Tokyo takes aim at whaling ban
Western governments and environmentalists are bracing themselves this week for the latest effort by Japan to overthrow the 42-year old international ban on the commercial hunting of whales.
Delegates from around the world gather in the Brazilian city of Florianopolis tomorrow for the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission, one of the most antagonistic international gatherings.
The meeting will be chaired by Joji Morishita, Japan’s whaling commissioner, and Tokyo is taking advantage of his stewardship to push for a ‘‘package’’ of rule changes that would undermine the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, thus paving the way for further changes.
‘‘There couldn’t be a better opportunity,’’ an official of Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. ‘‘We hope to draw on this opportunity to realise an environment where Japan’s claims will have more chances of being accepted.’’
The proposals include permitting hunts of whale species judged to have abundant numbers, such as the minke whale, and the formation of a committee on the ‘‘sustainable use’’ of whales.
Japan also wants to change the rules so that decisions can be made with a simple majority of votes by members, rather than the three quarters now required. Anti-whaling organisations, along with governments including Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States, fear that if such measures are agreed they will neutralise the moratorium voted for in 1982 which came into force two years later.
For years Japan got around the ban by carrying out an annual whale hunt in the name of ‘‘scientific research’’, which antiwhaling activists and governments dismiss as a cynical pretext. The Japanese government makes no secret of the fact that the flesh of the slaughtered whales ends up on the commercial market. In 2014 the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of the Australian government, which argued that Japan’s whale hunt was illegal.
After a one-year hiatus, Japan resumed hunting after ‘‘redesigning’’ the process to make it more convincing as scientific research. This year, the reconstituted research programme killed 333 Antarctic minke whales, including 122 pregnant females.
‘‘People often assume we already saved the whales back in the 1980s, but sadly that’s not the case,’’ said Kitty Block, the president of the Humane Society International, which campaigns against whaling. ‘‘We urge all whale-friendly nations attending the IWC to support conservation over killing by rejecting Japan’s outrageous proposition.
‘‘These graceful giants face so many threats in our degraded oceans such as entanglement, plastic and noise pollution, and climate change, the last thing they need is to be put back in the whalers’ cross-hairs.’’
Over the years, Japan has lobbied IWC members hard to support its position on whaling and has been accused of using economic aid as a bribe to win the votes of small nations, some of which do not even have coastlines, let alone traditions of whaling.
Japanese officials say that a resumption of sustainable whaling has the support of 40 of
‘‘People often assume we already saved the whales back in the 1980s, but sadly that’s not the case. We urge all whalefriendly nations attending the IWC to support conservation over killing by rejecting Japan’s outrageous proposition.’’ Kitty Block, Humane Society International president
the IWC’s 88 IWC members, which still leaves it well short of the three quarters it needs to make changes.