Pro-whaling countries gear up for vote

Countries that oppose the two-decade moratorium on commercial whale hunts fought for the upper hand at an annual whaling meeting in Ulsan, South Korea, pushing a proposal to back limited commercial hunts.

Japan and other pro-whaling nations in the International Whaling Commission have virtually no chance of getting the required 75% majority to overturn the moratorium at this year’s annual meeting.

But they want a simple majority to back Japan’s proposal for a non-binding measure expressing support for limited commercial catches.

That would demonstrate that opinion among commission members has turned in favour of sanctioning commercial whale hunts for the first time in nearly two decades.

The pro-whaling nations failed to win two procedural votes yesterday, but some of the members of their camp had not yet arrived.

The 66-member commission, based in Cambridge, which regulates global whale hunting, banned commercial hunts in 1986, handing environmentalists a major victory in protecting species near extinction after centuries of whaling.

Norway holds the world’s only commercial whaling season in defiance of the ban. Japan, Norway and other nations which advocate what they call “sustainable use” of whales, this year are expected to kill more than 1,550 of the mammals.

Yesterday, Japan said it would more than double its annual research cull of minke whales to as many as 935 from 440 this year, extending a researching whaling program begun in 1987. Critics call it commercial whaling in disguise.

Japan says it must kill whales to study them. It then sells the meat, which is allowed under commission rules. The US criticised the decision to expand the research hunts, saying scientific advances make it unnecessary to kill whales to study them.

Japan maintains that whaling is a national tradition and that eating meat from mammals forms a vital part of its food culture. Japan claims whale stocks have sufficiently recovered since 1986 to allow the resumption of limited hunts.

Countries led by Australia and New Zealand reject that view. The advocate protecting whales and encouraging alternative ways of profiting from them, through tourism and whale-watching.

“Putting a regime in place that allows any number of whales to be killed commercially is a step toward legitimising commercial whaling,” said Patrick Ramage of the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Japan’s proposals on deleting the issue of whale sanctuaries from the meeting’s agenda and introducing secret ballots were narrowly defeated Monday, but might have passed if several pro-whaling countries including the Pacific island nation of Nauru had arrived at the meeting on time.

The annual meeting went into a closed session for about 90 minutes today in what critics blasted as a delay tactic until more members who back the resumption of commercial whale hunts could arrive.

Members voted 28-20, with nine abstentions, in favour of the closed-door session as proposed by St Lucia, one of several Caribbean countries allied with Japan in the pro-whaling camp.

Some participants evidently were frustrated that debate was being stalled. Brazil walked out of the closed meeting and accused pro-whaling countries of making long speeches on procedural issues.

“We just refuse to be taken hostage of rhetoric for unclear purposes,” said Brazil’s representative Maria Teresa Mesquita Pessoa.