At the moment Australia are leading the forces of light.
This started a couple of years ago, and has a lot to do with Pete Garret, once
of the band Midnight Oil, becoming the Australian environment minister. Garrett
was particularly enthusiastic to be engaged in the whaling issue, and although
Australia has always been a very active player at the IWC, they had more
government support thanks to Garrett. New Zealand used to be the conservation
heroes, but have gone very quiet in recent years, mostly because of a more
conservative government and lack of funds. The UK is pretty active, although is
a more subtle way – their Commissioners Richard and Trevor used to be like the
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie of the Commission, being terribly polite,
diplomatic, yet extremely sarcastic and very cutting. Sadly Richard has retired
and the IWC meetings have got a lot less witty. Most of the European countries
are pro-conservation, but these days the European nations have to have
consensus and vote at international meetings as a block, and getting all of
these countries to co-ordinate is, to say the least, a little difficult.
Denmark is the problem child in Europe. Although a member of the European Union
(in which killing whales and dolphins is banned), Denmark has dominion over
Greenland and the Faeroes (part of Europe, but also separate, like the Puerto
Rico and Samoa of Europe, but not as sunny, nor as good at sports), both of
which have whaling/dolphin hunts. So, Denmark supports the hunts of marine
mammals and is the sand in the ointment in the European delegation. Talking
about the European countries I should highlight the Luxemburg delegation – they
might be a small delegation, but they always know where the best restaurants
and bars are. Various Latin American countries also work as a block: Chile,
Argentina and Brazil are particularly active and passionate about whale
conservation, and other Latin American countries try to back them up, although
are often strapped for cash to send delegates to meetings.
Representing the dark side of the force, Japan is the main
player, with Norway, Iceland (nb neither Iceland nor Norway are members of the
European Union and so what I said above does not count for them), and Korea. A
controversial aspect of the IWC is the number of small developing nations that
have recently joined the IWC and vote with Japan on whaling issues. In 2010, a
UK newspaper conducted a reporting ‘sting’ operating and filmed one of the
delegates admitting having taken Japanese money in exchange for their vote at
the IWC. The fact that the delegate in question was the vice-chair of the
Commission caused huge scandal that year.
So where is the US in
this? Well the US is usually on the side of good, but it is a whaling nation
(there is “aboriginal” whaling for bowhead whales in Alaska, as well as hunts
for beluga and narwhals). Whenever it’s a year to discuss bowhead whale quotas,
the US bends over backwards not to upset any whaling nations so they can get
the bowhead whale quota for native Americans. Two years ago, the US led the
charge to roll back the current whaling ban/moratorium in an extremely politically
naïve attempt to “solve the whaling deadlock at the IWC once and for all”. The
idea was that by allowing commercial whaling to resume, then the uncontrolled “scientific
whaling” would stop. What the likely result would have been – commercial whaling
with countries using “scientific whaling” to top up their quotas, and virtually
no way to rein whaling in. Luckily the US initiative failed (thanks to the
Latin American and European blocks), and the US commissioner who suggested this
initiative has been “moved on”. Hopefully the US will be more conservation-focused
this year, when it comes to the Commission meeting… let’s see.
No comments:
Post a Comment