Humane Society International. IWC 57 will take place in June in Ulsan, Korea. This is a pivotal year. It is believed that Japan and the other pro-whaling nations may have a simple majority at this meeting. Pro conservation countries have been in the majority at the IWC since 1982 and such a shift will dramatically undermine the conservation mandate of the IWC. HSI has a team attending the IWC meeting in Korea, including Nicola Beynon, who is an advisor on the Australian delegation.

If they command a simple majority, Japan has stated that they intend to dismantle the Conservation Committee and all the whale welfare work done by the IWC to-date. They have also indicated that they will institute secret ballots and instruct the Scientific Committee to stop all research on the environmental threats impacting whales.  

Japan has also notified the IWC that they will put forward a Revised Management Scheme (RMS), to be adopted at this meeting, which includes the lifting of the commercial whaling moratorium. To adopt an RMS, Japan will need a ¾ majority.

Recently there has been significant momentum to adopt an RMS and lift the moratorium. The rush to adopt an RMS comes from the fact that Japan, Norway, and Iceland exploit loopholes in the Convention and kill increasing numbers of whales and additional species each year. Japan just announced that they will double their take of minke whales to 800 per year and add two new endangered whale species, fin and humpback to their hunt in Antarctica.

Some conservation countries believe that an RMS will somehow bring whaling under control. However, the current draft of the RMS is fundamentally flawed. It has no enforcement mechanisms, no penalties, no international inspectors, and no power to stop the most egregious expansions of whaling, i.e. scientific whaling and whaling under reservation/objection.   

If adopted, the RMS would be a management scheme in name only. It would provide no real safeguards for whale populations or for individual whales and it would provide no real consequences to nations that flouted the nominal rules it would impose. It does not even match the measures taken in modern fishery treaties to manage hunting of species far less vulnerable to cheating and over-exploitation than whales. In short, the draft RMS would create the same sort of chaotic conditions that led to the moratorium in the first place.

The only way to stop the abuses of scientific whaling and whaling under objection/reservation is to amend the Convention. New Zealand has proposed a Protocol to close the loopholes enshrined in the Convention. HSI strongly supports amending the Convention and believes this is the only way forward to restore credibility to the IWC and provide the necessary protection for whales.

HSI is also recommending that anti whaling countries such as Australia bring a case against Japan to the International Court of Justice, seeking a ruling that their exploitation of the loophole for scientific whaling is an ‘Abuse of Rights’.

Opening Statement to the 57th Meeting of the International Whaling Commission June 2005 by the Humane Society International

The current draft of the Revised Management Scheme (RMS) is fundamentally flawed, and any attempts to adopt an RMS at this meeting are not only unwarranted but would be extremely dangerous for the future conservation and protection of whales.

The simple truth is that from the IWC’s inception, whalers have exploited opportunities to evade whaling management and conservation regulations. Despite IWC regulations, whalers for decades routinely exceeded their permissible take and inaccurately reported the numbers of whales killed. As a result, whale populations continued to decline and by the 1970s, eight out of ten species of great whales covered by the Convention were commercially extinct. Having failed to properly regulate whaling, the Commission adopted an indefinite commercial whaling moratorium in 1982.

However, even when the moratorium went into effect in 1986, whaling continued because of exemptions in the Convention. This problem persists today, and nearly twenty years after the moratorium went into effect, 24,000 whales have been killed. 

Recently there has been greater momentum to adopt an RMS and lift the moratorium.  This motivation is not based upon the fact that civil society wants to see a return to whaling, or that whales are needed again for their oil or other products. Rather, the desire to adopt an RMS and lift the moratorium is based upon the fact that more and more whales are killed each year and the Commission has no way of controlling this expansion.  However, the RMS is not a panacea for unsustainable and uncontrolled whaling.   

The RMS draft does not contain even the minimal implementation and enforcement measures found in modern fisheries management organizations. Problems with the current draft include lack of adequate funding for controlling whaling, no procedures for imposing sanctions to address violations, no compliance mechanisms, and no welfare provisions.  Most importantly, an RMS even if it addressed the concerns mentioned above, cannot stop the abuses of Article VIII whaling or prevent countries from filing objections or a rejoining with a reservation to any or all regulatory measures in an RMS. 

Article VIII of the Convention allows member countries to exploit and kill whales at will for scientific research purposes. This right supersedes all conservation measures outlined in the Schedule including any RMS adopted into the Schedule.

If adopted, the RMS would be a management scheme in name only. It would provide no real safeguards for stocks or for individual whales and it would provide no real consequences to nations that flouted the nominal rules it would impose. In short, the RMS would create the same sort of chaotic conditions that led to the moratorium in the first place.

Instead of negotiating whether to adopt an RMS and lift the moratorium, member governments would better serve whale conservation and bolster the reputation of the IWC by amending the Convention to close the loopholes and modernize its provisions. The unfettered right to issue special permits and to whale under reservation/objection must be removed from the ICRW.  Moreover, new provisions allowing for enforcement and compliance, currently adopted in other fishery agreements, should be added to the Convention.

HSI therefore, supports a Protocol to the Convention that would close loopholes and add enforcement mechanisms, as a way to restore credibility to the IWC and provide the necessary protection for whales.

Competition Between Whales and Fisheries