The International Whaling Commission voted narrowly in favour of a future return to the managed hunting of whales at its annual meeting on Sunday. The vote, by 33 to 32, was a victory for pro-whaling nations led by Japan.
A worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling has been in place since 1986. Sunday鈥檚 vote was the first favouring the resumption of whaling that Japan has won.
But the victory is only symbolic. In order to end the moratorium, pro-whaling countries need to secure 75% of votes.
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Furthermore, the victory was preceded by narrow defeats for the pro-whalers on four other key issues put to the vote during the weekend meeting on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. If passed these motions would have stopped conservation work on dolphins and porpoises, introduced secret ballots, exempted some Japanese coastal communities from the moratorium and cancelled the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
Sustainable whaling
The motion that was passed was proposed by a group of six Caribbean nations including St Kitts and Nevis. It has no legal force but requests a 鈥渘ormalisation鈥� of the IWC. According to the pro-whalers, this means returning to the commission鈥檚 original 1946 mandate of regulating whaling rather than preventing it.
鈥淭he moratorium, which was clearly intended as a temporary measure, is no longer necessary聟 many species and stocks of whales are abundant and sustainable whaling is possible,鈥� read the motion.
The main justification outlined is that whales are now competing with humans for fish stocks, and threatening 鈥渇ood security for coastal nations鈥�. This notion is dismissed by conservationists (see Whales, seals and fishermen rarely take same prey).
鈥淭his amounts to a sneak attack on the IWC,鈥� says Joth Singh of the International Fund for Animal Welfare based in London, UK. 鈥淎fter losing on every single proposal they brought to this meeting, the whaling countries and their supporters cooked up a non-binding statement, sprang it on the commission and pushed it to a vote.鈥�
Singh added: 鈥淭hey want to kill whales, and they鈥檙e willing to kill the commission to do it. But this is no death blow, just a stinging flesh wound.鈥�
Japan has been accused of buying the votes of poor Caribbean, Pacific and African nations in exchange for aid packages. It was believed that 2006 would see pro-whalers gain a majority and begin to reverse the body鈥檚 focus on conservation (See Votes ahoy! and Insight: Conservationists鈥� tactics now used by whalers).
Japan has threatened to leave the IWC if the body does not move towards the sustainable whaling of some species. The annual meeting ends on Tuesday.
