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Japan fails to lift whaling ban, threatens to quit IWC

by P. Parameswaran
42 minutes ago



ANCHORAGE, United States (AFP) - Japan failed in its bid Thursday to lift a moratorium on commercial whaling after stormy annual talks of the 75-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC) and warned it might pull out of the organization.

"There is a real possibility we will review at a fundamental level our role in the IWC and this would include withdrawing, setting up a new organization," Japan's top delegate Akira Nakamae said in a stunning announcement at the end of the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.

Japan would also consider defying the two-decade whaling ban and "unilaterally" launch hunts for the large creatures along its exclusive economic zone, he said.

The decision was announced after Japan abandoned its application at the IWC meeting for Japanese small-scale coastal communities to hunt whales following strong opposition from anti-whaling nations, including the United States, Australia, Britain, New Zealand and Brazil.

It refused to call for a vote, a day after leading 27 nations in a boycott of a vote on a non-binding resolution urging Japan to suspend "lethal aspects" of its scientific whaling program.

In another rebuff to the IWC, Japan also withdrew its bid to host the annual IWC talks in Yokohama in 2009, saying it made no sense to stage the talks in Japan when the commission refuses to support its "sustainable" whaling concept.

"I think in any kind of patience, there is always a limit," said another senior Japanese delegate Joji Morishita, adding that anti-whaling nations left "no room for dialogue, no room for compromise."

He said Japan's "top priority" was to restore the traditional rights of its small coastal whaling community, who had depended on hunting as far back as the 17th century.

They have been distressed since the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, Japanese officials said, adding that political pressure was piling up to review its position in the commission for several years.

Japan has been campaigning to lift the whaling moratorium ever since it was imposed. But this year, it argued that its traditional coastal communities have the same right to pursue whaling as natives in the United States and Russia.

Japan submitted its proposal under the same IWC rules allowing aboriginal subsistence whale hunting quotas but it needed an elusive three-fourths majority to overturn the moratorium, officials and experts said.

Japan last year won by a simple majority a non-binding resolution in favor of commercial whaling. This year, the anti-whaling group are in the majority and moved a resolution reaffirming the ban.

Still, Japan may be able to take along up to 30 members from the IWC into any new organization it sets up, some delegates said.

The United States and Japan are the key pillars of the IWC, set up to manage whaling and be in charge of conservation of the large mammals.

Nakamae explained that Japan was "greatly interested in the idea of holding a preparatory meeting for setting up a conservation and management organization for whales, which is in line with the UN convention on the law of the sea.

"It can be a replacement for the IWC," he said.

IWC chairman William Hogarth said he was sympathetic with Japan but asked it to review its decision about a possible pullout from the commission and setting up a new body.

"I really hope Japan doesn't pursue that," Hogarth, who is also the top US delegate to the IWC, told AFP. "I think it should have another opportunity to look at the future of the IWC."

"We, all countries, need to put all the issues on the table and discuss them thoroughly in the spirit of compromise," he said.

Japan has threatened to leave the IWC several times in the past but this is the first time it had announced openly at the commission that it was interested in setting up a new body comprising "like-minded" nations.

Environmentalists have accused Japan of exploiting a legal loophole allowing whaling for scientific research.

"We are winning the vote count, but the whalers are winning the body count," said Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

More than 20,000 whales have been killed since the two-decade old moratorium. Japan kills about 1,000 whales a year under its scientific program then sells the meat.

This summer, it wants to kill 50 humpback whales from stocks that migrate along the Australian and New Zealand coasts into the tropical Pacific, drawing protests from governments and green groups.

It offered a compromise of shelving the humpback hunting plan if its request for whale hunting by the Japanese coastal community is allowed. But the offer was rejected.
Whaling has been in Japan since the 17th Century...yeah, so was castrating boys to preserve their voice(Castrati)...but there's a huge difference between NEEDS and WANTS.

I believe in preserving cultural heritage but to a reasonable degree. Budo remains a very important part of Japanese culture and history but it doesn't mean we need to preserve the old school form of tameshigiri by cutting up convicts.

I reckon Japan should have its way and be allowed to hunt whales BUT only in THEIR waters.