By Chris Howe

Can government representatives at the International Whaling Commission start behaving like the whales actually matter?

As the farmer said over the fence to the lost tourist asking directions, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.” Much the same sentiments have been expressed many times in corridors and basement meeting rooms in hotels around the world during interminable sessions of the International Whaling Commission.

Originally established in January 1946 to “…provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry,” the Commission is the body that implements the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) and has been dysfunctional for many years. Many of the problems that have beset the organisation stem from that quote, with some countries focussing on conservation and others on the whaling industry.

Now consisting of over eighty countries, the IWC has grown considerably since it was founded. The initial signatories were Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, South Africa, Russia, the UK and the USA. New Zealand withdrew between 1969 and 1976, and other have come and gone and come back again over the years, most notably Iceland which rejoined controversially in 2002.

To cut a long story short, in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s many new countries joined the IWC, often as a result of encouragement by countries that were already members. Although countries that were generally anti-whaling dominated for a short time, resulting in the so-called moratorium on commercial whaling (actually a setting of quotas to zero), the requirements of the Convention to have 75 percent of the vote before changes to the text can be made now mean that any attempts to change or reform the IWC always fail.

Many observers recognise three groups of countries at the IWC. There are the anti-whaling countries, often recruited by other anti-whaling countries or environmental organisations. These countries oppose all whaling, and are often attacked by pro-whalers as being contrary to the actual aims of the Convention. Then there are pro-whaling countries, led by the three countries that currently go whaling – Japan, Norway and Iceland. They generally believe quotas should be issued. And then there is a small middle group that, while they don’t like whaling, would not oppose a regulated, scientifically based whaling industry. Some of these believe we don’t yet know enough about whale populations to set quotas.

To complicate matters, many of the pro-whaling countries have never been whaling, and don’t intend to. Some of them were recruited by the anti-whaling environmental groups, but switched sides. And some of the anti-whaling countries, such as the UK and New Zealand, were central to the whaling industry in its heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A lot has been written about all of this. You can see excellent in-depth analysis at http://www.pewwhales.org/, wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/cetaceans/cetaceans/iwc/, and www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/whaling/.

The question is: where to from here, given that here is not the place you’d want to start? The Convention itself is deficient, allowing abuses of the system, such as scientific whaling, to take place. The members are largely split between pro and anti whaling positions, and both sides are actively recruiting new members to bolster their numbers.

Some countries have come together to try and work out a compromise that would allow the whaling countries – Japan in particular – to save face, but currently the draft text of this compromise would allow Japan to whale in the Southern Ocean for the next ten years. Such a compromise is unacceptable to anti whaling nations and environment groups alike.

WWF has argued for reform of the IWC for some years, and for a while it seemed like a diplomatic conference would take place, but that seems to have faded away. What many delegates seem to have forgotten in the debates and arguments that rage at the IWC – and I speak from the experience of attending the annual meetings between 2003 and 2006 – is the whales themselves. Whether it is the pro-whaling countries arguing for quotas in sanctuaries for endangered species, and refusing to stop abusing the scientific whaling loophole, or anti-whaling countries refusing to budge from their “no return to commercial whaling” position, neither side has achieved much for the more than 30,000 whales killed since the moratorium.

In the meantime, more whales than ever are being killed, many in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary through the loophole of scientific whaling. WWF believes that whale sanctuaries should, by their very definition, be completely off-limits to any kind of whaling, and the scientific whaling loophole should be closed immediately. And even though some whale populations may be slowly recovering, most are nowhere near their pre-exploitation numbers, making the constant calls to restart commercial whaling both ecologically irresponsible, and a petulant display of disregard for global opinion.

It is certainly true to say that the IWC is not meeting either of its goals: it is not regulating whaling and it is not providing for the proper conservation of whales. On the eve of the 62nd meeting of the IWC, what the world needs to see is the delegates putting the whales first in their deliberations. That will require compromises from all countries, and no country will get everything it wants. The alternative is many more years of unregulated hunting in the Southern Ocean, continued stand-offs and arguments at the IWC, and worst of all, the continued decline of these magnificent creatures that we thought we’d saved decades ago.