Moby Next Year

Whaling commission avoids controversial decisions

Posted at 12:51 PM on 27 Jun 2008

Wrapping up its annual meeting this week, the International Whaling Commission decided to defer decision-making on various controversial issues. The IWC took only one vote at the meeting, deciding to disallow Greenland's request to take a higher quota of humpback whales. It also agreed to research the impact of climate change on cetaceans. But with the commission polarized by fierce disagreement between pro- and anti-whaling countries, no decisions were made on whether to end a 22-year-old ban on commercial whaling, whether to continue letting Japan kill whales for alleged scientific purposes, whether to create a whale sanctuary in the south Atlantic, or whether to issue permits for coastal whaling. A 24-nation committee of the 81-member commission will try to come up with compromises on contentious issues, and will bring a report to next year's conference.

sources: Associated Press, BBC News, Reuters

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Mowat on the IWC

In his book "A Whale for the Killing," first published in 1972, with a slightly revised new edition in 2005, Farley Mowat writes (p. 42 of the Stackpole Books paperback):

<<
It is true that in 1946 an organization had been formed with the publicly stated intention of giving protection to the threatened species of whales and of regulating the hunt. This was the International Whaling Commission, whose headquarters were (and remain) in Norway [no; but see below], which also happened to be headquarters for the world's most efficient whale killers. But despite the employment of many good and dedicated men, the Commission was run for, and by, the whalers; and in such a manner that, instead of helping to preserve and conserve the vanishing whale stocks, it served as a cynical device to divert attention from the truth. It served to mask the insatiable greed which lay behind the slaughter, by promulgating regulations which apppeared wise and humane but which, in fact, were useless ... and sometimes worse than that.
>>

Some readers would call that pretty cynical too; and yet it sounds quite credible. The Wikipedia article by contrast seems to go along nicely with the "diversion of attention from the truth," however:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Whaling_Commis ....

Note that according to that article, the headquarters are no longer in Norway, but in Cambridge, England. And Norway has in fact withdrawn from the IWC. In his survey of the history of whaling, Mowat makes much of the Norwegians' especially destructive role. It was a Norwegian who invented the harpoon gun, for example; and they were the first to deploy whaling fleets, including a processing "mother ship" and very swift small chasers.

As for this meeting in Chile, we may note that the real scientific work that the IWC sponsors, such as studies of the effects of pollution and now global warming on whale populations, happen also to mean a dangerous delay in deciding on revised, improved regulations of whaling.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:52 AM on 30 Jun 2008

Cetacean Rights

Whales need a civil rights organization like the Great Ape Project which extends the inalienable rights of sentient beings to apes. I don't think the issue of the killing of another being is going to be resolved by approaching it from an economic perspective.

Would you eat your family dog? Would you eat a monkey? Whales are obviously intelligent, socially organized, sensitive aware beings. Where do we draw the line?

Isn't it time for human beings to stop acting like we own the planet when we have trashed it so bad for ourselves and everyone else - and start showing some respect? The UN could create a Bill of Rights for sentient beings. Imagine that. . . . swan . . . .

http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com

by swan at 2:27 PM on 30 Jun 2008

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