IWC Draft Document Promotes Regulated Whaling

A special working group working to save the International Whaling Commission met in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida to propose a "package" that could bring whaling and anti-whaling countries closer together. Notes from the Chairman, which clearly state that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed," recognize that the body has not performed to the satisfaction of whaling and anti-whaling nations alike. Anti-whaling countries have protested that the IWC has done too little to regulate whaling, while the opposition says that the organization has done little to voice the cultural, economical, and scientific justification for sustainable whaling.

The working group contains anti-whaling countries, as well as whaling countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. Antigua, Barbuda, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sweden and the United States were all represented at the meeting. The draft document they created will be presented to the entire IWC constituency at the annual conference in June.

The Contents of the Whaling Draft Document

In the draft document's mission statement, it promises to promote cooperation between member countries to manage whale populations on a scientific basis. This could be interpreted many ways, as the catch limits proposed in the appendix are set to modest levels for some endangered whales, but the catch limits for common and prolific species, with a populations a thousand times larger than some endangered species, are yet to be determined. The draft sets out a few core issues it wishes to address.

• Bringing all whaling under the control of the IWC, including special permit whaling done by the Japanese as scientific research, indigenous hunting done off the coast of South America and in the Arctic, and objection whaling done by Iceland.
• Establishing a South Atlantic whale sanctuary with more legal rigidity than the gentleman's agreement that exists today.
• Allowing countries that have historically whaled and insisted on whaling through the moratorium to continue to do so in a regulated, sustainable fashion.
• Instituting a stringent chain-of-custody system that tracks each whale via DNA sampling. Auditors will be able to test whale meat at market to learn what species it is, where it was hunted, how it was killed, its age, sex, and other pieces of logistical information.
• Creating mechanisms for whaling enterprise in developing nations to cope with the costs and restrictions of the above-mentioned points.

In addition to the main points listed in the heading of the text, the draft document also features an extensive section detailing how NGOs must behave if they wish to be formally recognized by the IWC, which could be seen as a clear jab at the Sea Shepherd organization. The IWC states that nearly 2000 whales die each year to unregulated whaling, and that securing a means for countries to continue the hunt under IWC governance is the most effective way to control and reduce that number.

While the actual number of whales killed is yet to be determined and the text is yet to be adopted, the document could represent the largest shift in whaling since the moratorium was adopted in 1986.