Subject: IWC IFAW statement
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Subject: IWC IFAW statement
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Subj: IFAW's opening statement at IWC
Date: Sun, 22 May 1994 13:27:35 BST
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From: Michael Halford <mchalford@gn.apc.org>
Subject: IFAW's opening statement at IWC
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***Please forward to all on MARMAM ASAP**** Thanks
International Whaling Commission, Mexico, May 1994 IWC/46/OS IFAW
ACTIONS FOR THE PROTECTION OF WHALES IN PUERTO VALLARTA AND BEYOND
Opening statement by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)
IFAW is unequivocally opposed to any and all commercial whaling,
whether or not under the auspices, or with the blessing, of the
IWC, including whaling under special scientific permits which is
generally commercial whaling thinly disguised. Our main reasons
for this policy are that:
(1) the methods used in commercial - including 'scientific' -
whaling, are irretrievably cruel;
(2) commercial exploitation of these animals - which are all, in
international law, "highly migratory (marine) species" and
therefore under global rather than unilateral national authority,
regardless of where in the ocean they happen to be - has never
been, and still cannot be, effectively controlled; and
(3) there is no way other than an enforced long-term ban on all
commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean that the recovery of
devastated whale populations that feed in that remote special
region of the - mainly - high seas can be assured.
The worldwide, indefinite pause in commercial whaling decided by
the IWC in 1982 was limited in its effectiveness. While that
decision should not be modified, additional measures are urgently
needed if commercial whaling is not to slip completely out of
control. The continuation of the moratorium itself is
increasingly precarious. One reason for this is the 'vote
consolidation operation' by Japan to over-turn or modify it by
recruiting new countries to IWC membership, and by exerting
overwhelming economic and diplomatic pressure on some existing
Members to alter their voting patterns there. Another is the
fact that the financing system of the IWC is so inequitable that
poorer Members, who can see little concrete gain in the near
future from the conservation of whales and the restoration of
stocks, are withdrawing, one by one.
A third reason is that some governments, which supported the
moratorium originally, seem to be concluding - IFAW believes
quite erroneously - that the original, precautionary purpose of
the 1982 decision had largely been achieved once a better,
supposedly more 'scientific', method of calculating catch limits
had been devised.
Perhaps more importantly, the 1982 decision has not been as
effective as was originally hoped because the 'pause' it mandated
has never been complete, and is even less so now than it was when
it first came legally coming into effect. Commercial whaling is
increasing yearly, under objections to IWC decisions (one form of
outlaw whaling) and in the thinly-veiled guise of taking
scientific 'samples'. And the threat of resumption of outlaw
'pirate' whaling, by vessels flying flags of non- member
countries, has again become very real.
Evidently, commercial - including scientific and outlaw - whaling
cannot be held in check simply by a group of non-whaling
countries doggedly hold on to the moratorium through a blocking
vote (sometimes referred to as the so-called 'just say no'
strategy). Progress can only be achieved now through pro-active
measures.
One such measure is the widely supported move within and also
outside the IWC to declare the entire Southern Ocean, including
all Antarctic waters, as a long-term, circumpolar sanctuary for
whales, especially for the migratory southern hemisphere baleen
whales on their feeding grounds. Other such measures are
political and economic actions, within the IWC and outside it, to
stop existing whaling operations under objections; to curb the
resurgence of unregulated commercial whaling by non-members of
the IWC; and greatly to reduce or preferably eliminate
'scientific' whaling, especially that of an evidently commercial
nature, whatever its declared purpose.
IFAW believes that for the time-being achievement of the desired
results protecting the remaining whales from further depletions
and providing an opportunity for their recovery - demands the
continued existence of the IWC and the strengthening of its
resolve to bring order into the whaling issue. The greatest
threat to whales, here and now, is NOT the threat of future
indeterminate environmental changes, serious as those might
eventually turn out to be. Nor even is it the hypothetical
deleterious effects on whales of global or regional changes that
are thought now to be in progress. Further, the greatest
immediate threat may not be of a casual modification of the
1982 decision. Although that COULD happen almost inadvertently
through a freak vote involving a large number of abstentions or
absences, the apparent faltering of Japan's 'vote consolidation
operation' may be giving a breathing space.
The immediate serious threat to whales is the growing disorder
in the international regulatory system which is charged to manage
the restoration of whale populations and to deliver them, intact
and biologically productive, to the future.
The existence of this threat is the basic reason for IFAW's
support of moves by the governments of some non-whaling countries
towards formal acceptance this year of the completed work of its
Scientific Committee, carried through under the Commission's
specific instructions, on a Revised Management Procedure (RMP).
This could be done through an appropriate conditional Resolution.
The conditions are, of course, all important. Provided they are
in place such a move should not be regarded, in itself, as a step
towards the re-opening of commercial whaling or the
legitimisation of present whaling by Norway and possibly soon
other countries under objections or through other loopholes in
the Convention. Rather, we would interpret it as a step towards
bringing the argument about whaling back fully into the IWC's
orbit and thus strengthening the hands of the non-whaling Member
countries.
Current whaling problems are rooted in well-known flaws in the
1946 Convention, in the declining adherence by states to the
Convention, and in weaknesses in some aspects of current law of
the sea. Disorder is nourished by the arrogant and reckless
actions of a very few governments that in practice care more for
national pride and immediate profits for a few of their nationals
than for properly regulated sustainable resource use to which
they supposedly committed themselves in Rio de Janeiro in June
1992.
This issue is fundamentally an international one, and in existing
customary law a global one. Whales cannot be 'saved' either for
the intangible benefit of future human generations, or for their
own well-being, while disorder reigns and spreads in the oceans.
There is no forum other than the IWC through which it can be
resolved, despite the existence of an illegitimate crippled
pretender to an alternative forum in the North Atlantic - NAMMCO
- created by the two governments that are primarily responsible
for the de-stabilisation of the IWC - those of Iceland and
Norway. The United Nations at present recognises the exclusive
legal competence of the IWC to regulate whaling and to take
conservation measures for whales. If this forum fails to be
effective then recourse will have to be made to a higher body
such as the UN General Assembly, but that would take time, great
effort and have uncertain outcome, for there the debate would be
politicised even more than it already is in the IWC. Those who
care for whales, as well as for the people who wish to 'use' them
- now or in the future, benignly or otherwise - have to make the
IWC work.
Therefore IFAW supports, as top priority, the creation of a
circumpolar Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, with a northern
boundary which is ecologically justified and which will ensure
protection of the sei and fin whales as well as the blue, minke
and humpback whales, and which is politically and legally viable
and thus acceptable to as many nations as possible, so that its
provisions will have the greatest chance of being universally and
effectively honoured.
IFAW also supports actions at this time by non-whaling
governments to reinforce, directly and indirectly, but without
compromise, the IWC. This includes encouraging, by all possible
peaceful means, the countries engaged in, or considering
resuming, commercial - including 'scientific' - whaling, whether
or not they are members of IWC, to abide both by the fact and the
spirit of IWC decisions.
THE REVISED MANAGEMENT PROCEDURE (RMP)
It is clear that the question of the 'adoption' of the RMP for
the calculation of any future catch limits is a critical and
contentious one for the 1994 IWC meeting. It is one on which
some non-whaling governments, and also NGOs such as IFAW that
oppose commercial whaling, may be divergent opinions. IFAW has
therefore given this especially careful consideration in the
context of its basic policy expressed in the first part of this
statement. Negotiation of all the other essential elements of a
Revised Management Scheme (RMS) is also high on the 1994 agenda,
and the 'provisional adoption' or 'acceptance' or whatever other
formula may be favoured, must be considered in that context.
The Scientific Committee has said it has completed its work on
the RMP. In doing so has for the most part followed the specific
instructions of the Commission, contained mainly in Resolutions
(1991, 1992) originally put forward by groups of the non-whaling
Member states. Some possible technical weaknesses in the RMP
have been pointed out by the ad hoc Review group of independent
scientists established by the United States authorities, and also
by some other scientists. Thus another question has been raised:
should the Committee be instructed to continue the development of
work it has said it has completed? Such 'further development'
could, of course, in principle be continued for ever. The real
question is: do the suggestions for further computer trials
really justify the Commission in not formally recognising the
Scientific Committee's work now. Even the Review Group did not
engage this question, which was strictly outside its remit,
though it did suggest that any adoption and/or implementation
should be for a limited period of twenty years.
IFAW maintains that further delay in properly recognising the
Scientific Committee's work, and closing it off, is not
justified, and is likely to lead to further erosion of the
Commission's authority.
If any further trials revealed that some adjustments were
necessary, then the Commission would remain free to order minor
or drastic changes (or computer trials of those) before moving to
incorporate it in the Schedule. In the unlikely event that
trials showed that the present proposed RMP should be abandoned,
then obviously there could be no move to put it in the Schedule.
While the Scientific Committee might be encouraged to conduct
more trials, there is no clear need for that to be hurried. The
work of the Committee has been marred in recent years by
pressures on it for undue speed. If such trials are to be
conducted they should be done carefully and exhaustively and
should be limited to those arising from the technically valid
points raised by the Review Group, as determined by the
Scientific Committee. There is no need for another special
inter-sessional meeting of the Committee for this purpose.
There are other, more specific, reasons for provisionally
adopting the RMP, exactly as presented by the Scientific
Committee. It is a fact that the RMP, as 'tuned' in accordance
with the Commission's 1992 resolution, is a much better, more
conservative, procedure for calculating catch limits in
accordance with the Commission's constitution and policy - if any
such catch limits are ever to be calculated - than is the New
Management Procedure (NMP) in the current Schedule, the
implementation of which has been suspended while the 1982
decision is in force. While the NMP is in the Schedule, and the
Commission has not expressed clearly, even through a resolution,
an intention to replace that with something else, duly specified,
it remains a default procedure. In situations where the NMP is
applicable it gives unsustainable catch limits under the guise of
sustainability. In the more common cases, where it is simply not
applicable, it leaves wide open the possibility of the Commission
eventually yielding to pressure to agree to arbitrary numbers,
proposed by whaling countries to meet claimed special
sociological needs. When the Commission, as it must, considers
such claims - even if only to reject them - such discussion
should be around more rational and consistent ways of picking
numbers.
Nevertheless, IFAW considers that the illusion that the RMP
provides an objective, 'scientific' method for calculating
'scientifically based' numbers should be erased. There is,
admittedly, some scientific knowledge embedded in it - but very
little, and most of that is a weakly documented specification of
what is thought not be known. Our contention that it is far
better than the method now in the Schedule to the 1946 Convention
is based on recognising the RMP as essentially an engineering
solution to a practical problem (rather than a 'scientific' one)
in which critical value judgements are made through its 'tuning',
which has already been the subject of a policy decision by the
Commission.
Provisional adoption or acceptance of the RMP should be
understood to include adoption of the guidelines for treatment
and analysis of survey data provided in 1993 by the Scientific
Committee, without any exceptions such as, for example, the
Scientific Committee has unfortunately suggested with respect to
the North Atlantic minke whales.
In conclusion, IFAW encourages Commissioners from non-whaling
countries to provisionally adopt, at the 1994 meeting, the RMP as
now formulated, on the understanding that parallel actions
concerning all other elements of a comprehensive Revised
Management Scheme (RMS) as outlined below will be initiated and,
further, that no consideration is given to any formal adoption of
the RMP (by incorporating it in the Schedule) or its
implementation at least until all those elements have been
completed and generally agreed.
In our view any acceptable management scheme must also include a
system of regional sanctuaries, among them that in the Indian
Ocean which protects some breeding grounds and migratory paths,
the proposed sanctuary in the Southern Ocean, and possibly others
to be identified.
THE REVISED MANAGEMENT SCHEME (RMS)
Most of the necessary elements of an effective Scheme were
already identified in the Commission's resolutions of 1991 and
1992. They are recapitulated and annotated below, as conditions
the fulfilment of which should, in IFAW's view, be an absolute
prior requisite for further discussion of any eventual
implementation of the RMP. These elements/conditions could
conveniently be specified in the resolution provisionally
adopting the RMP. Additional conditions have not yet been
specified in Resolutions but have been discussed in a preliminary
way.
1. COMPLIANCE
Explicit acceptance of, respect for, and intent fully to comply
with all IWC rules and regulations, by all intending whaling
countries, members of IWC, is a necessary condition for
subsequent formal adoption of the RMP and for any implementation
of it. That implies NO objections can be allowed by ANY of those
countries to ANY of the elements in an RMS 'package'.
2. INSPECTION, OBSERVATION AND ENFORCEMENT
Existing provisions for national inspection must be fully
honoured, and in such a way that ALL vessels and landing places
would be continuously inspected throughout all whaling seasons.
A credible international observer scheme must be negotiated
providing that all accredited observers (of nationally and
resident different from that of the flags and owners of the
vessels), selected and employed by the IWC and responsible only
to the IWC, are deployed on all catcher vessels, as well as at
all landing places and on factory ships, at all times. No
exceptions should be made for claims that accommodation on the
vessels is limited. If and when, for whatever reason, the
international observers are not on stations then any operations
must be suspended.
It would be proper for the whaling countries, who would directly
profit from any re-opening of commercial whaling, to cover the
costs through special subventions to the IWC.
Additionally, external monitoring of the movements of all whaling
vessels is necessary, by satellite or otherwise. The IWC would
need to keep an official registry of these vessels, and any
unregistered vessel observed killing whales, or preparing or armed
to do so, should be treated as 'illegitimate' and dealt with
accordingly.
The present provisions for dealing with infractions - under which
only the offending country brings forward evidence, and
independent evidence is only admitted on the very rare occasions
when another state can be persuaded to submit it - are cosmetic
only and ineffective. It may be necessary for the IWC itself to
be empowered to bring forward evidence of infractions and even
initiate legal action against offenders in appropriate courts or
tribunals. Properly documented independent evidence from legal
persons other than the whaling governments should be admitted and
such persons should be permitted to lodge formal complaints.
The special arrangements for the peaceful settlement of disputes
regarding the deep seabed, provided for in UNCLoS, might be a
model for use with respect to the whales - another resource for
which the entire community of nations has taken responsibility.
The penalties for infractions should be at least commensurate in
scale with the monetary values obtained by offenders and those
who deal with them.
Member countries of the IWC will evidently need to take vigorous
steps, perhaps through higher authorities such as the United
Nations, to ensure that non-members (whether or not they are
members of the UN system) do not engage in or facilitate any
commercial whaling, nor violate any other rules and regulations
established by the IWC.
3. INTERNATIONAL TRADE
It is through trade in commodities from whales, and in whaling
material, that many past evasions of regulations have been
effected. Although it may not be reasonable to prohibit all such
trade in principle, a strong case can be made for such a
prohibition as an element in enforcement. At the very least it
is essential that intending whaling countries become parties to
CITES and those that are already Parties remove all their
existing reservations to relevant CITES listings. As in 2 above,
the ban on international trade must be made effective also for
non-members of IWC.
4. CATCH CONSTRAINTS
Firm and binding provision should be made to ensure that in
future the taking of whales under scientific permits is no longer
used as a means of exceeding any catch limits. This can be
achieved by appropriate provisions in a Resolution, later to be
incorporated in the Schedule, that total catches may not exceed
commercial catch limits over a short period of time. Countries
wishing to kill whales for scientific purposes could then do so
by reducing any authorised commercial catches correspondingly,
without formally foregoing their rights to issue permits.
Additional stringent conditions would be necessary with respect
to any taking of whales under special permits where catch limits
remain zero, as they do by default in the RMP specification.
5. SURVEY DATA
Although the Scientific Committee has provided guidelines for the
availability and analysis of survey data, it has made no clear
distinction between surveys, such as those under the IDCR, in
which the Scientific Committee itself (or its representatives)
also participates in planning and conduct, and those as, for
example, in the North Atlantic, which were planned and conducted
by one or more countries having special interests in the
resumption of whaling. The only valid survey data for use in an
implementation of the RMP should be those obtained under the
former type of arrangement. Through this means it could be
ensured that surveys, like any other operations related to
commercial whaling, would be subject to international inspection.
6. IMPLEMENTING A PRECAUTIONARY APPROACH
At least three matters which call for an appropriate formulation
of a precautionary approach in decisions about whether or not to
implement the RMP have been covered by recent decisions or
resolutions of the Commission. They should now be formulated
operationally.
(a) Environmental threats
These cannot, in our view, be dealt effectively within the RMP
context. The RMP - any Catch Limit Algorithm as presently
conceived - can only respond to actual detrimental (or
beneficial) changes in the environmental carrying capacity for
whales, or in the actual current numbers of whales, after changes
have occurred. It is appropriate to simulate such changes and
test the robustness of any algorithm accordingly. The algorithm
may or may not respond adequately, and if trials show that it
will not do so then adjustments can be tried. But it cannot
respond to threats as such. Thus the Commission needs also to
develop guidelines - an additional algorithm as an element of the
RMS - for reaching implementation decisions based on evaluations
of the existence, probability and possible strength of identified
threats. Evidently such decisions cannot rest entirely on vague
or poorly documented hypotheses. But, equally, it is not
acceptable to continue to assume that a perceived threat for
which there is some objective, indicative evidence is not
significant until it has been proved to be so. An operationally
valid formulation of a precautionary approach to this problem is
urgently needed.
(b) Depleted stocks
The 1991 Resolution of the Commission set a condition that whale
populations which are at present under the NMP because they had
been determined to be depleted, must remain protected until there
is positive evidence that they have recovered sufficiently to
warrant 'de-protection', or that they had been wrongly classified
in the first place. This precautionary condition was only
partially achieved by an adjustment made by the Scientific
Committee to the internal protection level of the Catch Limit
Algorithm, so a specific provision within the RMS is called for.
(c) Comprehensive Assessment
The provision in paragraph 10(e) of the Schedule, that no
consideration should be given to modification of the 'moratorium'
until there has been a comprehensive assessment of the effects of
the 1982 decision, has not yet been met. The Scientific
Committee has been unable to fulfil this, primarily because
survey methods are too imprecise to detect population changes
over what are, for whales, short periods of time. This is a
specific provision in line with a precautionary approach which,
in IFAW's view, must be honoured.
(d) Historical catch data
The RMP offers very strong incentives for whaling nations to
conceal knowledge of under-reporting (and other forms of
mis-reporting with respect to species killed, locations in which
they were killed, etc.) of historical catches, since the catch
limits calculated increase steeply with increased
under-reporting. There have been sufficient revealed instances
of serious under- reporting (e.g. Soviet Antarctic pelagic
catching in the 1960s, Norwegian minke catches in the 1980s) to
warrant the development of rigorous criteria regarding the data
to be used in the catch limit algorithm and in the multi-stock
rules. In principle all still-existing original sources of catch
data need to be independently validated. But precautionary rules
must be developed to determine which catch data shall be used
where original sources have disappeared or are incomplete. In
its deliberations so far the Scientific Committee has adopted
the very opposite of a precautionary approach, but using only
officially reported catches, ignoring information about
under-reporting even when it is available. This is clearly
unacceptable. Firm criteria should be established by which
precautionary decisions will be made regarding the acceptability
of historical data for use in any RMP implementation. These
should be enacted as a specific requirement within the RMS.
7. NON-CONSUMPTIVE, NON-LETHAL USE OF WHALES
The IWC has now recognised that these are within its mandate. No
commercial whaling should be permitted in situations where there
is good reason to suppose that it will substantially derogate
non-consumptive values obtained from the same population of
whales, or in the same or over-lapping localities, including the
less tangible values of non-lethal scientific research. In all
such cases a credible analysis, pursuant to IWC criteria to be
developed and agreed, must precede consideration of the
calculation of any non-zero catch limits.
8. CRUELTY
Last, but not - for IFAW - least, the matter of humane killing
techniques has to be taken seriously, and dealt with in
operational terms by the IWC, beyond endless loose discussions.
The Commission clearly accepted its competence to enact binding
regulations regarding humane killing when it outlawed the use of
the cold harpoon. It must continue to exercise that competence.
IFAW recognises that what is humane or cruel is in part a
subjective question and the answers may vary from one culture to
another. Even in a relatively homogenous region such as Western
Europe what is now completely unacceptable to the citizens of one
country is still tolerated in another. Concern for the treatment
of wild animals is evolving, and not only for those species that
are big, rare, 'beautiful', or 'intelligent'. Minimal absolute
criteria have been developed and widely adopted for the slaughter
of other animal species used as food for humans. Whales cannot
be an exception to this.
In this context, it is reasonable to insist that, before
consideration is given to any implementation of the RMP,
countries intending to engage in commercial whaling must provide
convincing evidence of their substantial efforts towards the
invention of less cruel methods than at present, and thereafter
provide continuing evidence of significant progress in this
matter. This should be explicit in the RMS, and related to a
standard of acceptability to be formulated and agreed by the IWC
on the basis of independent expert advice from the fields of the
veterinary and behavioural sciences.
A major impediment to progress in this matter is the degree to
which whaling authorities keep secret much of the information,
including film and video records, they have pertaining to it.
This is alone sufficient to reinforce public and professional
scepticism about claims being made from time to time that
improvements are in hand. In addition to the release of existing
information it would eventually be essential to empower
international observers of any authorised commercial whaling
operations to collect relevant data and to report these to the
Commission for appropriate action.
IN CONCLUSION
It will probably be said that some of the conditions described
here - especially those for control and enforcement - cannot be
met, for technical, financial or legal reasons. If that were so,
there is only one possible response: there should be no
legalisation of resumed commercial whaling while such impediments
persist.