IWC

International Laws and Treaties for Wildlife and Biodiversity

INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION (IWC)

60th IWC Meeting in Santiago Chile 23-27 June 2008

Summary of 59th IWC Meeting in Anchorage Alaska 28-31 May 2007

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was set up in 1945 under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to provide for the conservation of whale stocks and the regulation of the whaling industry. In response to the decimation of whale populations at the hands of commercial whalers, the IWC instated a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. Since then, the emphasis of the IWC has shifted to conserving whales and restoring their populations, which remain at critically low levels. Unfortunately, Japan, Norway, Iceland and their allies want to keep the IWC stuck in its tragic past.

The Convention provides for the complete protection of certain species through the moratorium and also appoints specified areas as whale sanctuaries, currently the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary and the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Hopes for new sanctuaries proposed by Australia and New Zealand for the South Pacific and by Brazil for the South Atlantic have been dashed at recent IWC meetings by the minority of countries that routinely vote with Japan and block the 3/4 majority vote required to set up new sanctuaries.

Sadly, despite the success of the 1980s campaign for the moratorium, whales have not been saved. The moratorium is under threat with Japan using a generous aid program to recruit poor developing countries to join the IWC and vote for hunting. Each IWC meeting inches closer to developing a new regime to overthrow the moratorium and oversee a return to commercial whaling. IWC 58 in 2006 saw, the pro-whaling countries for the first time in nearly thirty years gain a simple majority, which they used to pass a declaration (the St Kitts and Nevis declaration) attacking the moratorium on commercial whaling, NGO participation in whale protection and to make baseless scientific claims. Norway, Iceland and Japan continue to exploit loopholes in the Convention and between them hunt thousands of whales a year. Japan uses the guise of ‘scientific whaling’ in order to hunt several species of whales in the north and south Pacific. In 2006 the hunt was extended to include the endangered fin and humpback whales. Iceland hunted whales under the same ‘scientific’ whaling loophole until 2003, when their controversial reservation to the moratorium came into effect. Since then they have commercially hunted several species in the north Atlantic. Norway has always had a reservation to the moratorium and has continued its commercial hunting throughout the moratorium on commercial whaling.

Whales face additional pressures as well as hunting. There is significant bycatch of cetaceans in fisheries around the world and threats such as climate change, the use of sonar by defence forces and seismic testing by the oil and gas industries all loom large.

HSI campaigners have been fighting to protect whales at the IWC since the early 1970s and our team is there in force at every annual meeting. The Australian Government delegation regularly includes a HSI adviser.

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