(JP) Intrigue and politics in world of whaling

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news//chi-0412010247dec01,1,399820.story

 

Intrigue and politics in world of whaling

Japan is accused of buying votes of poor nations like

Nicaragua to promote its pro-hunting agenda

 

By Hugh Dellios

Tribune foreign correspondent

Published December 1, 2004

 

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- The only whales seen in

Nicaragua are the ones that wash up occasionally on

the Pacific beaches. The country has no whaling fleet,

no tradition of whaling and certainly no market for

whale blubber.

 

Yet that didn't stop the impoverished Central American

country from joining the International Whaling

Commission last year, just in time to attend the

commission's annual session in Sorrento, Italy, where

it voted with Japan for measures promoting more whale

hunting.

 

" Why Nicaragua? Well, why Switzerland? Why Mongolia?

Those countries are members, and some don't even have

oceans, " said Miguel Marenco, Nicaragua's new whaling

commissioner. " As a fishing nation, we are very much

interested in the management of marine species. "

 

Environmentalists believe there may be another reason

for Nicaragua's sudden interest in whales: millions of

dollars worth of Japanese aid, delivered in

sake-sipping ceremonies and used to pay for roads,

schools and other desperate needs.

 

In recent years, Japan has inched closer to achieving

a majority in the 58-member whaling commission with

what environmental groups say is a systematic campaign

to recruit poor nations with no whaling tradition such

as Nicaragua, landlocked Mongolia and a number of

Caribbean islands.

 

The countries allegedly are offered international

assistance, or subtly threatened with losing what they

already receive. In exchange they are to deliver

pro-whaling votes that have little to do with their

citizens' taste for whale blubber or skills with a

harpoon.

 

By the environmentalists' count, the number of such

nations voting with Japan in favor of commercial

whaling has grown from nine to nearly 20 since 2000.

It is happening just as debate is intensifying over

whether to lift an 18-year-old moratorium on whale

hunting, which would require a three-quarters

commission vote.

 

" Japan is getting very close to a majority, and it

will be a majority that is bought, not won, " said

Vassili Papastavrou, a whale scientist with the

International Fund for Animal Welfare.

 

Nicaragua and other new commission members join Japan

in denying suggestions of " vote buying, " saying the

votes are based on good science and the aid is an

entirely unrelated matter. They counter that

environmentalists are the ones using " sensationalist "

arguments to pressure countries into voting for more

whale protections.

 

The dispute has spouted at a time when the commission

faces important decisions on the fate of the world's

largest mammals. While many species were hunted to the

brink of extinction in the 1960s, some of them, such

as the minke and sperm whales, have recovered enough

that some scientists believe they can be hunted again.

 

Group established in '46

 

Others, citing the sad history of whaling, argue that

dropping the 1986 moratorium would open the door once

again to wanton overharvesting, because whaling always

has proved difficult to regulate.

 

The International Whaling Commission was set up in

1946 to do just that. For the last 18 years, though,

it has backed the almost complete moratorium with the

help of environmentalists' " Save the Whales " campaign.

 

Among the few countries still whaling are Japan and

Norway, which enjoy small exceptions for research.

There are also exceptions for subsistence whaling by

aboriginal groups.

 

The charges of vote-buying by Japan intensified two

years ago when several new members, including

Nicaragua and six Caribbean nations, helped vote down

a whale sanctuary in the South Pacific despite the

support of Australia and other countries in that

region.

 

At this year's meeting in July, the commission

approved a resolution to create a final management

plan by next year's session. In a 30-27 vote, Japan

lost on its proposal to raise from 440 to 600 the

number of minke whales it can hunt for research.

 

In the 18 months since Nicaragua became a commission

member, it has voted with Japan on 21 of 23 proposals.

Environmentalists say six Japanese-aided Caribbean

nations--Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St.

Vincent and the Grenadines, and St. Kitts and

Nevis--have been even stronger advocates of whaling,

despite no apparent national interest in whaling.

 

Commission leaders asked the environmentalists to

compile a report on the alleged vote-buying before the

group's 2005 meeting in South Korea. The scientific

issues are being addressed at a meeting this week in

Sweden of a committee trying to craft final whaling

regulations if the moratorium is lifted.

 

Japanese officials say the new members have been

convinced by scientific facts, such as evidence that

the rebounding whales now pose a threat to other

endangered species because they eat five times as much

fish as the world's human population.

 

" This type of [vote-buying] accusation is totally

false, " said Naohito Watanabe, the charge d'affaires

at the Japanese Embassy in Managua. " We help countries

who need us. We are collaborating with some of them at

the IWC, but we are not obliging them. "

 

Watanabe said Japan has been one of the top donors to

Nicaragua because it feels it owes a debt to the

world.

 

" The photos of Managua in 1972 [after a devastating

earthquake] look just like our cities after World War

II, all in ashes, " he said, noting how international

aid helped Japan recover. " Now we want to return the

favor. "

 

He said that Japan also gives aid to Mexico, an

anti-whaling member of the commission, and to El

Salvador and Honduras, which are not members.

 

Since 1990, 13 years before it joined the commission,

Nicaragua has landed an average of $41 million

annually in Japanese aid, including $70 million in

2001 for recovery efforts after 1998's Hurricane

Mitch. This year the Japanese Embassy hopes to secure

about $30 million in donations, Watanabe said.

 

Funding bridges, nurses

 

Nicaragua has spent the money on everything from

bridges to nurse training to equipment for the

national orchestra. At one event in 2002, Nicaraguan

President Enrique Bolanos donned a traditional

Japanese jacket and helped break open a wooden cask of

sake to celebrate the opening of a Japan-funded water

pumping plant.

 

Marenco, Nicaragua's whaling commission

representative, said he was the one who proposed

joining the organization. As director of his country's

fisheries management agency, he also attends global

forums on tuna and endangered species.

 

He said Nicaragua would act at the commission in

accordance with its belief in the " sustainable use " of

marine resources, which it has demonstrated in

programs to conserve lobsters, its main fisheries

export, and to protect the fishing traditions of

Miskito Indians on the Caribbean coast. He also noted

that Nicaragua has voted against Japan for at least

one whaling restriction, a proposal demanding more

humane killing methods.

 

" It is logical that there is pressure, but Japan has

never pressured me, " he said.

 

Actually, Marenco is frustrated that Japan has not

given him more fisheries aid. For years he has asked

the Tokyo government for several million dollars for a

seafood market in Managua and fishing facilities in

the port of San Juan del Sur, but the Japanese have

been reluctant, perhaps because of the vote-buying

allegations, he said.

 

" We never think in terms of favors, " Marenco said. " We

think in terms of keeping a balance in nature. "

2004, Chicago Tribune