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Japan blasts Australia on whale haven plan

 

By ANDREW DARBY

ADELAIDE

Tuesday 4 July 2000

R E L A T E D

Japanese flex their muscles over whale meet

Comment: We have no right to ban whaling

 

 

Japan has launched a strident attack on Australia, accusing Canberra of

double standards for campaigning against whaling while sanctioning the

killing of kangaroos.

 

On the eve of a crucial vote on a South Pacific whale sanctuary, Japan also

told Australia to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) if it

could not back controlled whaling.

 

The rebuke was delivered by Japan's IWC commissioner, Minoru Morimoto, ahead

of today's vote in Adelaide on the whale sanctuary proposed by Australia,

which is now expected to fail.

 

In a long opening statement that made no reference to any other conservation

nation, Mr Morimoto challenged Australian objections to the killing of minke

whales.

 

" Minke whales have been referred to as the rabbits of the sea because of

their high reproductive rate and abundant populations, " Mr Morimoto said.

 

" Perhaps if we named them the kangaroos of the sea, the Australian public

and (Environment Minister) Senator (Robert) Hill would support their

sustainable use. "

 

Senator Hill refused to respond at a press conference. " I don't think it is

particularly productive, " he said. " The issue we're addressing here is

whaling and ... we should concentrate on that. "

 

Senator Hill has called on the IWC to move towards the conservation and

non-lethal use of whales in business such as whale watching, but Mr Morimoto

said this was against the mandate of the organisation, which is to manage

commercial whaling.

 

" If Senator Hill does not agree with the specified purpose ... we suggest

that he take Australia out of the IWC. "

 

A Japanese delegation spokesman, Joji Morishita, later said it had decided

to focus on Australia because the meeting was being held here.

 

Japan is also mounting a sustained public relations campaign around the

country for the Adelaide meeting.

 

Both Mr Morishita and Senator Hill were careful to characterise the conflict

as a dispute between friends, saying it would not spill over into the

general bilateral relationship.

 

But Senator Hill took a much more cautious line as he opened the meeting,

making no direct reference to Japan while he sought to encourage last-minute

waverers to join the sanctuary proposal.

 

Jointly presented by Australia and New Zealand and openly backed by at least

six other nations, the vast sanctuary would stretch from Australia east

beyond Pitcairn Island and north to the equator.

 

The main obstacle to achieving the necessary three-quarters majority remains

a split between conservation nations about the best way for the IWC to

protect whales.

 

A core group of " pragmatic " conservation nations have indicated they will

abstain from the vote. That made the task even more difficult, Senator Hill

said.

 

Yesterday he raised the prospect that, like the Southern Ocean Sanctuary of

the early 1990s, the South Pacific plan could take another two votes before

it finally succeeded.

 

Mr Morishita was more cautious about the likely outcome, saying Japan could

not tell what the result would be. If it failed, he said he hoped it would

not be raised again.

 

Senator Hill also acknowledged that simply by objecting to the sanctuary,

Japan would not be bound by the decision under IWC rules.

 

" We haven't been able to get Japan to acknowledge that they have no future

intention of whaling in the South Pacific, " Senator Hill said. " I guess the

lodging of an objection by Japan would tend to increase that concern. "

 

Inside the meeting, Japan was heavily criticised over the inhumane killing

of dolphins and porpoises in an annual slaughter of about 20,000 animals by

its coastal fishermen.

 

Most are killed by hand-held harpoons, but some die in a " drive hunt " in

which they are herded into a net, hauled from the water alive and killed in

a slaughterhouse.

 

Britain's Fisheries Minister Elliot Morley said most of these small

cetaceans were exposed to unacceptable levels of cruelty. Japan refuses to

recognise the IWC's competence to deal with small cetaceans.

 

Japan failed in an attempt to have Greenpeace excluded from the meeting over

what it said were " violent and illegal actions " when the campaign ship

Arctic Sunrise and the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru collided in the

Antarctic last summer. Each blames the other for the incident.

The Age Company Ltd 2000

 

We have no right to ban whaling

 

By RUNE FRVIK

Tuesday 4 July 2000

 

Since time immemorial, man has caught fish and whales, but in the past two

decades a rum situation has emerged. While fishing continues to enjoy almost

universal acceptance as a means of food production, Western urban society

has decided unilaterally to shut down whaling, with complete disregard for

any culture that still practises it.

 

Each culture has its own culinary idiosyncrasies. For many Asians dog meat

is a delicacy, the French like their frogs, snails and horse meat, and

Australians are fast developing a taste for kangaroos. And there are just as

many taboos. Indians forgo the joy of beefsteak, Jews and Muslims won't

touch pork, and those pickiest of people, the northern Norwegians, would not

dream of eating eider duck.

 

Beset with environmental challenges and yet respectful of such cultural

differences, the world community has thankfully embraced the principle of

sustainable use. We have agreed that the use of renewable natural resources

is acceptable provided rates of usage are within the resources' capacity for

renewal.

 

Yet the West's cultural imperialists would have whales exempted from the

sustainable use principle - an exemption that would, quite simply, place

them above and apart from the animal kingdom to which they obviously belong.

 

For people who live close to nature, and in particular in regions where

ecosystems contain limited numbers of species, those species that do exist

often play vital roles, both nutritional and cultural, in people's lives.

Thus, inhabitants of the High North, for example, will continue to harvest

what nature provides, be it seals, fish, birds ... or whales. And in the

interest of self-preservation, they will strive to do so sustainably. But

the idea of placing a major species off limits for human consumption is

incomprehensible.

 

There are also commercial aspects to whalers' lives. In Greenland, Japan and

Norway, whale meat is sold in supermarkets, in Russia it has been sold to

feed fur-bearers, and in Alaska, baleen handicrafts from bowheads are sold

to tourists. Until such time as electronics stores accept sides of whale

bacon as currency, whalers will have to acquire their TVs the same way as

the rest of us - with cash.

 

The destruction of several great whale stocks by pelagic factory ships was a

sharp lesson in the dangers of capitalism run amok. But coastal whaling as

practised by local communities, even when it involves cash and (heaven

forbid) profit, is a different beast - one that has shown itself to be

sustainable and environmentally sound. The fact that whaling is now the most

closely scrutinised marine fishery in the world is a further guarantee to

sceptics that the mistakes of industrial whaling will never be repeated.

 

To ensure the oceans continue to serve as one of our most important food

reservoirs, there are many problems that must be addressed, notably

overfishing, wasted by-catches and pollution. But these must be tackled by

improving our management in accordance with agreed principles, not by

launching destructive attacks on those who engage in exactly what we are

striving for - sustainable use - because our cultural bias finds a

particular harvest unpalatable.

 

Rune Frvik is a spokesman for the High North Alliance, representing whalers,

sealers and fishermen from Canada, Greenland, the Faroes, Iceland and

Norway. E-mail: rune

 

The Age Company Ltd 2000.

 

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Japanese flex their muscles over whale meet

 

By ANDREW DARBY

ADELAIDE

Tuesday 4 July 2000

 

Controversy: Protesters gather outside the Adelaide meeting of international

ministers yesterday as Japan lashes out at Australia's " double standards " .

The meeting will discuss a proposed South Pacific sanctuary for the largest

mammals on Earth.

One of the great global litmus tests of eco-politics, the annual

International Whaling Commission meeting, opened in Adelaide yesterday. And

in one small cameo, the deep schism over whales was laid bare.

 

Japan' s alternate IWC commissioner, Masayuki Komatsu, was defending the

country's annual kill of whales and dolphins.

 

Despite the chairman's admonition to all to be brief, Mr Komatsu warmed to

his task.

 

Japan had taken a lot of time and trouble to develop humane ways of killing

whales over many years, he said.

 

A video made public by the non-government Environment Investigation Agency,

which made the dolphin kill by Japanese fishermen seem like a

slaughterhouse, was not appropriate to be shown to the media.

 

It would be just as appropriate to show the slaughter of a joey after the

death of its kangaroo mother, he said.

 

He wound up his remarks with a frown, and in a gallery in the meeting hall

rows of Japanese observers, neat in suits and traditional kimonos, broke

into polite applause. The chairman, Ireland's Michael Canny, demanded

silence at this, the only interruption to the meeting by the retinue of

pressure groups that follows the IWC around the world.

 

Outside the meeting conservation groups may have attracted the cameras

yesterday, with an inflatable whale, a gathering of Kids for Whales and a

silent vigil for a South Pacific Whale Sanctuary.

 

But inside the meeting it is Japan, leader of whaling nations, that is

flexing its muscles.

 

At yesterday's opening session this power was seen in the first appearance

in the IWC by its 41st member nation, the republic of Guinea. The

undeveloped African state joined the IWC after encouragement by Japan, which

already has a block of supporters.

 

It was also seen in the way Japan singled out Australia - despite its host

nation status - for lengthy rebuke over the proposed South Pacific

sanctuary.

 

With conservation nations now divided among themselves, the Japanese machine

is even more effective.

 

A longtime IWC observer, Cassandra Phillips, of the Worldwide Fund for

Nature, was asked whether the spectacle was more colorful this year than

other openings. " Slightly less, " she said, before going into her observer's

position. " There's more of a ritual about it. "

 

But outside the hall, an independent New South Wales MLC, Richard Jones, was

more blunt. Mr Jones is remembered by the IWC as the man who 22 years ago

threw blood over Japanese papers at an IWC meeting in London.

 

Yesterday he held up a hand-lettered sign that read: " The IWC is a corrupt

force " , and naming a series of countries that are seen as Japan's acolytes.

 

Mr Jones was gloomy about the Adelaide meeting. " There is no chance of

getting a sanctuary up while there is this level of corruption, " he said.

 

The Age Company Ltd 2000.