Aron sees end of IWC ahead...

[Guest guest]

The International Whaling Commission : A Case of Malignant Neglect

 

By William Aron

 

William Aron, Director, Alaska Fisheries Science Center (Ret.), Affiliate

Professor, University of Washington, presented this paper at a conference

held in Corvalis, Oregon hosted by the International Institute of Fisheries

Economics and Trade, July 10-14, 2000.

 

Introduction

 

The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was signed in

Washington, D.C. on December 2, 1946. The initial 14 signatories were all

whaling nations. Thirteen of the original members remain, but except for

aboriginal harvests, none whale. With the addition of Guinea recently,

current membership in the Convention is 41 nations. Almost none of these are

whaling, in fact most are opposed to whaling with varied degrees of vigor.

 

The Convention preamble has all of the words that would please a modern

conservationist- and let us be clear at the outset, I use the term

conservation to mean the rational use of living resources. The Convention

preamble recognizes:

 

The need to safeguard whale stocks for future generations

That the history of whaling has been marked by overfishing

That proper regulation will permit whale stocks to increase and permit

fishing without their endangerment

That it is in the common interests to achieve optimum population levels of

whale stocks without causing widespread economic and nutritional distress

and

That to achieve the above objectives whaling should be restricted to those

species best able to sustain exploitation, to allow the recovery of depleted

species.

To accomplish the above objectives the signatories decided to conclude a

convention for the proper conservation of whale stocks to make possible the

orderly development of the whaling industry.

 

This paper examines how the International Whaling Commission(IWC), which was

established by the Convention has operated during its fifty year history. It

will look first at some of the Convention provisions that are critical to

our understanding and then turn to the evolution of science and the

interaction of the IWC with its Scientific Committee

 

Key Convention Provisions

 

Integral to the Convention is the Schedule, which serves as the regulatory

and operational guide, fixing protected and unprotected species,, seasons,

open and closed waters, including sanctuaries, size limits, methods and

intensity of fishing, including quotas, gear specifications, methods of

measurement and statistical and biological records.

 

The prime business of the annual meetings of IWC has been to amend the

Schedule for the following whaling season. It is important to note that

Schedule changes require a three-fourths majority vote. The Convention

itself cannot be amended.

 

Even if an amendment to the Schedule is passed by the three-fourths

majority, a member may file an objection within 90 days, and exempt itself

from compliance.

 

The Convention allows any Contracting Government to permit its nationals to

take whales for scientific purposes, the number of whales to be taken is

determined by the Contracting Government. The Contracting Government also

determines how whales taken under a scientific permit are processed and the

distribution of the resulting proceeds. The Contracting Government is

charged, in so far is practicable, with transmitting the scientific data to

the IWC. The Contracting Governments are also charged with taking all

practicable measure to provide scientific information from commercial

whaling operations.

 

In the event a three-fourths majority is not reached regarding a Schedule

change, the previous year's quota remains in effect.

 

Of critical importance during the first part of IWC's existence (until 1972)

was the use in the Schedule of the Blue Whale Unit (BWU) as the prime

management tool. Whale quotas were not set by species or by stock units, but

by the oil equivalency of a blue whale. One BWU was equal to 6 sei (or

Bryde's - the Bryde's was not treated as a separate species until the 70s),

2 fin or 2.5 humpbacks. This allowed the IWC to control the availability of

whale oil- which many believe was the prime reason for IWC's existence ( a

clear hint of the future OPEC), as well as allowing whalers to conveniently

shift target species if shortages of a particular species occurred in their

operating area.

 

The IWC does not establish national quotas, these must be negotiated

separately by the nations that engaged in commercial whaling.

 

Each member nation has the same voting power, a vote from Oman or Monaco

counts as much as a vote from the United States or Japan.

 

IWC Through the Eyes of a Scientist

 

Just how has the IWC succeeded in its stated purpose of proper conservation

of whales and the orderly development of the whaling industry? Simply

stated- it hasn't. While my perspective is largely that of a biological

scientist, the evolutionary see-saw that transformed IWC from a whaler's

club that paid little heed to conserving whale populations to a

protectionist organization that largely ignores people dependent on whaling

while forcefully saving the whale, should be self evident to all. Just how

did this all happen?

 

The IWC Scientific Committee is a servant to the Commission. During the

first twenty years of the SC, there was a strong sense that the SC would

only be listened to if their quota recommendations met the industries needs.

During my first SC meeting in 1972 I was directly confronted by a more

experienced member of the Committee who chastised me for urging a low quota

on a whale stock. He had no problem with my estimates, but he was critical

for my lack of realism- I was told that if the SC went forward with my views

the Commission would ignore us and then select of quota of their choice. The

strategy in the SC was to seek the lowest possible quota that the industry

could live with, despite the fact that by the early seventies it was

blatantly clear to everyone that most of the great whales were in trouble.

 

The situation was even worse during the first decade of the Commission.

About a dozen scientists participated in the early SC meetings, mean

attendance was about seven. The members, including Dr. Remington Kellogg,

the Director of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, were

naturalists, systematicists and physiologists- none were from the rapidly

evolving fields of population dynamics or enumeration. Even they, as very

good observers, could tell the fin whale was in trouble. The fin whale catch

had risen from about 17000 animals during the 50-51 season to nearly 26000

in 54-55. The SC, in their meeting report details how they wished to reduce

the catch to no more than 19000 in 55-56, but recommended that no more than

25000 should be taken because a cut " of this magnitude would scarcely be

acceptable " . The U.S. joined other members in supporting the high quotas,

perhaps because the whalers had sufficient votes to block a low quota- thus

the previous years even higher quota would remain in effect.

 

During this early period the SC regularly expressed their concern for whale

stocks. The BWU quota was not being reached, and more importantly the

whalers were forced to shift their takes to less valuable species to try to

reach their catch limits.

 

Facing a clear crisis, the IWC assembled a group of outside experts to

provide a new perspective. Three outstanding population scientists, K.Radway

Allen, Douglas Chapman and Sidney Holt- the Committee of Three-later

supplemented by John Gulland to become the Committee of Four, were called

together to provide analysis and advice. The Committee began its work in

1961, issued an interim report in about a year and their final report on

time for the 1963 meeting of the Commission. The Report strongly recommended

elimination of the use of the BWU and very severe cuts in a number of

quotas. The report was only partially accepted. Use of the BWU continued for

10 more years, more than 14,000 fin whales were taken, instead of the less

than 7000 recommended, but the take of blue and humpback whales was stopped

(they were truly scarce).

 

A sense of what happened during these early years is shown in the

viewgraphs- which if you could read them will demonstrate the shift of take

from one whale species to another as they were each harvested to commercial

insignificance.

 

The willingness of the whaling industry to over harvest appears to be less a

case of foolish optimism, a disease which is widespread among fishermen of

nearly all nations, and more likely a function of the economic truths

detailed by Colin W. Clark. In 1981 Clark's paper, " Economic aspects of

renewable resource exploitation as applied to marine mammals(FAO Fish Ser.,

5, Vol.3) indicated that the slow growth of marine mammals was in direct

conflict with profits. Operational and capital costs were sufficiently high

to make harvest rates that were biologically safe economically unsound.

 

This was a period when hardly anyone outside of the whalers cared or thought

about whales. A few humane groups protested the cruelty of whale killing,

but the conservation community was largely silent and the environmental

community as we know it today did not really exist.

 

The 1970s saw a rebirth of environmental concern. There was created, in a

very short period, air, water quality, endangered species and marine mammal

protection laws .New organizations were created, including the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency,

the Council on Environmental Quality and the Marine Mammal Commission to

implement the new legislation.

 

The tragedy of the whale issue was seized upon as a unifying force by U.S.

groups ranging from the traditional wildlife conservation organizations to

the more extreme protectionists, as a symbol of what was wrong about man's

use of natural resources.

 

At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in

1972, the U.S. pressed for a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling . The

U.S. proposal was passed by a 53-0 vote with 3 abstentions. The moratorium

was designed to provide a pause in commercial whaling to both allow the

development of a conservative whaling regime and to allow some time for the

recovery of depleted stocks to assure their availability to man. A few

months later, despite the fact that most IWC nations had supported the

moratorium in Stockholm, it failed to win the three fourths majority

required. at the annual IWC meeting in London.

 

The IWC-SC, which by this time had expanded its membership substantially to

include a solid array of quantitative scientists, could not support a

blanket moratorium in view of the health of a number of whales stocks,

especially the minke whale which was virtually unharvested. It was clear,

however, that the status quo was not viable and that public protests which

expanded well beyond the U.S. were having an impact on whaling nations,

mainly through threatened and real boycotts, especially of Japanese

products.

 

A compromise was reached when in 1974 a proposal called the New Management

Procedure, was introduced by Australia. This was a biologically conservative

approach that limited whaling to those stocks that were above population

levels that produced 90% of the MSY, with the harvest to be limited so the

long term safety and sustainablity was assured. The NMP went into effect

during the 1975-76 whaling season, and for a short period the SC was allowed

to play a key role in the IWC decision making process

 

The see-saw was now level - but not resting.

 

The whale had become a true poster child- a wonderful animal perceived by

the general public as uniquely intelligent, care giving, remarkably

communicative, but most of all, cruelly threatened by merciless whalers with

imminent extinction. Sadly, these beliefs were wildly exaggerated.

 

The protection community, now with a solid understanding of the IWC

operation, effectively used the public perception of whales to generate a

strategy to stop whaling. With the help of the U.S. Government and others

pressures were brought on new nations- with no interest in whaling- to join

IWC as anti whalers. By 1981 the IWC swelled to 33 members and easily

achieved a three fourths majority in support of a moratorium on commercial

whaling in 1982( which went into effect during the 1985-86 season). The

argument used to support the ban was based on genuine defects of the NMP-

mainly in the difficulty in getting data essential for implementation. It

should be noted, however, in my own discussions with SC members at the time,

the view was expressed that the NMP could still be used without creating a

threat to any of the whale stocks.

 

The ban was instituted to allow the SC to generate a new approach that would

be conservative and which would be capable of implementation. The SC

finished its work on the Revised Management Plan (RMP)in 1993 and

unanimously passed it on to the Commission. Acceptance of this plan would be

a first step in the resumption of commercial whaling, a step not willingly

taken by many Commissioners. The Commission failed to act prompting the

Chair of the SC to resign because he could no longer justify himself, " being

the organizer of and the spokesman for a Committee which is held in such

disregard by the body to which it is responsible "

 

The RMP would form the basis for an implementation plan- the Revised

Management Scheme (RMS) which has not been implemented.. This failure to

move ahead has been severely criticized from within and from without, by

outgoing IWC Secretary, Ray Gambell, by the well respected International

Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). and most recently by the

leadership of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species

(CITES). Perhaps, because of these pressure, it appears that some progress

may have been achieved at the just concluded meetings in Adelaide,

Australia.

 

Organizations have been formed, for example, The World Council of Whalers,

that could replace the dysfunctional IWC, unless the situation changes

..Change may prove impossible in the face of the strong anti-whaling public

positions taken by many IWC members, especially Australia. Being an

anti-whaler, especially for most U.S. politicians, allows donning the green

coat without negative constituent impacts. The people who may be hurt are

out of sight and their pain seems to carry little weight. Having established

environmental credentials by pleading the case for whales you can avoid

getting into serious environmental issues, like population control and

global warming, that may challenge the jobs and lifestyles of your

supporters.

 

In the meantime whaling operations continue throughout the world, by

aboriginal people in the Atlantic, the Carribean, many places in the

Pacific, including a tribal hunt just to our north, as well as the bowhead

hunt described by fellow panelists.. Legal commercial hunting also goes on,

mainly in Norway with hunts underway in Japan for scientific purposes. Many

of these takes are addressed under the IWC banner, but many are by

non-member nations. Most whale stocks have large migrations and are true

trans boundary species, their effective management is an international

concern. The current vacuum is untenable.