Humpbacks And The Whaling Ban Under Fire ~ Urgent Action Needed!!!

Humpbacks And The Whaling Ban Under Fire

Members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meet this week, from

Tuesday onwards, in St.Petersburg, Florida, to discuss a proposal that

sets out the conditions to make commercial whaling legal again.

The full proposal will be considered at its annual Meeting in June 2010.
 On
the 4th and 5th of March the IWC will decide on another proposal by

Denmark as to whether humpback whales are added to the list of species

hunted in the waters off Greenland.

Is the European Union selling out on Humpback whales?

The
credibility of the International Whaling Commission is undermined by

Greenlands attempts to increase whale hunt quota. A Member of the

European Union, Denmark, has been keeping the EU hostage for the last

three years, trapping the EU in never-ending internal negotiations 

about this flawed proposal. A failure to agree a consensus position

(total agreement by all EU members of the IWC) means that Denmark can

force the EU to abstain on its own demand at the IWC for more whales

for Greenland.

Conservation led countries can no longer exercise
their rights to vote for conservation measures or against whaling

proposals, because Denmark can use the requirements of the internal EU

negotiation rules to tie the EU up in knots.

You can read about the issue of Greenland's proposal here in the joint WDCS/WSPA report revealing the failings in Greenland Whaling.


Urgent Action Needed Now!

Please take action to let the countries of the European Union that they cannot
allow Denmark to hold the EU back from upholding their conservation

lead.


Is the Future of the IWC the end of the whaling ban?

Two years ago the Members of the IWC agreed to open negotiations to potentially
develop a proposal that could be seen as a kind of compromise between

the differing positions of those countries engaging in whaling and

those wanting all commercial whaling banned once and for all.

An IWC  Small Working Group (SWG) of countries of differing opinions was tasked with taking these discussions forward.

This
week the Small Working Group is discussing their Chairmans  draft of

their deliberations and will seek to make recommendations to this years

annual Meeting of the IWC (due to take place in June, in Morocco) for a

decision to be made.

WDCS and our allies are extremely
concerned over the current proposal which basically foresees the

legalisation of commercial whaling as  currently carried out  by Norway

and Iceland under a reservation or objection to the moratorium.

Unfortunately,
from what we understand, the right for Member States to undertake so

called scientific whaling enshrined in Article VIII of the Whaling

Convention will continue to exist, allowing Japan to continue its

activities, both for commercial and research purposes.

The
vague concessions achieved by countries claiming to focus on whale

conservation is a limitation of such whaling activities to Iceland,

Norway and Japan and a still to be negotiated reduction of the number

of whales killed within a ten years time. And then …how many whales

will be dying ?

Both Norways and Japans
whalers have welcomed the proposal as a stepping stone to full scale

industrial whaling on many more species. They see the first ten years

of this so-called deal as simply a transition to allow them to prepare

to ratchet up their whaling

Read a general critique of the Deal by WDCS

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More on the background of whaling

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