Eco Issue 3

Japan Minke Whaling Dealt Yet Another Blow

As one IWC commissioner put it yesterday, Japan's "magic number"of 760,000 minke whales in the Southern Oceans has now vanished.

The Japanese are fuming. Gone forever is the number that they have trumpeted to the world as proof of how "over-populated" minke whales have become. Gone, too, is the crutch they have used to rationalize killing whales for"science" in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Instead they are left with the stark Scientific Committee reality that there is no estimate whatsoever for the Southern Ocean minke populations, and that the true population levels could well be "appreciably lower."

The shocking implications of this revelation are just setting in.

It should provide IWC commissioners with new grounds for adopting the Southern Pacific Sanctuary. Without reliable estimates of whale populations, it clearly makes even more sense to establish areas of study free from lethal take.

Meanwhile the argument for forcing Japan to cease whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary just became appreciably stronger.

Legal Woes

"Scientific" whaling could land Japan in the International Court of Justice. Legal opinions suggest that Japan's unilateral scientific whaling is an abuse of its obligations to the IWC. Australia is considering bringing the challenge.

A recent paper published by Melbourne University law school Professor Gillian Triggs concluded that scientific whaling could be a breach of established legal principles such as "abuse of rights," "good faith," and the precautionary approach to harvesting wild species.

"These principles of international law may have been breached if the overwhelming purpose of scientific whaling by Japan is for commercial rather than scientific ends, and if the science undertaken is of marginal significance," Professor Triggs wrote in the Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law.

"Moreover, it appears Japan has acted unilaterally, contrary to the consensus developed within the IWC."

Last year Australia and New Zealand forced Japan to halt its "experimental fishing" program for bluefin tuna, by taking Japan to the International tribunal.

"Abuse of rights" is a well-established international legal doctrine recently used by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body in a case brought by Thailand, Pakistan and Malaysia against the US for its ban on shrimp caught not in accordance environmental technologies. The WTO held that although the US had the legal right to protect endangered sea turtles, Thailand had the right to expect they could import shrimp into the US unhindered.

According to a legal opinion prepared by the Humane Society International in 1998, "abuse of rights" is also a doctrine applicable to the IWC. Japan's right to scientific whaling is not absolute and unfettered. Japan must balance its right against the right of reasonable expectation of other IWC parties to a sanctuary free of lethal takes. Japan's scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary undermines the purpose and intent for which the sanctuary was established.

Japan Whaling Association spokeswoman Shigeko Misaki claimed that the whale killing case was much stronger than the tuna case. She also said, "In fact we have considered suing the like-minded (pro-conservation) nations in (the) IWC for flouting the Convention, denying us the opportunity to go whaling."

This year's Scientific Committee finding that the population estimates of Southern Ocean minkes are appreciably lower than the previously established 760,000—and that there is no currently reliable estimate of population numbers—has done further damage to Japan's case for whaling.

OECD Targets "Drug Cartels, Mafias and Corrupt Officials"

Japan's Troubled Allies

Six Caribbean nations allied with Japan have been recently named as havens for organized crime, drug cartels, tax-evasion, and corrupt officials: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada,St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In June, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued two "blacklists" of nations harboring crime and corruption.

The revelations that six Caribbean states taking Japanese aid for whaling support are also centers of crime and corruption have touched off alarms in Tokyo, according to observers. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is gravely concerned that the same island nations named by the OECD are those that have sold their IWC votes to Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

The Paris-based OECD, comprising 29 leading industrial nations (including Japan), has spent a decade investigating centers of money-laundering, tax-evasion and corruption. The Financial Action Task Force on Money-Laundering, originally set up by the Group of seven economic powers—including Japan—issued a list of 15 "non-cooperative" nations on 22 June. The list includes Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Canada intervened to keep Antigua and Barbuda as well as St. Lucia off this OECD list, according to Le Monde.

The New York Times reported that "Governments decided to pressure money-laundering centers in part because of the sheer volume of transactions by drug cartels, mafias and corrupt officials has expanded dramatically to at least $600 billion a year, United States officials said."

On 26 June, the OECD issued a second "name and shame" list of nations harboring criminal activities. This includes Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, and the Grenadines.

These tax havens have tax laws intended to attract assets from companies and individuals who are seeking to avoid actual tax payments or potential tax liabilities in their home countries. The targeted tax havens have generally refused to cooperate with investigators seeking to catch tax dodgers. The countries cited in the report have been given one year to reform their tax laws, or face sanctions such as loss of access to the U.S. and U.K. banking systems.

The major world economies, including Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France and Russia, lose tens of billions of dollars in tax revenues each year because "offshore" financial centers such as the Caribbean islands help people hide vast sums of money.

Over the past two decades, the Caribbean has become a favorite base for money-laundering and other criminal activities for the Russian Mafia, the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, and other international crime syndicates such as the Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza and Sicilian Mafia, according to international law enforcement authorities.

By choosing to join these gangsters to buy influence, protection and votes in corruption-infested nations, Japan is further tarnishing its reputation in the world community.

Will the IWC Confront the US Navy?

On March 15 and 16, sixteen whales and dolphins of four different species stranded in the Bahamas following exercises by the U.S. Navy. At least seven died, including four Cuvier's beaked whales and one Blainsville dense-beaked whale. Those necropsied showed blood in their ears and evidence of concussion, suggesting exposure to acute trauma. After initially denying any responsibility whatsoever, the Navy now states through its spokesman, Commander Greg Smith, "We hope to build upon what we learn ... to assure that it does not happen again anywhere in the world."

This is not the first time military exercises have preceded whale strandings. Unusual strandings in the Canary Islands, Bonaire, and Greece have been linked to the military use of active sonar devices. But never before has a trained biologist been on hand to preserve the evidence and conduct timely necropsies. Some of the whales stranded in front of the home of scientist Ken Balcomb, whose rescue efforts were quickly supplemented by Dr. Darlene Ketten of Harvard. Dr. Ketten said," the coincidence of the timing and the pattern of the stranding with the presence of Navy sonars ... raises a red flag and I think there is reason for concern."

Especially worrying the Navy is the fact the culprit might be "normal" hull mounted sonar. Commander Smith said, "this is the same sonar we have used for decades, on some U.S. Navy ships and many navies' warships that are transmitting somewhere in the world every day."

Beaked whales are the world's deepest diving whales, feeding at 6,000 feet deep. This may make them especially vulnerable to intense sounds broadcast into the water. Twelve Cuvier's beaked whales also died along the shores of the Ionian Sea in 1996 following NATO antisubmarine exercises.

The U.S. Navy is poised to deploy Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar on four ships worldwide, broadcasting 235 decibels into many countries' coastal waters for thousands of hours annually, ostensibly to find quiet diesel electric enemy submarines. The Navystill insists the device will have negligible impact on marine mammals, arguing that the level at which sound bothers whales is about 180 decibels—a million times more powerful than the 120 decibels heretofore considered the "safe" threshold.

Now with a smoking gun pointing to active sonars as a legitimate threat to whales, we shall see if the IWC has the courage to challenge the U.S. government over the deliberate proliferation of sound pollution.

Oh, Canada!

On June 30th at the IWC Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling Committee meetings, while discussing Agenda Item 10.3 "Catches by nonmember nations" under which only Canada is listed, the Austrian commissioner asked the representative of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to confirm information received from Canadian sources that a whaling permit had been issued to kill another highly endangered bowhead whale in the Eastern Canadian Arctic this summer. "Yes, it is true that the DFO has agreed to the hunt of one whale, two strikes, from the Foxe Basin stock,"answered the Canadian delegate, "but no application has yet been received for such a permit." If this is the case, the government of Canada must be so eager to promote the whaling of a highly endangered species that it grants whaling licenses without Canadians even having to apply for permits!

But that's not all. The DFO rep took the opportunity to also reprimand the IWC when he added, "I also object to the IWC (Scientific Committee) describing the bowhead population as being a 'highly endangered' stock when there are about 345 whales left."

Unbelievable, Canada!

As a nonmember country permitting the killing of whales without bothering to rejoin the IWC to obtain a quota, Canada is way out of line objecting to IWC Resolution 1999-7 "Resolution on Small Populations of Highly Endangered Whales." One also must wonder how far this population of whales must drop before the DFO agrees that even without a hunt, bowhead whales in the Eastern Canadian Arctic are likely to go extinct.

Norway's Great Days

Dr. Johan Hjort was an eminent Norwegian scientist who, as Chair of a committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, advised the League of nations that there should be a moratorium on the expansion of the new Antarctic pelagic whaling industry, atleast until there was a better scientific basis for management. That was in 1929.

Thirty-four years later another eminent Norwegian scientist, Prof. Ruud, Chair of the IWC Scientific Committee, spectacularly resigned because the behavior of his government was wrecking the IWC.

Less than a decade later, a Norwegian diplomat, Ambassador Rindal, found himself in the Chair of the IWC. He was presented by the then Scientific Committee Chairman, Dr. Douglas Chapman, with the Committee's belief that there were quite a lot of sperm whales in the Antarctic and that it would be OK, under the Commission's rules, to kill 2,000 of them the following year. Ambassador Rindal went pinkish, nearly exploded, and shouted: "You mean to tell me there are all those whales out there, and we have to leave them in the sea to rot?"

When the Norwegian Commissioner speaks this year, watch his lips.

On the Solidarity of Islands

In other global intergovernmental fora, including the United Nations General Assembly, UN agencies such as United Nations Environment Program and Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Law of the Sea institutions, the Small Island States, especially "developing" states, form a cohesive, mutually supportive group. In particular it would be inconceivable that some of them would oppose proposals by a regional group acting in its own perceived interest.

Here at the International Whaling Commission we have a proposal by two regional states, for a South Pacific sanctuary, which is supported by all the small islands in the region through their relevant intergovernmental body, South Pacific Regional Environment Program. The rest of the world will be watching to see whether Japan's allies in the Caribbean will be ready to endanger the Small Island alliance by voting against the coastal states of the South Pacific.

If they do we should expect to see the repercussions of such treachery later this year in other places.