Region wants to settle long-standing whaling controversy

Saturday, November 21, 2009 8:49 AM

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Environment

CMC

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) - Five Eastern Caribbean countries are hoping to end the deadlock between pro-whaling and anti-whaling activists.

Representatives from Antigua and Barbauda, Grenada, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines will join scientists, government officials and journalists from around the world for the 61st annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to be held in Portugal from June 22-26.

They are hoping that new strategies will be found at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to allow it to move away from its dysfunctional past and return to its original mandate of managing global whale stocks.

Those Caribbean countries are among the 85-member IWC membership calling on the Commission to end its years of wrangling over whaling by agreeing to a plan where the contentious issues are acceptable to all parties.

The advocates of the sustainable use of marine resources, including whales, across the globe, and the opponents of any resumption of whaling, especially a carefully calibrated programme of harvesting of species that are in abundance, have been at loggerheads for almost 20 years.

Now, Caribbean countries are hoping that they would reach a compromise that would normalise the organisation's activities.

"It is highly possible that the conference in Madeira can turn out to be a make-or-break point for the IWC," said Cedric Liburd, St Kitts-Nevis' Minister of Agriculture and his country's Commissioner.

"The future of the Commission is at stake and every effort must be made to save it after years of being dysfunctional."

He said that since last year's annual conference in Chile, several meaningful attempts have been made under the leadership of Dr William Hogarth, the IWC Chairman, to get the two sides to find common ground, "a way forward, if you will, and we are hoping that we can finally achieve that in Madeira".

The minister, who has become a major voice for the countries which advocate sustainable use of marine resources said that the Caribbean and like-minded countries, Japan, Iceland, Russia, Benin and Norway among them, were heading to the five-days of open debates and closed-door sessions committed to the search for a "solution that would save the IWC for the future".

"That's why we welcome the determined and sincere efforts of Dr Hogarth of the United States to bring the two sides closer together so they agree on a solution to the highly contentious issues which have paralysed the Commission for years," said Liburd.

A key element of any compromise would be an agreement to implement the IWC's Scientific Committee's recommendation for a "Revised Management Scheme," and a "Revised Management Procedure (RMP) that would prevent any "harvesting" of whale stocks that are in danger of being depleted while allowing for a limited and strictly managed system of commercial whaling of those species that are in abundance.

"It's crucial that we end the counter-productive ways of the past and get back to what the IWC was established in 1946 to do and that is to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and in the process make it possible for an orderly utilisation of whale resources," Liburd said.

He traced the history of the recent attempts to reach a compromise to the "Kitts-Nevis Declaration," which was approved at the IWC's meeting in Basseterre in 2006.

In addition to recognising the deep divisions within the Commission, the Declaration called for a review of its operations and the preparation of a plan that would enable the body to get on with the business of managing whale stocks.

"The St Kitts-Nevis Declaration was a landmark step because it attempted to remove the roadblocks that prevented any meaningful discussion on how to solve the intractable positions of both sides," Liburd said.

"We recognised that the Commission wasn't working and asked for the preparation of a proper structure that would enable us to move forward. Dr Hogarth has been working with all sides to find a solution and comprise. This for me is going to be the main area of focus in Madeira."

Like its Caribbean neighbours, St Kitts-Nevis has joined IWC member states in Europe, Africa, the Pacific and other regions in backing Japan's scientific research whaling programme and its appeals for a quota of whales for communities with a long tradition of whaling.

At the same time, the Caribbean states have vigorously opposed any whaling of species the scientists have determined to be endangered.

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