"The Australian government has been vocal in its opposition to whaling, strongly criticising whaling nations year after year in international political arenas such the IWC.

"However diplomacy has failed -- more talk will not stop Japan killing whales," said International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Asia Pacific director Michael McIntyre.

The push for legal action is based on the findings of a panel of international law experts who reported this month that governments would have a good chance of success against Japan's so-called scientific whaling programme.

"Japan's whaling programme is illegal and will remain so until a government takes steps to challenge this unlawful activity," said Australian National Univerity professor Don Rothwell, chair of the Sydney Legal Panel.

"There's an arguable case I think the government should be taking and one I am fairly confident they would be successful in.

"We have to remember the Australian government has taken these cases in the past where they have developed legal principles -- in the French nuclear testing in the 1970s and in other related cases, where the government has been out there pursuing environmental principles.

"I think this is a similar sort of case."

The panel was commissioned by IFAW to build on the work of the "Paris Report" of 2006 in which international lawyers declared that Japan's long-held stance that it has the legal right to hunt whales for research is wrong.

The IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, but Japan exploits a loophole over scientific research, while making no secret that the meat from the hunt often winds up on dinner plates.

The panel concluded that the programme breaches the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Antarctic Treaty System among other international conventions.

It said governments had a number of legal options open to them to challenge Japan, including hauling Tokyo before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

But Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull threw cold water over the idea when asked whether the government would pursue the recommendations.

"If we believed that legal action could put an end to scientific whaling, we would have taken this path by now -- as would the previous governments of Australia, New Zealand and other anti-whaling nations," he said.

"Those who advocate such a course must acknowledge that an unsuccessful legal action would set back the cause of saving whales by years, if not decades."

IFAW's Mcintyre dismissed the argument.

"We hear a lot about risks we take before international courts, but the Sydney Panel thinks otherwise. It's going to take action outside the IWC to stop scientific whaling," he said.

And Australia's opposition Labor Party, which is leading Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government in opinion polls and could take power in elections later this year, has indicated a willingness to take legal action.

"Labor will pursue legal action against whaling nations before international courts and tribunals to end the slaughter of whales for all time," the party vowed at its national conference last month.

Japan's whaling is of particular concern to Australia because some of the hunting is carried out in Canberra's self-declared whale sanctuary off Antarctica.

Each Southern Hemisphere summer a Japanese whaling fleet heads for the Southern Ocean, drawing in its wake ship-borne anti-whaling activists and setting up high-seas skirmishes among the icebergs.

Last season the fleet set out to kill about 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales but had to abort the hunt after a fire aboard the mother ship.

IFAW estimates Japan has killed more than 6,800 minke whales since it began flouting the ban.

This season, starting in November, "Japan will begin its largest hunt since the global moratorium in 1986," McIntyre said.

Local anger has also grown since Japan announced that it will for the first time target humpback whales, gentle giants which Australians call "our" whales as they migrate northwards along the coast to breed each year.

Their slow and majestic progress draws some 1.5 million whale watchers, pumping an estimated 225 million US dollars into Australia's economy each year.

IFAW will take its plan for a change in tactics to nations attending the IWC conference in Anchorage, Alaska from May 28-31, campaigns manager Darren Kindleysides told AFP.

"Over the years there have been something in the region of 40 resolutions condemning Japan's scientific whaling by the IWC, but year on year we see them increasing the number of whales they kill.

"Diplomacy is failing, the IWC has had very little impact -- that's why we asked some of Australia's leading legal experts to look at some alternatives."

earlier related report
Pressure mounts to end whale slaughter at international meeting
by P. Parameswaran
Washington (AFP) May 24 - The International Whaling Commission holds its annual talks in Alaska next week amid pressure to end an impasse over commercial and scientific whaling threatening the conservation of the gentle giants. The 75-nation group charged with managing the world's whale populations established a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 -- yet more than 20,000 whales have been killed since then for commercial purposes.

In 2006 alone more than 2,000 whales were killed, more than in any year since the moratorium entered into effect, environmental groups say.

"The protection of whales is a global concern," said Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, one of the largest environmental scientific and advocacy organizations in the United States. "The current regime to conserve whales is failing to do the job. Unless the global community can find a better way to address some of the weaknesses of the current whale conservation regime, these animals face an increasingly uncertain future," he said.

The Commission is divided into pro-and anti-whaling groups, with the annual meeting serving as the perennial battleground over the fate of the commercial whaling moratorium.

The pro-whaling nations -- Japan, Iceland and Norway -- won a razor-thin 33-32 victory at the Commission's 2006 meeting in the Caribbean, passing a symbolic resolution saying the whaling moratorium was no longer necessary. Although the trio needs a 75 percent majority to end the moratorium, they have been exploiting loopholes in the suspension which allows them to kill whales for "scientific research."

Japan, which says whale meat is part of its culture, has been recruiting friendly countries to the Commission. Critics say it is really offering economic aid to Commission members in return for pro-whaling votes.

Last week land-locked Laos, with no history of whaling, said it would join the Commission to back Japan's position.

The conservation lobby, led by western countries including Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Britain, is also on a relentless recruitment drive.

"This year the conservation bloc is looking very good," New Zealand's Minister of Conservation Chris Carter.

"A number of Latin American countries which previously supported the Japanese -- like Panama and Nicaragua, Costa Rica and so on -- have all joined the conservation bloc, mainly because those countries see eco-tourism now as their future," he said.

Greece, Croatia and Israel have also joined the IWC on the conservation side, he added.

But environmentalists fear the cause could still be weakened if Japan succeeds in changing some Commission rules, which require only simple majorities.

"A simple majority can do a lot of damage in terms of changing the tone of the commission and the way it interacts with other international organizations," warned Kate Nattrass, spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Patrick Ramage, head of the Fund's global whale campaign, has taken its conservation message to new heights, flying a plane painted with humpback whales in a bid to lobby countries attending the Alaska talks to cut back on whaling.

Later this year, Japan will for the first time harpoon and kill 50 humpbacks, risking international condemnation.

Another likely controversial issue at the Commission's upcoming meeting is a debate on the renewal of so called aboriginal subsistence whaling quotas.

Quotas under discussion include a bowhead whale hunt undertaken by the Alaskan Inuit.

Japan has used the US request for this quota as a way to get Washington to support, at least in principle, Tokyo's request for a coastal whaling quota, conservation groups say. Washington needs three quarters of the Commission's members to approve the Inuit quota, and Japan and its allies hold enough votes to block approval, they said.

A bipartisan group of 56 members of the US Congress has sent a strongly worded letter to the administration of President George W. Bush, asking it to fight harder for whale conservation and against commercial whaling.

The Whaling Commission is meeting on US soil for the first time in nearly two decades, which gives the United States an opportunity "to reestablish itself as a leader on whale conservation," said Democratic lawmaker Nick Rahall, head of the House of Representatives natural resources panel.

earlier related report
Whaling struggles to gain momentum in Norway
Oslo (AFP) May 24 - Despite huge international criticism against its commercial whale hunt Norway has doubled its quotas in the past five years, but its hunters are struggling to catch the authorised number of whales.

Norwegian whalers in 2001 filled and even slightly exceeded the quota of 549 minke whales, the only species of whale they are authorised to hunt.

But they have failed to capture the allotted quota every year since then. In 2006, only 545 minke whales were killed even though the government had set an upper limit of 1,052.

"It is astonishing how the quotas continue to grow while hunters fail to meet them and struggle to dispose of the existing whale meat," Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace Norway told AFP.

The whaling industry denies having trouble selling their products, but professional whalers have admitted that effort is needed to fill the quotas.

Whalers struggle with a number of unfavourable factors that affect the catch, including poor weather conditions -- harpooning requires a flat sea -- and high fuel prices, the allocation of some quotas to remote areas, and poor profitability for whale meat compared to more lucrative species such as cod or saithe.

Norway and Iceland are the only two countries to defy a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan also allows whaling, but officially for scientific research purposes.

The minke population in the North Atlantic Ocean is estimated at 100,000 animals. Quotas have been increased to maintain sustainable resource management, according to authorities who rule out any financial considerations.

"When setting quotas we only look at removing such a number of individuals that the population can support. If quotas are filled it's great, but if they are not it's not a disaster," said Halvard Johansen, a senior official at Norway's fisheries ministry.

In order for whalers to fill their quotas more easily the government earlier this year increased the number of kills permitted in coastal waters and reduced those in the area around the small island of Jan Mayen, located some 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) off the coast.

"Whale meat is rapidly becoming unfashionable. They will have to go through a whole lot of trouble to get rid of all this meat," Greenpeace's Gulowsen said.

But the pro-whaling lobby organisation High North Alliance disagreed.

"Whale meat is a market with great potential, though it would be an illusion to think that we can go back 50 years in time to when it was common food for the poor," Rune Froevik, secretary general for the group said.

"Back then the meat was cheap and people didn't have much money. Today the situation is different. Whale meat is still affordable, but consumers can now choose between a number of different meats, many of which receive subsidies unlike the whaling industry," Froevik added.

In Norway some 30 boats are involved in whaling and Greenpeace estimates that the entire whaling business employs around 100 people on a yearly basis.

According to Gulowsen, "the whaling industry is very marginal."

Given its relative low economic significance and the harmful effect it has on Norway's image -- is whaling worth it? "Absolutely", government official Johansen said.

"It is a matter of principle, we are defending our right to freely exploit our resources, something that cannot be measured in hard cash."

Email This Article

Related Links
International Whaling Commission
Follow the Whaling Debate