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India's last-minute entry saves whaling ban

Sanjay Suri in London

Nobody can tell just how many whales Maneka Gandhi saved this week, but they reckon it could be a few thousand.

Gandhi and India's external affairs ministry came together to cast crucial votes that succeeded in stopping a push towards commercial whaling at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in London last week.

India very nearly did not attend the conference because of outstanding dues, according to an official from the IWC. India's last-minute payment brought life to whales in the Pacific and the Atlantic.

The weeklong conference was marked by a series of acrimonious and closely contested debates. The Indian vote proved crucial in blocking Iceland's re-entry into the whaling commission. Iceland had sought membership together with a right to kill whales.

The Iceland vote, which was won 19-18 by the countries that oppose whaling, became a turning point. The vote won a point in principle against whaling as a member of the IWC. It also kept Iceland out of closely contested votes among the 43 members later.

"India's firm position that we are opposed to commercial whaling and our support for maintaining the current moratorium prevented such an outcome," an Indian official who attended the conference told rediff.com

"The Indian vote was critical and in days ahead it's going to become even more important," Sarah Tyack from the International Fund for Animal Welfare told rediff.com "We are relying on countries like India to turn up and vote and prevent the ban from being overturned."

The IWC introduced a ban on commercial whaling in 1986. But Japan and Norway, principally, continue to kill about 1,000 whales a year.

Japan kills whales under a loophole that allows whaling for research. Norway permits whaling on the grounds that it posted a reservation on the ban when it was introduced. Both countries say their whaling activities are limited.

Both, however, are campaigning for the ban to be lifted. Other countries and environmental groups fear that if the ban is lifted the number of whales killed every year will go into thousands, not just a thousand.

The official annual toll is about 1,200 minke whales a year. The Japanese claimed that they were whaling a few hundred out of a trillion; the New Zealanders said it could be many more than a few hundred among no more than 250,000 or so minke whales.

Japan's tactics stirred up a storm after a Japanese official virtually admitted to giving aid in exchange for support over its whaling policies. Masayuki Komatsu told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ahead of the meeting that Japan has a right to use its economic powers to persuade countries to oppose the ban on whaling. Minke whales, he said, had become the "cockroaches of the ocean".

The Japanese official said Japan had to use the "tools of diplomatic communications and promises of overseas development aid to influence members of the International Whaling Commission".

Japan, he added, does not have military powers like the US or Australia. "In order to get appreciation of Japan's position, of course, it is natural we must resort to those two major tools."

To this, Tyack said Japan was working "not on the strength of its argument but on the strength of its currency".

Japan won the support of six Caribbean countries, the Solomon Islands and Guinea with such 'persuasion'. This year at least three other countries getting substantial Japanese aid -- Peru, Morocco and Panama -- are joining the commission. The next meeting of the IWC will be held in Tokyo.

The research clause under which Japan kills whales goes on to say that once whales are killed their meat must be consumed and not allowed to go to waste. Japan says it consumes whale meat -- which is considered a delicacy -- only as a byproduct of research. This position taken by Japan is "brazenly arrogant", said Tyack.

Japan and Norway failed to overturn the ban on commercial whaling, but they managed to block a proposal led by Brazil and New Zealand to create sanctuaries for whales in the Pacific and the Atlantic. The proposal needed a three-quarters vote to succeed, but managed to get only about two-thirds. Twenty countries voted for the South Pacific sanctuary, 13 voted against and four abstained. In the South Atlantic vote, 19 countries favoured the sanctuary, 13 were against and five abstained.

The vote in the whaling commission is not legally binding either on members or on non-members. But the commission carries considerable clout as a trade and environmental body with strong backing from the governments of member countries.

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