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Showdown over international whaling rules

Panama's change a key to Japan's defeat at the IWC
by Eric Jackson

On June 16, the opening day of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) summit in St. Kitts, Panama's change of position that came with Mireya Moscoso's replacement as president by Martín Torrijos became a key factor in close votes that set back Japanese ambitions to resume commercial whaling. With Panama voting with the majority, the commission first voted 33 to 30 against Japan's motion for secret votes at this IWC meeting, and then sided with a smaller 32-30 majority to reject a Japanese proposal to exclude dolphins and porpoises from the whaling ban. Had Panama not changed its previous position, the first vote would have been defeated by only a one-vote margin and the second would have ended in a tie.

The Moscoso administration, which environmentalist groups accused of being bribed by Japanese aid to support it whaling aspirations, took Panama into membership on the IWC for the first time, where it supported Japanese motions.  One of Martín Torrijos's few specific promises was to reverse the prior administration's position on whaling.

Whaling has never been a significant part of Panama's economy or culture, and hasn't existed at all in modern times, but we now do have a nascent whale watching tourism industry.

In the days before the St. Kitts meeting, La Prensa reported that Japan was lobbying behind the scenes to convince the Torrijos administration not to send a Panamanian delegation. "Whales are for sale in St. Kitts," Greenpeace spokesman John Bowler charged. As it turned out, Panama attended but Greenpeace did not, at least as the latter had planned: three days before the meeting the St. Kitts government forbade the Greenpeace ship MY Arctic Sunrise from entering that Caribbean country's waters. St. Kitts has historically supported Japan on the whaling issue.

But meanwhile the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other anti-whaling groups were watching. Among those following the action in St. Kitts from afar was the Foro de Sociedad Civil Ambiental, a coalition of 11 Panamanian environmental and animal protection groups. The alliance's expression of satisfaction with the way that Panama voted and the results of the voting was part of a global wave of victory statements from the environmental movement.

However, Greenpeace's Shane Rattenbury warned that “Whaling history may not have been rewritten this year but it was too close for comfort. The anti-whaling countries must see this as a wake-up call."

In the end, however, whaling may end just because of its economics. All of the private Japanese companies that had been engaged in the whaling industry have pulled out of the business, claiming that it's unprofitable. (Although the commercial taking of whales is banned, Japan takes hundreds of minke, sei and fin whales from the world's oceans per year under the pretense that it's for "scientific" purposes.) The Japanese government's Fisheries Agency of Japan has stepped in to carry on the whaling business, both on the marketing and production sides. Nevertheless, the Japanese people themselves show every less of an appetite for whale meat and that likely means that their government has nationalized a dying industry.

Also in this section:
Salinity studies don't jibe with what the ACP says about them
State-owned Chinese shipping company's CEO endorses Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan
University of Panama forum on environmental aspects of canal expansion
Panama's new whaling policy in line with IWC majority
Business & Economy Briefs