Minoru Morimoto: What gives you the right to lecture us about whaling?

[Barrett808]

Minoru Morimoto: What gives you the right to lecture us about whaling?
5:00AM Tuesday January 22, 2008
By Minoru Morimoto
Minoru Morimoto is Director-General of the Institute of Cetacean Research, Tokyo which carries out Japan's research whaling in the Antarctic and western North Pacific.

In 1982, without any scientific justification and recommendation by its scientific committee, the International Whaling Commission passed the global moratorium on commercial whaling.

Since then, the normal rules of debate and treaty interpretation that are the basis for good international governance have too often been ignored by some IWC members. Differing opinions have become entrenched as polarised institutional discourse and rhetoric. With a lack of good faith negotiations, this raises serious questions about the IWC's continued institutional legitimacy and whether it indeed has a future.

The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), agreed to in 1946, is about the proper management of the whaling industry by regulating catch quotas at levels so that whale stocks will not be diminished. The Whaling Convention is not - nor has it ever been - about protecting all whales irrespective of how abundant they are.

The fact that New Zealand and Australia were whaling countries when they agreed to and signed the Whaling Convention but subsequently changed positions to anti-whaling in the 1970s does not change the Convention.

New Zealand has sacrificed the principles of science-based management and sustainable use that are the world standard as a political expediency to satisfy the interests of non-government organisations. New Zealand's intransigence and continued lobbying of other IWC members to resolutely oppose any return to sustainable commercial whaling (and to oppose research whaling) has contributed to bringing the IWC to the brink of collapse.

...

Whaling will continue around the world and Australia and New Zealand are now faced with a choice - participate in a calm and rational manner in discussions to manage whale resources within the IWC or be left out of a new organisation that will manage whaling in a sustainable, science-based manner.

(more)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10488010

[Algorem]

1. take a long scientific walk on a short pier,Morimofo