Frigate Bay, St. Kitts and Nevis – As the United States takes the helm of the International Whaling Commission, environmentalists and animal-welfare activists are divided over whether it will use its stewardship to pressure Japan to abide by a 20-year-old ban on killing the mammals or to compromise and accept some whaling.
The rotating three-year chairmanship of the IWC passed from Denmark to the United States at the end of the IWC’s annual meeting in this Caribbean resort this week, a shift from a generally pro-whaling nation to one in which sentiments for saving whales from pain, abuse and slaughter run strong.
But activists point to a ragged Bush administration record on environmental issues, from rejection of the Kyoto accord aimed at combating global warming to plans to drill for oil in Alaskan wilderness and off Gulf of Mexico shores.
The commercial whaling ban imposed in 1986 has been under persistent assault by Japan, which has spent the last decade recruiting small Caribbean, Pacific and African countries to join the IWC and vote against measures that saddle the former whaling club with responsibility for conservation.
During the annual meeting that ended Tuesday, Japan mustered a one-vote majority to proclaim the whaling ban “no longer necessary” and a hazard to dwindling marine life further down the whale’s food chain.
A 75 percent majority would be needed to overturn the ban.
The U.S. official chairing the IWC, National Marine Fisheries Service chief William Hogarth, made clear in an interview after his appointment that a deep divide within the 70-member whaling body has led to a situation in which killing whales under a loophole in the ban is on the rise.
“We’ve gotten to an impasse,” Hogarth said, alluding to the polarization between opponents of whaling and an equal number supporting Japan, Norway and Iceland in the killing of more than 2,000 whales a year.
