Maintaining IWC Membership Is in Japan's Interest

(from "The Japan Times", 9/Nov/1994)

Kunio Yonezawa
 Former Japanese representative on the International Whaling Commission


Events in the International Whaling Commission point to a rather startling change in the major antiwhaling nations' stance: In the last few years, they have gone from advocating science to unabashed candidness as regards their earlier hidden agenda. It does not appear to trouble them that this agenda is not only completely incompatible with both the spirit and the letter of the IWC Convention itself, but also with the concept of sustainable use of living marine resources to which these nations pledged their support at UNCED two years ago. They have cornered themselves into admitting the truth about their biases under the weight of scientific evidence against them - evidence to which Japan has contributed significantly through its research and field surveys.

Objectively, the scientific irrationality of the commission's behavior in refusing to adopt the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) comes clear in the resignation of the Scientific Committee Chairman, Dr. Philip Hammond of Britain, two weeks after the 1993 meeting. He said, "... the work of Scientific Committee [on the RMP] was praised and acknowledged by several delegations to be complete, but it remained unadopted ... (R)seasons for this were nothing to do with science ... [I concluded that] I can no longer justify to myself being the organizer of and spokesman for a committee whose work is held in such disregard by the body to which it is responsible ...."

As things stand now, many in Japan and elsewhere rightly doubt the merit of Japan's staying in the IWC.

However, there is a consideration I see, particularly when I sense the beginning of a groundswell in certain Western governments, the media, and NGOs against antiwhaling and other extremist positions as regards resources management.

Were Japan to withdraw from the IWC, it would lose the formal arena in which to confront the antiwhaling nations with reason and science. For example, at the 1994 meeting, two researchers, funded by Earthtrust - a U.S. antiwhaling group - charged that there is marketing in Japan of illegally caught whale meat. This allegation attracted wide media coverage in the U.S. and elsewhere, but the truth was otherwise.

As they admitted, these researchers did not have even a responsibly minimal set of reference type specimens against which to check their meager 16 samples. This led them to fail to distinguish between legally taken Antarctic minke and protected humpback whales, among other mistakes.

They submitted their paper to the IWC Scientific Committee, but the committee simply dismissed it as not up to the scientific standards necessary for consideration. Other non-IWC scientists, who work in genetics and DNA, have reported reached similar conclusions. Sadly, through the misuse of scientific techniques, Earthtrust achieved a successful publicity stunt because the truth has not been as widely reported.

For Japan to withdraw from the IWC might please extremists, but it would not necessarily help our concern for sustainable whaling or further our larger cause.

The larger cause we stand for goes well beyond the immediate issue of whaling. It encompasses much broader questions, among which are the fundamental human right to use natural resources responsibly; mutual respect for divergent cultural and ethical values; and freedom from the tyranny of the majority. It is most presumptuous to seek to impose one's ethical values or penchant for certain fauna on others who do not share the same views, especially when these views are merely ideological and wholly unscientific, as with the IWC.

However, what remains most unconscionable to me is that a civilized government which has signed a treaty can attempt to use the treaty organization to promote objectives that are utterly incompatible with the purpose and letter of the agreement. The excuse that the whale issue is somehow an exception is not convincing.

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