(from Chapter 8 of "An Alalysis of Social and Cultural Change in Ayukawa-Hama (Ayukawa Shore Community)", 1994, University of Alberta)

Dr Masami Iwasaki-Goodman
Anthropologist, Hokusei Gakuen Women's Junior College

The ethnographic interviews which were presented in Chapter 6.C dealt with the STCW issue from the perspectives of the local people in Ayukawa-hama. It has become clear that the STCW operations have been the basis of their community development, in that the economic viability and the social and cultural vitality of the Ayukawa-hama community has been generated from the production, processing, distribution, consumption and ceremonial celebration of minke whales, which are the main target species of the STCW operation. Furthermore, the future survival of the community is largely dependent on the resumption of minke whaling, and the normalizing of STCW operations. The discussion has made it abundantly clear that the STCW issue is a serious social, cultural and economic issue for the people in Ayukawa-hama. From the perspective of the local people, it is the survival of their community that has been repeatedly threatened by the Commission.

The discussion of the interactional analysis of the IWC meetings provides a sufficient understanding of the nature of the present IWC and its functioning. Polarization has split the Commission into two groups, one of which is the majority anti-whaling group who uses its majority power to dominate the Commission's agenda and dictate the course of discussion and the consequent outcome. The back stage activities among the group of anti-whaling countries and the anti-whaling NGO observers contribute to the operational problems which seriously hinders the Commission's function. The lack of compromise or attempts to operate by consensus and the lack of meaningful discussion on substantive matters or negotiation effort between the pro-whaling countries and the anti-whaling countries in the Commission allows the majority position to consistently prevail over the minority interests.

The interactional analysis of the IWC meetings demonstrates that there are numerous negative consequences of the operational disfunction of the Commission related to other areas of its responsibilities. Firstly, the extreme polarization and consequent non-conciliatory manner in which the Commission operates has resulted in a Commission unable to make compromises to accommodate the various interests of its member countries. The Commission, in fact, has not sought to compromise on most of the conflicting issues involving whaling interests. A senior member of the Icelandic delegation stated in his final speech at the close of the Plenary session that:

...the majority within the Commission of what I consider moderate nations would have to choose between accommodating the views of extreme protectionists and those who wish to carry out scientifically-based conservative whaling. Too often over the past years the Commission appears to have chosen to favour the extreme group... ( Appendix 1.10.1 )

The above statement indicates that the Commission could have kept Iceland as a member, if it could have operated in a manner that allowed a compromise to accommodate the Icelandic interests.

Another serious implication of the operational disfunction of the Commission involves the question of the credibility of the IWC as a science-based resource management organization. As evident in the discussion concerning the adoption of the Revised Management Procedure, the Commission has not accepted the unanimous advice of its Scientific Committee and postponed adoption of the completed Revised Management Procedure. This behaviour was repeated again at the 1992 and 1993 annual meetings, after which the Chairperson of the Scientific Committee announced his resignation as an expression of his dissatisfaction (Letter: P. Hammond to R. Gambell May 24, 1993).

The Commission has also repeatedly disregarded the rights of its member countries under the Convention. The countries who have been conducting scientific research on whales are, every year, subject to resolutions which urge reconsideration of the research operations. Such behaviour reflects the Commission's defiance of the legal rights of signatory countries to the Convention. The extreme polarization has, in these ways, been detrimental to the Commission as an international organization that was established for specific purposes under the International Convention for Regulation of Whaling. Regrettably, it has become a protectionist forum for self serving posturing by the countries presenting anti-whaling positions.

The disfunction of the Commission as a result of polarization has had serious implications for the people in Ayukawa-hama, because the outcome of the IWC annual meetings directly and immediately affect the local social, cultural and economic infrastructure of Ayukawa-hama⁵⁰. The preceding discussion of the endogenous development made it clear that the people in Ayukawa-hama have successfully developed their community through a renovation of traditional social and cultural systems. The IWC's inability to solve the social and cultural problems that the moratorium has caused has left the people in Ayukawa-hama in a situation that will lead to the discontinuation of its whaling cultural tradition. Furthermore, the people in Ayukawa-hama now face a situation where, without a resolution of this problem, the almost-century-old endogenous community development based on STCW that they have innovatively engaged in will inevitably come to an end.

The serious implications of the moratorium has been fully reported to the IWC at every annual meeting since 1989 when the Working Group on Socio-Economic Implications of a Zero-Catch Limit first met. Various documents reporting the findings of the social science research have been presented to the Commission every year since 1988. Thus, the Commission has been sufficiently informed that the STCW operations have played a socially, culturally and economically significant role in the STCW communities (Akimichi et al. 1988; Bestor 1989; Braund 1989,1990; Japan 1989a, 1990b, 1991a, 1991b, 1991d, 1992a, 1992c, 1992d, 1992e, 1993a, 1993b). However, consideration of the STCW issues has been left with the Commission which has serious operational problems. Consequently, the Commission, after six years (till the 43rd Annual Meeting, and eight years till the present) of discussion of the STCW issues, is unable to constructively develop a solution to the problem that the moratorium on commercial whaling has created. In short, it is clear that the IWC has not been a useful forum for the resolution of the STCW issues that affect the social, cultural and economic wellbeing of the local people of Ayukawa-hama, and which the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling requires the IWC to appropriately address.

Throughout the debates related to the STCW issues, the people in Ayukawa-hama have not been merely passive victims affected by the IWC's decisions. Rather, they have been making conscious decisions based on their observations of the given situation and their judgement concerning alternative courses of action⁵¹. The people in Ayukawa-hama are sufficiently knowledgeable of the state of the STCW issues. They have become aware of the nature of the IWC and its decision making process. Since 1989, community representatives have been attending the IWC meetings and participating in the discussions of the Working Group and observing discussions in the Technical Committee and the Plenary sessions. They are fully aware of the Commission's decision to accommodate the social and cultural needs of the Aboriginal/subsistence whalers and communities by exempting this form of whaling from the moratorium. They are also aware of the fact that, in the case of the Alaskan Eskimo whaling issue, special consideration for humane reasons, was given to this group of people, despite the threat continued whaling appeared to have on the seriously depleted whale stock that they have been harvesting. Moreover, the Ayukawa-hama representatives are aware of a discrepancy between the recommendations of the Scientific Committee and the outcome of the Commission's discussions that relate directly to their livelihood, including the moratorium decision itself which was passed by the Commission despite the lack of any recommendation from the Scientific. Committee in support of such action. Furthermore, the Ayukawa-hama representatives have noted the Commission's vote against the Japanese request for fifty minke whales as an emergency relief allocation, despite the agreement in the Scientific Committee that this number was well below the most conservative estimate of replacement yield for the stock in question.

Persistent effort by the people in Ayukawa-hama to continue to seek an understanding of the social, cultural and economic need for the normalization of their STCW operations is firmly based on their conviction that the IWC's decision to ban minke whaling in their coastal waters is unwarranted. Furthermore, the moratorium has adversely affected the community development strategy through which the local people have endogenously developed Ayukawa-hama, utilizing the local whale resource. It is the local people's conviction that the deterioration of the social, cultural and economic systems of Ayukawa-hama can be only remedied by normalizing STCW operations.

In conclusion, the disfunction of the Commission as a result of polarization between the pro-whaling minority and the anti-whaling majority groups has created two major issues. One is, needless to say, the future of the Ayukawa-hama community and in the larger context, Oshika-cho, which is striving to regain an indispensable social, cultural and economic base for the restructuring of the community. Another issue at stake is the credibility of the Commission as an international organization for the management of whale resources. As some members of the Commission repeatedly stated throughout the discussion that took place during the 43rd meeting, the present disfunction of the Commission is seriously threatening the future existence of the Commission ( Appendix 1.3.1 ; Appendix 1.3.2 , 1.7.1 , 1.8.1 ).

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50 In his discussion of the IWC, Finn Lynge makes a similar point. He says that "To the Inuit and the coastal communities of the North, it is a struggle to defend a way of life and a culture close to the sea and all the good creatures from the deep" (1992:63).

51 The similar phenomenon is described by Anne Brydon who examined the recent situation in Iceland. She points out that the discussion concerning the continuation of whaling has become increasingly nationalistic (1990).

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