Author - CEO

The Wikileaks pieces on Norway and the US remind us that Norway has so far gotten off pretty lightly in recent years as compared to Japan and, increasingly, Iceland.

Dr. Sidney Holt reminds us that it was Norway that helped pioneer the art of sleight of hand and misdirection at the IWC. Sidney is far too polite and others may be tempted to use other language.

In the various US cables we see Norway’s deliberate continuation of the myth of Norway's objection to the 1986 moratorium on a matter of 'scientific principle'.

Poppycock!

Dr. Holt is right that the historical record tells us what really happened.

In a paper on this website, Dr. Holt details that Norway's real objection is to the 1985 classification by the IWC of the Northeast Atlantic minke whale stock as a "Protection Stock" with zero catch limit, because it was found to be seriously depleted.

"That action was taken on the basis of a consensus advice from the IWC Scientific Committee from which even the Norwegian scientists (from, at that time, the Bergen Laboratory) on the Norwegian delegation, did not dissent."

Their actions did not agree with their Government’s policy, and they were subsequently removed from being in a position to give advice and replaced by a more, let us say, ‘politically aware’, scientific grouping.

So let's be clear, Norway did not object to IWC decisions on the moratorium because of 'scientific uncertainty', but because the science did not fulfil its political demands.

In recent years we have seen the same approach, in that the Norwegian Government has set the desired political whaling quotas and then it's scientists have sought to justify the numbers.

This has been a scar on Norwegian fisheries and environmental policy for decades.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, many IWC delegations don't have the institutional knowledge to remember what the whalers have done in the past, and the whaling interests seem to be happy to play the long game until someone more naive and pliable comes along.

The US and others cannot afford to be so short-sighted or so easily misled.

2012 is quickly racing towards us. It’s a crucial year because the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development set internationally agreed targets to establish extensive networks of MPAs around the world by 2012.

Whether the 2012 target turns out to be to ambitious will soon become clear as many of the proposed MPAs will need to be on track during 2011 to meet the 2012 deadline.

Daniel Cressey writing in Nature (Vol. 469, No. 7329, 13 January 2011) quotes Tundi Agardy, the lead author of a paper published in Marine Policy (35, 226-232 (2001)) [one of the other authors is a friend of WDCS, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara],  warning of ‘blind faith’ in the ability of MPAs to stem biodiversity loss.

Agardy is not opposed to MPAs. Indeed it appears that the paper is highly supportive of MPAs, but is critical of policy makers who end up designing MPAs that are too small to be effective and that create an illusion of protection when none is actually occurring. The paper also points out that poor management and the fact that degradation of waters outside an MPA can mean that the MPA is ineffective.

The paper goes onto illustrate the MPA for the vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California has not been successful because the paper claims that it missed a major area of the species core range.

WDCS is campaigning for MPAs for cetaceans around the world, but some policy makers seem ready to repeat the list of mistakes that Agardy and her colleagues outline. I am concerned that proposals for MPAs that policy makers may accept will be too small and too limited to make a difference.

In the same edition of Nature the lead editorial calls on policy makers to think big when considering protected areas. Whilst the leader looks specifically at terrestrial national parks and the impacts of climate change, it also notes that ‘landscape scale’ conservation initiatives are necessary to adapt to the impacts of climate change where many species will need to be able to move to adapt.

I remain concerned that policy makers may believe that the oceans of the world are ‘big enough’ to allow for such movements and adaptations by cetaceans, but how will small protected areas be flexible enough to accommodate such changes? Only if we look at larger ocean landscape protected areas - that address multiple threats to cetaceans - will we really begin to create the necessary frameworks to manage human impacts and so allow these creatures to flourish in such highly dynamic environments.

 

I have to say I have a lot of time for Bruce Parry. His enthusiasm for the people he meets around the world is infectious and his friendliness is well rewarded by those he meets.

Now, I was especially interested to see his latest program on the BBC where he is visiting Arctic peoples. I must admit I approached it with some trepidation, as I was not particularly looking forward to any glowing endorsement for the hunting of marine mammals.

However, Bruce has taken a very objective view. Whilst recognising the needs of true indigenous hunters he contrasts this with what he finds in some parts of the Arctic, including Greenland.

In an interview on the BBC website, Parry discusses filming in Greenland where he spends time with indigenous hunters.

"I don't normally question stuff too much," says Parry. "If I'm in the middle of the jungle with a group of people and they shoot a monkey, that might be a controversial thing to eat, but they're living an incredibly traditional life." But the Inuit are more integrated.

"They're living a traditional life, but they're accepting fuel and boats and vehicles and heating from the outside world. That comes with opinions about the larger picture of the animals they subsist on."

This comes at the same time that climate change is causes dramatic changes in Greenland. New Scientist reports this week that new data and models show that Greenland's ice cap, the world's second largest, is on track to hit a point of no return in 2040.

What all this means for the people and wildlife of the high Arctic is to be seen, but maybe people should be thinking carefully about not commercializing the hunting that takes place there and, in doing so, adding further pressure on the Arctic’s disappearing wildlife and habitats.

Various news sources are reporting that BP has had to shut down the pipeline it uses to transport oil from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, forcing it virtually to close down production from what is North America's biggest oil field. There is no reports of environmental damage yet, but I am sure this is one headache that BP could well do without after 2010. Let us see how they handle this one.

You may have mixed opinions on the Wikileaks US cable releases, - whether they are in the public interest or just publicly interesting - a concept responsible journalists wrestle with all the time. However, there have been some 'revelations', or confirmations to some of us, of the true negotiating positions of several country delegations.

Of particular note is the backroom negotiating style of the US Government. It appears that the US, in trying to appease Japan into accepting a 'deal' that would allow for the legitimising of commercial whaling, sought to trade northern hemisphere humpback whales for Japan's compliance.

Despite being fully aware of the increased commercialisation of the Greenland hunt the US was willing to campaign for the killing of humpbacks in the northern hemisphere.

The US was desperately trying to get Iceland to reduce its self-allocated quota and was looking for issues that may engage Japan to ‘help’ deliver a deal.

The Cables report that Japan stated that there were factors outside the current ‘Future of the IWC’ [the deal] negotiations that would influence Japan's negotiating position and that the ‘First, a negative outcome in the vote at next year's [2010] IWC intersessional meeting on Greenland's proposal to catch ten humpback whales could derail the work of the Support Group. …and another rejection at the IWC plenary meeting could make the overall compromise being discussed impossible.’

The US IWC Commissioner appointed by President Obama, Ms. Medina, is reported in the cables to have said  that ‘she hopes to work out differences with the EU on Greenland's proposal on humpback whales prior to the March 2010 IWC intersessional meeting and include the issue in the overall agreement.’

Indeed, as the IWC meetings then revealed, the US played an important role in driving through the final Greenland whaling quota that included humpbacks.

What is also striking on reading the cables is that the US appears to have been mistakenly staking its negotiating position on the fact that Iceland was the only blocking player in their campaign to achieve a resumption of commercial whaling and  Wikileaks reports that the US requested of the ‘MOFA [Japanese Fisheries Agency] State Secretary Fukuyama and Fisheries Agency Deputy Director General Yamashita to press Iceland to lower its proposed quota for whaling in order to facilitate an overall agreement on whaling’.

The US negotiating position was that for a resumption of whaling to be achieved, all that was needed was for all countries ‘to take [a] reasonable approach’ - very different to their public anti-whaling position.

The US negotiations with Japan about Iceland appear to have been predicated on the argument that Japan could not absorb all the whale meat that Iceland was taking, not that the hunt was irresponsible and should stop.

Whilst we welcome the recent moves in the US that may result in the USA certifying and sanctioning Iceland, one must question why the US, which has been publicly opposed to resumption in whale meat trade, appears to have been willing to open up discussions on trade, and we have to ask, were they implicitly ‘agreeing’ to accept future trade in whale products? Indeed, the US is reported to have said that it ‘did not recommend Japan take any measures to restrict trade’.

Humpbacks, future trade, one must question what was the US was not willing to negotiate away? Read the cables and see what you think.