An influential newspaper called on Japan to agree to a compromise plan on the table at an international whaling conference which opened in Morocco yesterday.
Under the proposal before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting, Japan would scale back its Antarctic hunt in coming years, but be allowed commercial whaling in its coastal waters.
“Now that the chair’s proposal is on the table, we hope officials will go to negotiations with the resolve to urge anti-whaling nations to accept a compromise,” the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial. “We should calmly think whether there is a rational reason to insist on [whale hunting] in the Antarctic Sea and commit massive efforts to fighting anti-whaling nations and violent environmental groups.”
Japan justifies its whale hunts under a loophole to an international moratorium that allows for lethal “scientific research,” although the whale meat is sold openly to shops and restaurants.
The country has drawn fire from Australia, which has launched legal action at the International Court of Justice, and its harpoon ships have been harassed by militant environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The Asahi editorial said that the amount of whale meat consumed in Japan has fallen over the years, and said the nation might be better off to focus on coastal whaling.
“Even without whale meat from the Antarctic Sea, the demand can be met, given that minimum coastal whaling can be carried out,” it said.
Meanwhile, at the IWC’s annual meeting catch quotas will be debated, which could replace a moratorium on hunting, though a key scientific committee will say the catch limits are too high, sources said.
The 88-nation body will debate the proposal, put forward by the IWC’s chairmen in an attempt to break a 24-year deadlock that has nearly wrecked the global whaling regime.
Despite a 1986 moratorium on the commercial hunting of whales, Japan, Norway and Iceland have flouted the ban and still kill the animals, more than 1,500 in the 2008 to 2009 season alone.
The draft deal tables reduced annual catch numbers through 2020 for four species of whale as a baseline for negotiations, in the hope of coaxing the renegades back into the IWC fold.
Under the scheme, total allowable kills in each of the first five years would be just over 90 percent of the 2008 to 2009 figure, dropping further from 2015 to 2020.
The IWC’s own scientific committee is set to say that these numbers are not sustainable, committee members said.
Using a formula based on estimates of population levels, scientists calculated that the proposed catches were far too high for the North Pacific Bryde’s whales, and double tolerable limits for North Atlantic fin whales and eastern North Atlantic minke whales.
Only for the central North Atlantic minke whales were the tabled suggestions well under conservation-safe limits, they found.
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