The South Pacific island state of Palau is ending its support for Japan’s scientific whaling program in favor of the catch quota proposal being considered by the International Whaling Commission.
The quota proposal will only be implemented by unanimous approval of the commission’s 88 members, including Japan, when they vote at the annual meeting next week.
There’s no indication yet of the potential outcome, but voting strength on other proposals at last year’s meeting were balanced evenly between whaling nations and opponents. Many small nations supported the whalers, and opponents claimed Japan “bought” those votes with aid and other funding.
Palauan President Johnson Toribiong said yesterday he doesn’t believe his administration’s decision will affect his country’s close ties with Japan, its second-biggest benefactor after the US.
“I assume Japan is a mature, responsible country and has the capacity to accept our position in light of the world’s view on whaling,” Toribiong said.
Toribiong said he planned to announce the shift in Palau’s whaling policy at the UN General Assembly in September last year, when he declared Palau the world’s first shark sanctuary. But Japan asked him to delay the whaling announcement.
Last week, a Japanese whaling expert visited Palau to seek its continued support at the whaling commission meeting in Morocco.
The envoy, Kenro Iino, told Palauan officials current levels of hunting would not deplete any whale species. He also said whales consume much more fish than humans do, so an overabundance of whales could threaten global fish stocks.
There was no immediate comment from Japanese officials in Palau to the policy change.
The quota proposal has been criticized as a return to commercial whaling, which has been banned since 1986. But it would end scientific whaling, an allowed but unregulated exception to the ban.
Japan’s annual scientific hunt is decried by opponents as a cover for commercial whaling, as much of the whale meat is sold for domestic consumption.
The proposal would allow Japan, Norway and Iceland to hunt a set number of whales while aiming to reduce the total catch over 10 years. It would ban Japan’s scientific whaling program and could halve the 1,000-plus whales Japan would harvest annually over the next five years.
Anti-whaling states, including Australia and New Zealand, have called the proposed whale cull quota system unacceptable and demanded an end to Japan’s hunt in Antarctic waters.
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