Japan Announces Plans To Recommence Whaling Despite IWC Resolution For Tougher Guidelines
Monday 22 September 2014 @ 11.23 a.m. | Legal Research
Concern that Japan will resume whaling in the Antarctic as early as next year appears to have been justified. Last week, Japanese representatives at the International Whaling Commission (“the IWC”) announced that they intend to submit a new research plan for the 2015 season that they believe will be in line with international law.
As previously discussed on TimeBase, earlier this year Australia successfully obtained a judgment from the International Court of Justice ("the ICJ") that found that Japan’s JARPA II whaling program was not reasonably designed or implemented as scientific research. However, commentators warned that there were a number of ways Japan could avoid ceasing whaling altogether.
New Zealand and Australia instigated a vote last week at the IWC on a non-binding resolution that would have established tougher guidelines for scientific scrutiny for whaling research permits. Environment Minister Greg Hunt told the Sydney Morning Herald that the resolution was designed to integrate the ICJ’s findings on the necessary components of a legal research program within the accreditation processes of the IWC. Participants at the meeting passed the resolution with a 35-20 majority, with five abstentions. However, Japan voted against the resolution and announced plans to relaunch its program next year. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, several South American nations abstained from voting because they believed the resolution further legitimised whaling.
BBC News reported that Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the resolution “regrettable”, and confirmed that Japan are “carrying out preparations for a new plan for scientific whaling to resume in the 2015/2016 year”, which are “based on international law, scientific fact and the international whaling treaty”.
Japan has promised its new program will be limited to minke whales and that its review process will be “transparent”. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Japan’s IWC commissioner Joji Morishita had “nominat[ed] minkes in the Antarctic, North Pacific and North Atlantic as already proven sustainable by IWC methods.” Japan will have to present details of the project later in the year, before a meeting of the IWC’s scientific committee in early 2015.
The leader of the New Zealand delegation, Gerard Van Bohemen, told The Guardian:
“We are disappointed with their announcement… We thought it important that there was a strong statement agreed about the interpretation and application of the court’s decision but in the end it wasn’t possible to reach consensus on that.”
Mr Hunt told the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia was “considering the outcome of the meeting”, but reiterated that “we would not do anything in any way that would endorse or encourage lethal whale research”.
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