Miljø- og Planlægningsudvalget 2008-09
MPU Alm.del Bilag 527
Offentligt
IUCN statement to the IWC Intersessional Meeting Rome 9 to 11 March on the Future
of IWC
Thank you, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity to address this meeting. Like previous speakerswe are encouraged that Commission members are making an effort to resolve theirdifferences, so that the organisation can focus its energies on addressing important cetaceanconservation issues instead of internal divisions. We greatly appreciate the efforts ofAmbassador de Soto and yourself, Mr Chairman, to develop proposals that might beacceptable to all parties.
In situations like this, where previous negotiations have reached an impasse, there is often acase for going back to the drawing board, and trying to start afresh without feeling bound toprevious approaches.
However, we are disconcerted by the direction these negotiations seem to be taking. IUCNplaces especial emphasis on finding scientifically based solutions to conservation problems,with the involvement of stakeholders, To date, we have found the IWC to be a relativelyscience-friendly organisation, and we have been impressed by the work done by its ScientificCommittee. The Committee over the years has made substantial progress towards solving thedifficult problem of how to determine sustainable catch levels, and is relatively advanced inthis field when seen in the context of fisheries and wildlife management in general.
We are concerned that the Commission may be setting aside the achievements of theScientific Committee and returning to the practices of the past, when whales were horsetradedin political deals between the parties, to the detriment of their conservation. While it isencouraging that the Chair’s Suggestions in Document 4 do envisage receiving some advicefrom the Scientific Committee, the questions that it envisages putting to the Committee arenaive. The Committee would be asked to comment on the effects of a given catch level to betaken either for just five years, or for an indefinite period.
The Committee’s extensive work on these issues over the years has shown that for long-livedspecies such as whales, which are hard to monitor, one cannot meaningfully assesssustainability over a period as short as five years. The answer to the question of the effect ofa given catch over five years will simply be that there would be x00 fewer whales left in the
stock than if the catch had not been taken. The Commission would be left to decide whetherit thought that mattered or not.
As to the effect of taking a given catch level indefinitely, the scientific answer is that there is ahigh risk that a constant catch level is unsustainable, unless it is an extremely small catch.Extensive work by the Committee over the years has shown that a constant catch level, apartfrom a trivially small one, engenders risks to whale stocks.
Instead, one needs a procedure for continually adjusting the catch level in the light of newdata.The Scientific Committee has over the years developed comprehensive machinery for
this purpose in the form of the RMP and its implementation variants. Rather than try todevelop an alternative approach from scratch, we would recommend using the machinery thathas already been developed by the Committee.
The proposals appear to contradict themselves to the extent that one the one hand theyindicate that catch level would be based on scientific advice, while on the other hand theysuggest that catch limits in the North Pacific could be increased as a reward for reducingwhaling in the Southern Hemisphere. If catch limits are based on what the scientists estimateto be sustainable, then there can be no scope for increasing them as aquid pro quoforrestraint exercised elsewhere in the world. We shouldn’t forget that the Commission’scharter, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, specifies that itsmanagement measures should be based on scientific findings.
Finally we emphasise the importance of the Commission continuing to broaden its scientificapproach focus to cover not just the effects of whaling, but all the risks to which cetaceanpopulations are subject to today. In this connection we draw attention to document 6 whichcontains many constructive suggestions for progress.
