Disappointed. Betrayal in Slovenia and Renewal of Sea Shepherd efforts in Antarctica Commentary by Captain Paul Watson Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice handed a ruling to conservationists in their condemnation of illegal Japanese whaling activities in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. After a decade of battling the whalers in the hostile and remote waters off the coast of Antarctica, we in Sea Shepherd were finally were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. All we needed was the willingness of nations to back the ICJ ruling and pressure from international Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to do so. Instead the so called conservation nations led by New Zealand and Australia snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and the big NGOs went along with the compromise. The whales were betrayed and an emboldened Japan, knowing that they will not face any real opposition from Australia, New Zealand and the USA, nor from the WWF, IFAW and Greenpeace, announced that they will return to whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in 2015. In the words of Elsa Cabrera, executive director of the Cetacean Conservation Center (Chile) and accredited observer to the IWC since 2001: The most upsetting experience of the last IWC meeting was to witness the unwillingness of many civil society organizations (NGOs) to oppose a resolution that does not meet or comply with what the environmental community publicly promotes: the ending of so-called Japanese “scientific” whaling programs. Despite the sustained efforts of small civil organizations from Latin America to reverse the support granted by large NGOs like World Wildlife Fund (WWF), International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Greenpeace to the weak New Zealand proposal, these mega civil organizations preferred to play the policy of Realpolitik, and actively promoted its adoption. The justification provided by these NGOs was that getting something is better than nothing. But an analysis of this approach shows that the New Zealand resolution is not only useless to prevent the continuation of whaling operations in the Southern Hemisphere but it also endows these killings, seriously obstructing progress towards its permanent cessation in the near future. What the Japanese whaling interests obtained with the adoption of the New Zealand resolution, is nothing more and nothing less than the legitimization of these anachronistic hunting operations in a polar area designated as a sanctuary by the members of the IWC. Tony Abbotts right wing anti-conservation government and the right of center New Zealand government have reversed the efforts by the previous Australian Labor government to defend the whales. Both New Zealand and Australia have capitulated to the Japanese while at the same time pretending to be anti-whaling to fool their own people into thinking that they care - which they no longer do. The big NGOs that betrayed the whales at the IWC have no idea what is happening in the Southern Ocean. They navigate from behind their desks as Sea Shepherd sends ships and international crew down into the cold and remote waters of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to dramatically reduce the kill quotas each year. Sea Shepherd is the only effort that is actually saving the lives of whales in the Sanctuary and costing the Japanese whaling industry a great deal in profit losses, yet it is Sea Shepherd that is condemned every year at the IWC by the member nations and by the NGOs because the reality is that none of these nations or the major NGOs really want to end whaling in the Southern Ocean. They simply want their supporters to think that they want to end whaling. Greenpeace even posted a poster celebrating the end of whaling and of course issuing posts claiming how they were responsible for ending it. Yet in 2015 when the Japanese whaling fleet returns with the intention of killing whales once again, they will not be there to confront the harpoons. Who will be there? Steve Irwin, Bob Barker, Sam Simon, Brigitte Bardot and if Sea Shepherd succeeds in raising the funding, a fifth vessel yet to be named will be blocking the harpoons and saving lives as Sea Shepherd has been doing year after year, knowing that talk is cheap and it takes courage, passion, dedication and endurance to directly intervene against such an unscrupulous, unethical and conniving whaling nation like Japan. ccc-chile.org/articulo-15-1146-100614_international_whaling_commission_2014_why_did_whales_lost.html
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 19:05:22 +0000
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