Contents

1. Introduction
2. Japan's attempt to ´normalize´the IWC
3. The Pew Whale Symposia
4. The Gordian Knot
5. Normalizing VS. Modernizing
6. Conclusion

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5. Normalizing vs. Modernizing

60 years since the IWC was set up, and knowing what we currently know about the threats to the global environment (and marine ecosystems in particular), we should seek consensus on the fact that there is serious risk in unfettered adherence to an agreement adopted in 1946 before these threats had developed or had been identified.  The conservation of whales is in everyone’s best interests, and the international community must look forward to the 21st century, not backwards to the 20th.  It is time to turn the page and focus on modern whale conservation.

Turning the page and modernizing the IWC means that contemporary principles can be borrowed from other conventions whose aims are to ensure the conservation of marine biodiversity and promote healthy ecosystems, such as:

• Application of the precautionary approach;
• Application of an integrated, ecosystem-based approach to biodiversity conservation (as opposed to a narrower ecosystem-based management to fisheries or an even narrower species-based approach);
• Establishment of a body to review compliance with new powers of enforcement, including a dispute settlement mechanism in line with modern international environmental law;
• Avoidance of reservations to new rules and provisions and elimination of the privilege to ‘opt out’ from any such rules and provisions when adhering to the regime (in line with UNCLOS and the majority of modern MEAs);
• Recognition and regulation of non-lethal use of cetaceans as a legitimate and optimum use of the whale resources;
• Good faith negotiation on the future of the provision in ICRW Article VIII whereby restrictions to whaling may currently be undermined by the unilateral issuance of special permits.