Fifth Announcement: A Change in Climate for Whales.
Second Pew-Sponsored Whale Symposium

United Nations University,
Tokyo, 30-31 January 2008

Pew Whale Symposium Secretariat
whales@pewtrusts.org

TOKYO CELL PHONES:
+81 (0)80 6501 5516 -- +81 (0)80 6501 55 31

Tokyo 27th January, 2008

Pew Whale Symposium participants are arriving in Tokyo this week-end and on Monday and Tuesday. 86 participants from 28 different nationalities, including one third from Japan are expected to take part in this unprecedented dialogue.

IF YOU ARE COMING FROM ABROAD BUT HAVE NOT YET ARRIVED, do not forget to print the Travel Advisory section prepared by the Symposium Secretariat, with instructions on how to best get from Narita airport to the hotels, and from the hotels to the United Nations University.

IF YOU ARE ALREADY IN TOKYO AND DON’T KNOW WHERE TO GO, check out our new section Where to Eat, Where to Go. We hope you will enjoy the great city of Tokyo and its fine culture and gastronomy.

Speakers' biographies are all available on this website. An additional section “Meet the Participants” will also be developed during the symposium itself. A full list of participants will be available before the start of the symposium.

The Resources section with relevant documents and useful links continues to be updated.

As shown on the Symposium agenda, in keeping with the spirit of bringing new ideas to the table and generating an open dialogue between participants, we will be drawing on the skills and experience of people from other fora with equally if not more difficult and contentious issues. We hope that lessons can be learned and success stories applied to the whaling context.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin team (ENB) that will report in both English and Japanese, following the same format that was used in April for the first Pew Whale Symposium in New York is also about to arrive. In Tokyo, ENB will report in both English and Japanese. Like the rest of the participants, the ENB team will respect the Chatham House rule whereby no individual statement is attributed to their authors unless decided otherwise.

The speakers who will introduce each session are putting the final touch to their presentations. We are also preparing the closing session, which will consist of an interactive round robin where speakers will be asked to take into account the wide variety of views expressed over the course of the two days, and to put forward innovative ideas and recommendations for the March intersessional meeting of the IWC on the future of the international whale conservation regime that will take place at Heathrow, UK on 6-8 March, 2008.

At the close of the Symposium, a preliminary draft of the Chairman’s Summary will be presented to the group. As at the first symposium in New York, there will be a mechanism for participants to comment on it before it is forwarded to the IWC for its consideration.

The Pew Environment Group Whale Symposium Secretariat: whales@pewtrusts.org.

This is the Fifth Announcement 27 January 2008

Click here for the Fourth Announcement
Click here for the Third Announcement
Click here for the Second Announcement
Click here for the First Announcement

Chairperson

Judge Tuiloma Neroni Slade, former Presiding Judge of the International Criminal Court; previously Ambassador of Samoa to the United Nations; Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and leader in the climate change negotiations; and former Co-Chairman of the United Nations Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS).

Secretariat

Rémi Parmentier, Senior Policy Consultant, Pew Environment Group.

Kelly Rigg, Director of the Varda Group.

Alex García Wylie, Associate of the Varda Group.

Monica Medina, Director of the Pew Whales Project.

Whales in the Media

Read the NY Symposium Bulletin

Click here for ENB online reporting of the Whale Symposium.