First 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
Tel: +34 637 557 357 -- +34 666 526 02

The Pew Environment Group is happy to announce the Second Pew Whale Symposium ”A change in Climate for Whales”, to be held at the United Nations University Headquarters in Tokyo on 30-31 January, 2008.

This follows the first Pew Whale Symposium held in New York in April 2007 and will precede a special meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on the future of the whale conservation regime at the end of February as decided at the last annual meeting of the IWC.

The Tokyo symposium will seek to identify a common way forward to resolve the divide between the proponents of a resumption of commercial whaling and the advocates of the continuation of the current moratorium. The symposium will be chaired by 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 Ocenas and the Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS).

With attendance by invitation only, the Tokyo Symposium will:

• Bring together a broadly representative group with multiple points of view,
• Include international policy experts with no direct experience in the whaling debate, to foster new ideas,
• Limit media activity before and during the symposium so as to create a conducive environment, and Use the Chatham House rule whereby no individual statements are attributed to their authors without permission.

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

[This is the 1st announcement: 29 October 2007]

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.