01/03/08 Greenpeace - Greenpeace welcomes Australian whales reform agenda

GREENPEACE AUSTRALIA PACIFIC MEDIA RELEASE

Greenpeace welcomes Australian whales reform agenda; warns of Japan vote-buying meeting

Sydney Saturday March 1, 2008: Greenpeace today welcomed Environment Minister Peter Garrett’s reform proposal to improve the whale conservation measures of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), to be presented at an extraordinary meeting of the IWC in London later this month.

Greenpeace warns that the Japanese government is already undermining this meeting by hosting a ’seminar’ for nations they are recruiting to join the IWC (or have recently recruited). The Japanese foreign ministry has quite blatantly stated that the meeting is aimed at "obtaining understanding for Japan’s position on sustainable whaling."

Eight of these countries are not yet members of the IWC - Africa: Angola, Eritrea, Congo, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania. Pacific: Micronesia, Vanuatu Four have recently joined the IWC: Cambodia, Laos, Palau, Guinea

"Corralling these nations in Tokyo to shore up the pro-whaling position at the IWC just days before a conference in London designed to openly debate the future of the Whaling Commission is a clear signal that Japan’s only concern is to roll back decades of protection for whales and resume commercial whaling," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific Whales campaigner Rob Nicoll.

The Australian government is bringing a constructive proposal in good faith to the Intercessional meeting of the IWC which aims to directly challenge the exploitation by the Japanese government of the scientific whaling loophole.

We would expect all the pro-conservation members of the IWC, currently the majority of members, would support the Australian proposal to:

* Put in place conservation plans that protect whales from the full range of threats - not only whaling but also climate change, fisheries activities, marine pollution, habitat disturbance and collisions with shipping.
* The IWC should take a more coordinated and strategic approach to research and introduce new collaborative non-lethal research programs, beginning with the Southern Ocean.
* The conduct of science by the IWC should be brought under the direct scrutiny and authority of the Commission, with agreed priorities and criteria for research, and an end to individual countries unilaterally granting themselves permission to kill whales for science.

"Instead of continuing in the same vein of buying votes to shore up its numbers at the IWC, the Japanese government should listen to the growing voices of concern from their own citizens - who don’t eat whale meat and don’t support their taxes funding dubious research that is condemned by the rest of the world."

Recent research commissioned by Greenpeace has found that 71% of Japanese people do not support high seas whaling