The vision for the International Whaling Commission was conceived in 1946, through the efforts of those who felt a genuine concern for the future of stocks of the world's great whales, which had sustained human industrial purposes for lighting, lubrication and some pharmaceutical purposes for centuries.
In addition, the cultures of some societies were inextricably tied to the beasts, as whales were a primary source of nourishment and social identity. Many of these societies thought of themselves as "the People of the Whale", because their sustenance, history and identity were all tied to the various stocks and species that existed around their coastal communities. Whaling was a traditional way of life.
Global concern for the continued success of the great whales in their marine environments originated when it was recognised that they were being taken in unsustainable numbers for purposes other than the nutrition of coastal peoples. This unsustainable harvest was being conducted without any regard for conservation of the stocks, which inevitably, became depleted, one after the other, until it finally cost more to acquire them than could be realised from the sale of their product.
The IWC first met in 1948, and the original fifteen members tried for a number of years to find methods by which the take of these animals could be moderated in ways that would both allow whale stocks to recover and still accommodate the needs of a rapidly industrialising and urbanising world.
Restraints on the quantities of harvest were implemented not just because whalers were afraid the resource would become extinct, but also because it was necessary to keep the price of a barrel of whale oil up to levels that would be sufficiently profitable for them all to stay in business.
The attempts at moderation included use of the Blue Whale Unit method of quota setting, which was finally recognised as ineffective, and then the New Management Procedure, which similarly, failed to protect whale stocks from rampant depletion. By 1982 certain non-governmental organisations had become so internationally influential that their lobbying and other efforts achieved a "loaded membership" in the IWC, through which a majority vote for a total moratorium on commercial whaling was achieved.
This was brought about regardless of the advice of the IWC Scientific Committee, which knew that some stocks and species could withstand moderate harvest by coastal communities whose members traditionally sold the meat and blubber in their markets for human food.
Some member nations took a reservation to the ill-advised moratorium; long story short, it did not stop all whaling, some of which was benign in effect, while industrial oil whaling done by one nation continued to irresponsibly deplete whale stocks until most sources of the resource became "commercially extinct", meaning that it was no longer profitable to continue. By that time, petroleum supplies and the technology of refinement of this substance into fuels, lubricants, and other chemical by-products, put an end to industrial whaling on any scale.
Although the whales were "saved" by the discovery, refinement technology and worldwide use of petroleum in place of whale oil, some IWC member nations continued to object to any efforts by others to implement a method with which to
sustainably take whales for human food.
The Revised Management Procedure is a conservative, statistically "safe" method for achieving whale management, but it never was implemented, mainly because those who opposed all whaling feared it would open the way for Japan to once again, allow coastal communities to resume sustainable, regulated harvest and to sell the meat and blubber in local markets.
The Scientific Committee of the IWC tried in vain to recommend safeguards and statistically valid procedures aimed at true conservation of the resource, but a number of nations objected to these, until shamed into a semblance of agreement on the Revised Management Procedure, which finally could not be implemented until a companion piece, the Revised Management Scheme, was devised.
Because there was no IWC-wide spirit of compromise or negotiation, the RMP/RMS never came into being as a rational plan with which to scientifically manage the whale resource and simultaneously monitor and report upon the actions of whalers. At that point, the original vision of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was doomed to be submerged in the darkness of international division and distrust.
In 2010 the IWC had what many considered could be a final substantive meeting, during which no agreement on a consensus proposal to allow the organisation to manage limited whaling could be achieved. The failure of this initiative leaves the IWC as an organisation in name only, with no realistic prospect that it can ever function properly in the future.
The body of the IWC is now so cool as to be considered in a state of unmoving, rigor mortis. No hope for revival is being expressed, and no plans have been announced for a meeting in 2011. Whaling nations may now quietly go their separate ways, with the moral resolve to conduct scientifically justified sustainable use of their traditional resources, through their own efforts and those of regional management bodies.
The ICRW was a laudable, historic effort to bring the world's whaling nations together to achieve the conservation of whales and manage the whaling industry. Those who retained the original vision tried their best to keep the International
Whaling Commission alive and functioning as originally intended. Those who felt compelled to "modernise" the IWC finally succeeded in killing it entirely, not by "saving" whales, but by fighting the sustainable use of them to the end. May those who wish to use this resource in a rational, sustainable manner, continue in their efforts to do so for the benefit of their citizens, and for the benefit of the total marine environment upon which so many people of the world still depend.
Rest in Peace, IWC.
Dr. Janice Henke
