once again, creation of a sanctuary whales In the Atlantic, he was frustrated by the blocking stance of whaling countries and their allies that made it impossible to approve a proposal on the subject. This request has been raised 12 times at the International Whaling Commission, but it has never been closer to ratification.
Now, the creation of a whaling sanctuary in the South Atlantic It will not be discussed again until 2024after whaling countries boycotted a vote at the International Whaling Commission meeting that ended in Portoroz, Slovenia, this Thursday.
Voting could not be done because 17 of the 52 members of the commission were not present at the general assembly. (CBI) then with the right to vote.
Given the situation created, the Commission agreed to initiate a process to clarify the participation and quorum rules, which will be discussed at the next plenary meeting in 2024, the press office informed EFE before a decision is scheduled before that date. IWC.
The German conservation NGO Pro Wildlife did not hesitate to describe these countries’ behavior as “sabotage”.
Three countries continue to hunt whales
Of the countries that blocked the vote, only Iceland has a significant whaling industry, Sandrá Altherr said, with the rest being countries in the Caribbean, Africa or Oceania that have “received generous economic aid from Japan for years” in many cases. Representing this NGO at the Portoroz meeting.
Japan resumed whaling in 2019, When it left the International Whaling Commission after a proposal to phase out the moratorium on commercial whaling, approved in 1982, it was rejected because several species were at risk of extinction.
Despite the ban, Japan and countries such as Norway and Iceland continued to hunt whales for commercial purposes. However, the second country has announced that it will abandon this practice in 2024 due to the decrease in demand in Iceland.
According to Alther, Reaching a 75% majority to create the Atlantic sanctuary has never been closerAn offer that has been rejected twelve times since 2001.
Roxana Schteinbarg, co-founder of the Argentine NGO Whale Conservation Institute, acknowledges that the proposal is about to go ahead this time and describes what happened as “sabotage”.
A 20-year moratorium
The offer consisted of: ban all forms of whaling for at least 20 years in a sanctuary from the equator to Cape Horn and from South America to West Africa.
According to Schteinbarg, about 54 whale species live in this region and represent more than 60% of the world’s diversity. Sanctuaries already exist in the Antarctic and Indian Oceans.
To this year’s IWC meeting Two more proposals were submitted by countries considered allies of Japan.on a “sustainable” quota for commercial hunting and a quota linking this activity to the fight against hunger and poverty.
NGOs believe that the purpose of these voted-out proposals is to gradually weaken the hunting moratorium.
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