Source: Intervention by Professor Lars Walløe on behalf of the Government of Norway, Plenary session, 51st Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission, Grenada, 26 May, 1999.

IWC should focus on central issues, not on general environmental topics

Norway fully recognises the importance and seriousness of the environmental threats presented by Dr. Baker in his communication. Despite the seriousness of these issues, the underlying scientific questions are challenging and even interesting. Norway has been heavily involved in both this research and the scientific discussions as well as in the international political processes from the very beginning, when these environmental problems were first recognised by the scientific community. For example, Norwegian scientists working on chemical reactions in the atmosphere were among the first to publish papers on the processes resulting in the breakdown of ozone. Norway was also one of the countries that was most active in the political processes that resulted in the Montreal Protocol on the release of CFC gases. When Robert May published his review of the quality of research in European and some other countries based on science citation indexes in the journal Science about a year ago, I am ashamed to say that Norwegian science was rated rather low. But there was one exception: research on environmental questions was very highly rated. I say all this to remind you that Norway has had a very high profile both scientifically and politically on environmental issues. Nor is there any political indication that environmental questions will not continue to have high priority in Norway. But Norway seriously questions whether IWC and its Scientific Committee are the right forum for such scientific discussions or for the political process. There are already many international bodies that coordinate research on the environmental issues mentioned by Dr. Baker. I myself chair one of them, the Life and Environmental Sciences Standing Committee (LESC) under the European Science Foundation. The most important body is probably the IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme - a Study of Global Change) under the ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions), which coordinates climate change research ranging from geophysics to botany. But there are many others: international organisations for meteorologists, oceanographers, CCAMLR (Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine and Living Resources), both southern and northern hemisphere GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics) etc, etc. The Norwegian view is that the maximum research output in this area will be obtained if each organisation concentrates its activities within its central field of competence. In the case of the IWC, this means research on whales and monitoring stocks. In addition, Norway recognises one other area in which the IWC has a special contribution to make: the effect of pollution on individual whales and on cetacean populations, especially on stationary populations in highly polluted areas like the Baltic Sea, the southern part of the North Sea, the coast of Quebec and perhaps New England states and similar regions. For this reason Norway hosted the first IWC workshop on pollution in cetaceans in Bergen some years ago. In addition to stationary populations, for example of harbour porpoises, migratory species such as the North Atlantic pilot whale may pick up pollutants if they feed in highly polluted waters during part of the year. But Norway would like to point out that there is no indication of a general pollution problem in cetaceans. The minke whales caught in the North Atlantic by Norwegian whalers contain very low levels of all relevant pollutants. But of course we monitor these levels. In our opinion, it is advisable to analyse samples from different species and areas when they can be obtained from strandings, from bycatches or from directed catches. However, there is no need for an expensive sampling programme in unpolluted oceans like the Southern Ocean. The climate change issue presented by Dr. Baker is of great concern to Norway, as it should be to all Northern European countries. However it is not obvious that general global warning will result in a warmer climate in Northern Europe. Only minor changes in the transatlantic current could result in a substantially colder climate in our part of the world. The amount of warm water transported to the coast of Northern Europe is partly determined by the sinking of cold heavy water in the Greenland Sea. But then, what is the relevance of all this to whales? The large migratory species of whales will probably be among the species that are most resilient to climate change. Many other species of plants and animals will be much worse off, as they cannot easily move from one area to another. Most, if not all, of the effects of climate change on cetaceans will be indirect, through the food chain. Many species of large whales are opportunistic feeders. They eat whatever is available. In the present situation, commercially interesting fish species are an important part of the diet of many whale species and stocks. The effects on fish stocks and fisheries will therefore be of great concern to us long before most whale stocks are seriously affected. We know that all species of large whales survived the last glacial period and the period of global warming that followed, without any bottleneck in population size, probably because they changed their feeding areas and some also their prey species gradually as the climate changed. To conclude; In Norway's view, the most important contribution the IWC can make to global environmental research is through careful monitoring of and research on; the abundance and distribution of populations of cetaceans, including species which are currently abundant, species which were hunted down to low levels in the period from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century, but are now recovering; and species and stocks which still have very low population numbers; changes in biological parameters which characterise different whale species and stocks, such as pregnancy rates, calf mortality, age of sexual maturity and adult mortality; and the effects of pollution on cetaceans in regions with high concentrations of pollutants. Norway also considers that the IWC should restrict its activities in the environmental field to such research issues, which are also central to the tasks of the IWC as specified in the Convention (in addition to "the orderly development of the whaling industry"). It is the Norwegian view that IWC should not expand its activities to include more general environmental topics. The more general research problems connected with global warming, the ozone hole etc, should be left to other much more competent international bodies. Norway is very concerned that instructions for the Scientific Committee to increase its activities in the general environmental field substantially will divert both resources and time away from the central issues which I have just mentioned. Additionally, if the IWC in the long run were to follow the advice that as I understand it was given by the UK minister yesterday, that the Scientific Committee should give less priority to advice on whaling issues, this would have important implications for Norway. Under such circumstances Norway would have to seek advice on its whaling activities in another international body such as NAMMCO. (Editor's note: In his presentation, the US IWC Commissioner, Dr. Baker claimed that the most serious threats to whales around the world are depletion of the ozone layer, climate change and general pollution of the oceans, and he recommended that the IWC, and especially its Scientific Committee, should increase its activities in these fields.)

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