Source: High North Alliance publication issued in conjunction with the 1997 CITES meeting in Harare.
"[The Parties have] decided to conclude a convention for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry."
(Preamble to the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation for Whaling, ICRW)"Since...scientific analyses now shows that some populations of minke whales are likely to be able to sustain a limited harvest, it was time to review US policy...(T)here is presently no support in the U.S. Congress or among the the American public for commercial whaling. Therefor, the United States has decided not to support resumption of commercial whaling."
(US Note to Iceland, May 1993)"Amendments of the Schedule...shall provide for the conservation, development and optimum utilization of the whale resources, ...shall be based on scientific findings, ...and shall take into consideration the interests of the consumers of whale products and the whaling industry."
(The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, Art. V.2)"Commercial whaling is opposed by the vast majority of our citizens and by Parliament... Accordingly, the UK will oppose any move to end the current moratorium on commercial whaling."
(Tony Baldry, Britain’s Fisheries Minister, in a statement to Parliament, May 8, 1996)"[We] have noted with satisfaction the consensus...to extend practical support to the globally agreed principle of sustainable use of the world's natural resources, based on scientific evidence and objective data."
(EU, Concluding statement CITES COP9, 1994)"There should be no commercial whaling at all. We believe the practice of killing whales is unjustifiable."
(Robert Hill, Australian Environment Minister, Media release, 17 June 1996)"I believe it would be wrong, and in the nature of cultural imperialism, for Ireland to attempt to impose our cultural values on those nations whose populations have depended on the whale for generations."
(Mr. Higgins, Ireland’s Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, during the IWC meeting in Dublin in 1995)"Our basic concern is to ensure that whales are not killed."
(New Zealand’s IWC Commissioner Jim McClay, "The International Whaling Commission: Wither or whither", 1996)"What is the point of having a scientific commitee if its unanimous recommendations are treated with such contempt?"
(Phil Hammond, chairman of the IWC Scientific Committee, in his letter of resignation, May 1993)"At it's worst the moral of the IWC's history could be this: Will any nation that signs a global environmental or resource convention find itself ensnared in a regime that appears to discard its original premises and to pay little heed to its own scientific advicors?"
(Christopher D. Stone, Report from the International Legal Workshop, Cetacean Research Institute, 1996)
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