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The Revised Management Scheme
(RMS) that the IWC is still working on shall consist of two major parts, a quota
calculation model (RMP) and procedures for inspection and observation. In 1983, the year after the moratorium was adopted, the Scientific
Committee established a working group to prepare the comprehensive assessments that the
moratorium decision required, and to make improvements of the existing New Management
Procedure (NMP).
Shortly after the moratorium entered into force in 1986,
the IWC Scientific Committee was commissioned to draw up a new management procedure, known
as the Revised Management Procedure (RMP), which was to give precedence to the
precautionary principle and was intended to replace the New Management Procedure from
1974. The core of the RMP is a quota calculation method which takes uncertainty fully into
account. The larger the uncertainty surrounding important biological data (such as stock
size), the smaller the quota allocated. The management procedure also requires whaling
nations to monitor stocks by means of surveys, which are to be carried out every six
years. If they fail to do this, the quotas allocated are reduced, ultimately to zero.
The Scientific Committee presented five different
proposals to the IWC for RMP in 1989.
In 1991, the Scientific Committee recommended one of these
as the RMP. It further asked the Commission what "tuning level" should be used,
i.e. the stock level that is reached after long-term whaling compared to the original
stock level.
What had been referred to as the RMP until 1992, became
known as the "Catch Limit Algorithm" (CLA), which refers to the method of
calculating catch limits for baleen whales. The RMP should include the CLA, but in
addition it should incorporate further scientific aspects including data standards and
survey guidelines.
The RMP should then be part of a broader package called
the Revised Management Scheme (RMS). In addition to the RMP, the RMS should also
incorporate non-scientific aspects including inspection, the establishment of an observer
scheme and incorporation of all scientific and non-scientific aspects into the Schedule.
The RMP including the new aspects was presented to the
Commission in 1993. When the IWC refused to adopt and implement it, the Chairman of the
Scientific Committee, Dr Philip Hammond of the UK, resigned in protest. "What is the
point of having a Scientific Committee if its unanimous recommendations ... are treated
with such contempt," he asks in his letter of resignation. "I can no longer
justify to myself being the organiser of and spokesman for a Committee whose work is held
in such disregard by the body to which it is responsible. Nor can I justify asking other
members of the Committee to spend their valuable time working hard ... knowing how the
results of this work may be treated. (...) I am left with no alternative, therefore, but
to resign as Chairman of the Scientific Committee."
The Scientific Editor of the International Whaling
Commission, Greg Donovan, describes the development of the RMP as a "major advance in
the scientific approach to natural resource management. (It) is the most rigorously tested
management procedure for a natural resource yet developed. It sets a standard for the
management of all marine and other living resources. ... (T)he procedure ... is very
conservative and certainly more conservative than anything else that has gone before"
(Donovan, 1995).
The IWC approved the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) in
1994 in a non-binding resolution, but decided not to put it into effect until an
inspection and observer scheme could be developed. This, together with the RMP, is to
constitute the Revised Management Scheme. It now appears that there can be no question of
resuming whaling before development of the new control scheme is completed, but this
requirement was not introduced until 10 years after the decision to impose a moratorium.
At present, it seems unlikely that the quota calculation
model the Scientific Committee has spent eight years developing will ever be used. Work on
the observer and control scheme has come to a complete halt, and nobody in the IWC is
willing to predict when the work will be completed. The main reason for this stalemate is
that New Zealand, Australia and the UK have made completely unrealistic demands concerning
the scope of the scheme. They want it to include delivery and distribution of whale
products on domestic markets, and require monitoring of whale products through the entire
chain of distribution until they reach the consumer. Furthermore, they want to see the
establishment of a satellite monitoring centre based at the IWC secretariat, which is to
be manned on a 24-hour basis. The centre would register the positions of whaling vessels
at all times and maintain contact with the observer or observers on board.
Norway already requires each whaling vessel to carry a
Norwegian inspector, but this is not enough for the anti-whaling nations. They want
national inspectors to be replaced by international observers, or alternatively for each
vessel to carry an international observer appointed by the IWC in addition to a national
inspector. If there are language problems, an interpreter must be provided. The costs of
all these measures are to be met by the whaling nations.
Norway is willing to consider an international observer
system, but believes that the IWC must meet the costs if it requires such a control
system. The whaling nations already pay much higher membership fees than other IWC
members.
For small-scale whaling operations such as those in
Greenland and Norway, where coastal fishing vessels are used for whaling operations, the
costs of these proposals from the anti-whaling nations would be of the same order of
magnitude as the income derived from whaling.
If the anti-whaling majority of the IWC so wished, they
could dictate an observer and control scheme and ignore the protests of the whaling
nations, thus ensuring implementation of the RMS. However, this would remove any excuse
for failing to allocate quotas for commercial whaling. Even if the conditions imposed were
so strict that the whaling nations were in practice unable to use their quotas, the
allocation of quotas in itself would arouse strong opposition in the Save-the-Whale
movement, and would be in conflict with the position taken by the USA, the UK, New Zealand
and Australia.
Further Reading:
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