Anybody interested in the IWC will soon meet the terms Revised Management Scheme (RMS) and Revised Management Procedure (RMP).

To put it simply, the RMP is a procedure for calculating abundance estimates for whale stocks and catch quotas.

The RMS consists of two major parts, one being the RMP, and the other being procedures for inspection and control.

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). This exercise became known as the RMP.

The core of the RMP is a quota calculation method, which gives precedence to the precautionary principle and takes uncertainty fully into account. The larger the uncertainty surrounding important biological data (such as stock size), the smaller the quota allocated. The RMP also requires monitoring of stocks by means of sighting surveys.

Resigning in protest at refusal to adopt RMP
In 1993, a unanimous Scientific Committee recommended the IWC to adopt the RMP. 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," Dr Hammond 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."

RMP - a major advance
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.

Blocking the RMS
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 some countries such as New Zealand, the USA 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.

The strategy of these countries seems to be that in case the whaling moratorium is lifted and the RMS is put into action, whaling becomes practically impossible.

No Progress
Many meetings have been held with the purpose of completing the RMS, both in conjunction with annual meetings and as intersessional meetings.

Last year, the IWC decided to establish what it called an Expert Drafting Group. This group was given the task to work out the actual wording of the RMS, so that the IWC could have a prepared draft for inclusion into its Schedule.

The Expert Drafting Group was to be composed of a representatives from eight members only in order to improve the chances that it could fulfill its task.

These countries participated in the Expert Drafting Group: Antigua and Barbuda, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, UK and USA.

The Expert Drafting Group has met twice, first in October 2001 and then in February 2002.  The meetings were chaired by by Henrik Fischer (Denmark), and the IWC-Secretariat also attended.

As reflected in the group’s report to the IWC, apparently no real progress was made in these two meetings.

 The Chequered History of RMS
1983: The Scientific Committee started on the exercise that became known as the RMP.

1992: The IWC started to discuss the RMS and the first RMS-related resolution.

1993: The Chairman of the Scientific Committee, Dr Philip Hammond of the UK, resigned in protest when the IWC refused to adopt and implement the RMP as unanimously recommended by the Scientific Committee.

1995: Intersessional working group on the RMS, Reine, Norway.

1994-2001: Various working groups preceding the annual meetings and deliberations at the plenary sessions of the annual meetings.

February 2001: Intersessional meeting of the RMS working group, Monaco.

October 2001: First intersessional meeting of RMS Expert Drafting Group, Cambridge, UK.

February 2002: Second intersessional meeting of RMS Expert Drafting Group, Auckland, New Zealand.

High North Alliance opinion on the RMS/RMP:

The High North Alliance sees no reason in continuing the talks on the RMS. Anti-whaling nations engage in these talks with the objective of appearing sensible and serious. These countries want to make sure that in the unlikely event that the RMS is completed and implemented, whaling becomes so burdensome and costly that it effectively removes any economic interest in whaling. This second objective can be summarised as making whaling “legal, but impossible”.

Further Reading:

The International Whaling Commission and the Revised Management Procedure. G.P. Donovan

Use of the Revised Management Plan for Whale and Fisheries Management. G.L. Swartzman

Sustainable Utilisation of Marine Mammal Resources. Douglas Butterworth

Review by US Scientists: IWC Quota Calculation Model Deemed Safe

The letter of resignation from the Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the, Dr. Philip Hammond, UK, 26. May 1993.