Bad deals for whales and the Caribbean

Dec 07, 2008 Features / Columnists, Ronald Sanders

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By Sir Ronald Sanders

For several years, at the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the six independent countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Suriname have supported Japan’s yen for killing endangered species of whales.

But, last June the Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerritt, boldly broke ranks and announced in advance of the IWC’s 60th meeting that Dominica would abstain on a vote for “the sustainable use of marine resources”, which really means “killing whales”.

It now seems that his principled position should have been adopted by the other Caribbean countries. The Japanese are working out an unsavoury deal with the outgoing George W. Bush administration of the United States that might not only give them what they want, but also shed them of any need for Caribbean support.

Before I proceed any further with this commentary, I should make it clear that I am opposed to the killing of whales. Equally, I am opposed to unilateral rules on taxation and financial services made by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that are imposed on small jurisdictions such as those in the Caribbean.

Japan, a leading member of the OECD and the current co-chair of its Global Forum on Taxation, is a hawk on this issue which, since 1998, has severely damaged the offshore financial services of many Caribbean jurisdictions.

IWC meetings have been bogged down with acrimonious debate between countries that support whaling such as Japan, Norway and Iceland on the one hand and, on the other, several countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and North America.

The larger Caribbean countries, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and the Bahamas, are not members of the IWC.

They look after their marine interests in other organisations such as the FAO’s Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission.

The issue of Japan’s whale-killing for what it claims are “scientific” purposes has bedeviled the IWC, particularly as whale meat ends up as a delicacy on the tables of some of the elite in Japan.

Suffering repeated failures to block the IWC from establishing whale sanctuaries and to lift restrictions on whale hunting, Japan actively recruited countries to join the IWC. Among these “recruits” are the six small Caribbean countries and Suriname.

Many international organisations – and knowledgeable persons within Caribbean countries – have accused the Japanese of “buying” the votes of the small Caribbean countries.

When Skerritt made his announcement, Andrew Armour, President of Carib Whale, a group advocating for the protection of marine resources, is reported by the Caribbean Media Corporation as saying that Japan is no longer interested in “buying votes”.

The point has also been made that, apart from St Vincent and the Grenadines which carries out a traditional subsistence hunt for whales under an IWC-regulated total-quota of 20 Humpback whales in the five-year period up to 2007, commercial whaling gives no tangible economic or resource benefit to the people of Caribbean countries.

An authoritative study shows that the reverse is true since the tourist industry earns a combined sum of US$22 million from whale-watching in just four countries: St Lucia, St Kitts-Nevis, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. When the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas are added to this list, the revenues to the Caribbean are considerably larger.

Now it looks as if the support of the remaining five OECS countries and Suriname for Japan at the IWC might backfire, and Japan might get all it wants with no need to be helpful to them.

A closed door meeting of 24 members of IWC’s 81-member states will be held in Cambridge, England during the week beginning tomorrow (8th December) to discuss, among other things, the future of whaling. Three Caribbean countries – Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts-Nevis and St Lucia – are listed among the 24.

The meeting has been organised by IWC Chair and US Commissioner Dr. William Hogarth, an appointee of the present George W. Bush administration in the United States. Hogarth has indicated that he is working on a compromise package on whaling that would satisfy the Japanese.

It is quite remarkable that he is doing so despite the evident opposition of the US Congress and the US public to commercial whaling in the 21st century, and without giving the incoming administration of Barack Obama an opportunity to speak to the issue. No doubt any “compromise” will be revisited by the Obama administration next year.

Sources close to the IWC have indicated that the “compromise package” on which Hogarth is working would legitimize Japan’s “scientific” whaling and give it a new right to kill whales in coastal waters.

Japan itself seems certain of the compromise being negotiated with Hogarth because in mid-November its whaling fleet set sail for Antarctica to hunt around 850 whales, including 50 endangered fin whales.

If, indeed, the outgoing Bush administration and the Japanese government manage to agree a package that gives Japan what it wants, Japan will have no further requirement to recruit countries to support it at the IWC.

Once Japan no longer requires such support, there will be no need to continue to give incentives to any country in return for its support.

So the Japanese might get their way, and the leverage of the small Caribbean countries might disappear as would the blandishments of the Japanese.

But, other countries at the Cambridge meeting will work to stop the “compromise package” between the outgoing Bush Administration and the Japanese.

It is to be hoped that the three Caribbean countries will change tack and either not attend the meeting or abstain from voting on the “package”.

Caribbean countries may find themselves in an adversarial position with the Japanese on an issue of far greater importance to them than the pitiful benefits some of them get from supporting whaling.

As Co-Chair of the OECD’s Global Forum on Taxation, Japan issued a letter on November 26th with new criteria for deciding whether so-called “tax havens” should be penalised. Caribbean countries, which were blacklisted in 1998, will be among those under scrutiny.

The three Caribbean countries attending the Cambridge meeting should bear in mind the OECD threat to their financial services as they ponder support for Japan on whaling.
(The author is a business consultant and former Caribbean diplomat)
Responses to: [email protected]

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