Japan Must Halt Whaling Program In Antarctic, Court Says

Japan must stop issuing permits to hunt whales in the Antarctic, an international court ruled Monday. Here, packs of whale meat are seen in a specialty store in Tokyo last week. Shizuo Kambayashi/AP
Japan must stop issuing permits to hunt whales in the Antarctic, an international court ruled Monday. Here, packs of whale meat are seen in a specialty store in Tokyo last week. Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

An international court has ordered Japan to revoke whaling permits in the Antarctic and stop granting new ones.

The country’s government had argued that hunting whales was part of a research program, but the International Court of Justice ruled Monday that Japan hasn’t generated enough scientific research to justify killing hundreds of whales. Critics said the hunts were instead a way to justify commercial hunting.

Under the whaling program, Japan had set annual “lethal sample size” limits of 50 per species for fin whales and humpback whales, in addition to approximately 850 Antarctic minke whales. But the court said the research program had generated only two peer-reviewed papers that together refer to nine whales.

“In light of the fact that [Japan’s program] has been going on since 2005 and has involved the killing of about 3,600 minke whales, the scientific output to date appears limited,” the court wrote in its judgment issued Monday from its home in The Hague.

By a 12-4 vote, the court decided Japan must “revoke any extant authorization, permit or license granted in relation to” its whaling program, “and refrain from granting any further permits” related to it.

The court’s judgment stems from a complaint filed by Australia in May 2010, when it accused Japan of being in breach of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by operating a system that produced whale meat for sale in Japan, rather than creating scientific data.

Japan contested the allegations, saying the meat was sold in order to fund research. International conventions allow whale meat to be sold commercially when it’s a by-product of research efforts.

Japanese officials have said the whaling program, called JARPA II, is for research on whales’ age, sexual maturity, and pregnancy rates, according to court documents. Some elements of the program were slated to go on for 6-12 years.

But the court noted that an expert who was called on to testify — Nick Gales, chief scientist of the Australian Antarctic Program — said Japan’s program “operates in complete isolation” from other Japanese and international research efforts into Antarctica’s wildlife.

As Australia’s ABC notes, “Japan signed a 1986 moratorium on whaling, but has continued to hunt up to 850 minke whales in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean each year.”

The news agency adds, “The ICJ’s ruling is final and there will be no appeal.”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.image
Read original article – Published March 31, 2014 9:42 AM
Japan Must Halt Whaling Program In Antarctic, Court Says

NPR News

KTOO is the NPR member station in Juneau. NPR offers its members radio and digital stories.

Sign up for The Signal

Top Alaska stories delivered to your inbox every week

Site notifications
Update notification options
Subscribe to notifications