Adam Vai Delaney
The recent “anti-whaling” campaign struck a regional tempo, so high a profile, that it has made global Climate Change and Sea level-rise seem so peripheral.

In the lead-up to the June 2006 meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC)—the global body responsible for the conservation and management of whales—held in Saint Kitts and Nevis, leaders of several Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) came under tremendous pressure from the anti-whaling lobby to vote against what they had perceived to be a Japan-led position.

Japan, after all, kills whales in the North Pacific for ‘scientific purposes’. Some PICs supported the ‘save-the-whales’ policy, whilst countries like the Republic of Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu stood their ground, or rather, their Ocean, and supported ‘controlled and sustainable whaling.’

It was nothing unusual for them. They had faced this music before. Then again, so did the Russian Federation and Togo. For these sovereign nations, a primary motivation was sustainable economic development in the context of their situation.

But the recent ‘green’ campaign was like Don King promoting a Mike Tyson carnival.

Much to their credit, the conservation and advocacy organisations in Australia and New Zealand had generated a resounding media crescendo by lobbying politicians for action.

On the television ‘news’ in Australia, prior to and during the IWC conference, the public was fed graphic footage showing Japanese whaling ships harpooning helpless whales.

There were, however, no images shown of whalers doing the same ‘cruelty’ in Iceland and Norway—European countries and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—whom have dined on whales since the Vikings ruled.

In contrast, several international meetings held this year related to the subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol didn’t get the same media coverage or the Pacific leaders interest.

Without politics, no bleeding Minke whales and no ships ramming each other, it’s just not, it’s not news.

The pro-Kyoto Parties can only dream that ‘climate change’ would generate the level of political passion in the region, as the “anti-whaling” campaigners had most recently achieved.

The effects of global warming, as a result of the historical emissions of fossil fuels on coastal countries, has now been relegated on the leader’s radar to just a ‘technical matter,’ under the Pacific Islands Framework Convention on Climate Change. This was endorsed by the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders in Papua New Guinea last October.  

It’s a much different outlook from the Forum meeting held in the Cook Islands held over six years ago, when leaders passionately pleaded for urgent action as an obligation under the global treaty, to reverse the negative impacts of global warming and rising sea-levels.

One could be excused to think that the current philosophy on ‘climate change’ in the Pacific is in paralysis.

Unlike the early days when Forum Leaders urged for the Kyoto Protocol to enter-into-force immediately and those Annex 1 countries (non-developing countries) that hadn’t done so, to immediately ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Ironically, now that the Protocol is international law, the debate at the Forum and regional bodies, including the Secretariat of Pacific Regional Environment Programme should generate a sharper level of political interest, a sense of urgency and a wider media profile, in particular, on the concerns of small islands countries.

But how disappointed is the public in these countries with the niceties in the Forum communiqué adopted in PNG? Are they indifferent now towards Annex 1 countries in the neighbourhood who oppose the Kyoto Protocol, but demand support for their cause on anti-whaling? Interesting.

If ‘global warming’ is of any real significance to the Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand, a strong Forum policy on the Kyoto Protocol needs to be reaffirmed at the Forum meeting in the Kingdom of Tonga later this year.

This would be much welcomed by the international community, including Japan. It would demonstrate a collective will in support of the global consensus and the region’s real concern for the global environment.

It would also bring climate change to its past profile, whilst adding credibility for a reunited Pacific at future international meetings on climate change.

Importantly, it would bring a sense of fairness that the issues raised by small islands countries are as important as those that have constantly demanded an end to the centuries of tradition in the North Pacific and the Arctic waters on whales. Quid pro quo. Absit invidia.

On a final note to the whalers, you would give the endangered whales a much better chance from extinction by adopting similar traditional methods as those used by the Inuit in Canada.

There might be less wailing then about the future of these magnificent creatures.