Ballenas avanzan en Anchorage 2007

Martes 5 de junio 2007

Tras la 59ª reunión del Comité Ballenero Internacional (CBI) en Anchorage, Alaska, se respira un ambiente de liberación para los cetáceos. El persistente cabildeo de la sociedad civil ambiental, medios y aliados diplomáticos que consolidaron el Bloque de Países Conservacionistas de América, logró inclinar la balanza a favor de las ballenas. Las votaciones marcaron a favor del conservacionismo ballenero por márgenes de 40 a 42 votos a favor, contra 27 ó 29 a favor de los cazadores con algunas abstenciones de uno o dos países. Marcó una clara diferencia y se observó el peso del Grupo de Buenos Aires (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Méjico, Panamá, Perú) y Belice.

La primera votación para la creación del Santuario Ballenero del Pacífico Sur, desde Ecuador hasta la Antártica, y del Santuario Ballenero del Atlántico Sur, desde Brasil al África hasta el Polo Sur, tuvo un apoyo de 39 países contra 29 con 3 abstenciones. No se logró el 75% requerido para su aprobación, pero fue clara la mayoría de aceptación. Unos 42 países votaron a favor del Uso No Letal, dos en contra, dos abstenciones y 20 en boicot, marcando una nueva estrategia que beneficiará económicamente a numerosas poblaciones del globo, constituyendo una ventajosa alternativa frente a la cacería. Se aprobó, por 40 a favor, dos en contra, cero abstención, y el boicot de 27 países, una resolución que llama a Japón a suspender por tiempo indefinido los aspectos letales del Programa Científico JARPA en las aguas del Océano Austral.

El concepto central que orientó la decisión es que se puede aprender más de las ballenas vivas que de su cacería. No más matanzas de ballenas en nombre de la ciencia. La moratoria a la cacería comercial de ballenas, se mantiene, de forma que las pretensiones de los cazadores por justificar la caza a través del comercio bajo la figura CITES queda eliminada.

Aunque fue clara y contundente la mayoría conservacionista, el abstencionismo y votaciones del bloque de países aliados de los cazadores, se obliga a redoblar las gestiones diplomáticas, cabildeos, acciones públicas, conferencias y encuentros dirigidos a sumar a países como Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua y Guatemala. Es obligante abordar a las pequeñas naciones del Caribe de manera que lleguemos a Chile 2008 para alcanzar el 75% necesario para definir a la CBI como una organización conservacionista que permita promover el uso y la investigación científica no letal. Panamá se mantuvo unida al Bloque Conservacionista de Ballenas de América y se postuló para celebrar la reunión del CBI del año 2009.
Vale la oportunidad para mirar hacia lo interno de nuestro país que ha enviado claros mensajes al mundo con la creación del Santuario Ballenero de Panamá, a través de la Ley 13 del 5 de mayo del 2005 sobre el Corredor Marino de Panamá para la Protección de los Mamíferos Marinos, las posturas conservacionistas de ballenas en los foros internacionales de los últimos tres años y la reciente declaración, en el marco del CBI 2007, en el sentido de que mantendrá su postura contra las cacería y a favor del uso no letal así como su oferta para celebrar el CBI 2009 en Panamá. Contrastan, sin embargo, algunos sectores al promover la instalación de centros de exhibición de delfines y otros mamíferos marinos que no garantizan el uso no letal que impulsa el conservacionismo ballenero. Nuestra propuesta es por el avistamiento a campo abierto, en forma regulada y sin daños a las especies, que ya inician con éxito, comunidades costeras en Bocas del Toro, Pedasí, Panamá-Taboga, Las Perlas, Montijo-Coiba y Paridas.

El nuevo escenario previsto es un mundo donde la humanidad logre la convivencia pacífica, armónica con los cetáceos permeando amplios beneficios económicos para una diversidad de sectores que hoy requieren de nuevas y seguras formas de ingresos que, además, dignifiquen los valores por la vida. Vale más la naturaleza viva que muerta.
(Fuentes informativas desde Anchorage: Milko Schvartzman (Greenpeace), Roxana Schteinbarg (icb.org.ar), Aimee Leslie, Viviana Monge).

Gabriel Despaigne
Ambientalista
gabrieldespaigne@yahoo.com.mx


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Anchorage, United States
June 1st, 2007

Following last year's "St. Kitts Declaration", which mumbled that the moratorium on commercial whaling might not be necessary anymore, the anti-whaling countries have bounced back with a 37-4 vote for a resolution strengthening the commercial whaling ban.

This was a major victory for the voices of whale conservation worldwide.

At last year's meeting, 33 countries - led by pro-whaling Japan - voted in favour of the "St. Kitts Declaration," essentially an attempt to restart commercial whaling, which has been banned since 1986.

That temporary, one-vote whaling majority was a wake up call, and as Japan continued to recruit votes in support of their position, often with lucrative aid packages, Greenpeace and other conservation organisations, like-minded countries, and whale supporters all over the world responded with their own efforts to ensure that the true opposition to whaling worldwide was reflected at this year's meeting.

We launched a website dedicated to enabling those who opposed whaling to be part of those efforts: I-GO/Defending the whales. Whale defenders who signed up at that site helped to motivate countries around the world to protect the whales. Recent months saw several countries joining or rejoining, like Peru, Cyprus, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Costa Rica and Ecuador - or even declaring they would swap sides to vote for the whales, like Nicaragua.

In addition, there were Big Blue Marches all over the world in support of whales - in New Zealand and Australia, India, Argentina, Ecuador, Netherlands, Peru, Spain, US, UK, France, Portugal, Columbia, Venezuela, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Morocco, Romania, Sweden, Singapore, Turkey - the list goes on and on!


And in Japan, the Whale Love Wagon reached out to the Japanese public in a very different voice, exploring the whaling issue from the perspective of former whalers, people who still eat whale meat, and Japanese youth. The latest instalment, an animation from academy-award nominee Koshi Yamamura, tells the story of a Japanese headmaster who saves a whale, repaying a debt he feels for the days when whales saved the Japanese people from starvation following World War II. "Once they saved us -- now it is our turn to save them" he says in this tiny, beautiful story.


What we didn't win


Yet while we achieved the major objective of maintaining the moratorium, the meeting was not entirely a success. The functional extinction of an entire species, the Baiji dolphin, - got just fifteen minutes of fame at the meeting, at the Anchorage's Captain Cook Hotel, which has just drawn to a close.

The Vaquita, the Mexican dolphin likely to become extinct in the near future, also garnered little mention. And there was no discussion whatsoever about the estimated 3,288 cetaceans that have died as bycatch from fishing vessels worldwide since the 59th IWC meeting started four days ago, or through human causes like ship strikes, pollution, bycatch and climate change.

Instead, a huge chunk of meeting was spent arguing over the resumption of commercial whaling, with Japan's JARPA II "scientific whaling" hunt later this year drawing censure from most countries. Japan aims to kill 50 threatened humpback whales in the Southern Ocean later this year, and the "Resolution on Jarpa" with 40 countries voting against Japan's "research" expeditions - which are really just commercial whaling in disguise.

Japan also proposed a resolution that its coastal whaling communities should be allowed to engage in commercial whaling, because of its similarity to subsistence hunts by indigenous people in other countries. The problem is, for the last decade, the UN has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, requested Japan's government to recognise the rights of Japan's own indigenous people - the Ainu - in the north of Japan, so it's hard to see how they can claim empathy with indigenous people elsewhere. Japan eventually withdrew the proposal.

Sore losers

Japan routinely threatens to leave the IWC every year that it doesn't go well for them, and this year was no exception. This year they said they want to start another whaling organisation, and to start coastal whaling.

Jun Hoshikawa, executive director of Greenpeace Japan said that this was just posturing by Japan.

"Japan can't just walk away - whaling isn't such a big business in Japan that other important international relationships can be compromised".

The meeting, IWC 59, kicked off on Monday with Japan requesting everyone to act "civilly." That sentiment didn't go too far - there was soon a wave of so-called "hate votes" - the refusal of pro-whaling countries to participate in votes they didn't like the look of; threats to walk away from the whole process from Japan, and an almost total failure of all members to consider in detail the real threats to whales and dolphins.

Finally, the IWC's member nations have agreed to a special meeting to discuss reform of the organisation. But unless "reform" means actually modernising the IWC to properly address the major threats to cetaceans - which kill one animal every 90 seconds - and stop the most preventable cause – hunting - then that meeting will just become another soapbox for political grandstanding, where the only victims will be the whales.

Fuente: www.greenpeace.org