The global moratorium on whaling will remain in place after an initiative to revive it failed on Thursday, September 26, 2024, at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Lima.
The delegation of Antigua and Barbuda withdrew its proposal to revive commercial whaling and lift the moratorium due to the polarization it caused, but said it would take it up again at the next meeting of the IWC which will be held in 2026 in Australia.
We have blocked the display of this content to respect your cookie choices.
By clicking on “Consult”, you agree to the storage of cookies by social networking services such as Twitter.
To consult
The IWC will also not consider a proposal from African countries to declare whaling a source of global food security.
No consensus
This proposal was presented by Guinea with the support in particular of several other West African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal) as well as Cambodia and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
“These countries do not have a hunting tradition but respond to the interests of countries led by Japan, which are seeking to reopen commercial hunting. They don’t want food security, they want to resume whaling outside of the moratorium”Roxana Schteinbarg, director of the Whale Conservation Institute, an Argentine NGO, told AFP.
Both initiatives were withdrawn during the plenary debate, due to a “lack of consensus” between delegates from the 60 participating countries.
The IWC was established in 1946 to regulate whaling, and a global moratorium was adopted in 1986 to encourage recovery of the species.
Whaling kills around 1,200 specimens each year, despite the moratorium rejected by Japan, Norway and Iceland. Tokyo withdrew from the IWC.
