1. Animal Law Committee Newsletter Fall 2015
18 18
THE BOOKSHELF
After almost four years of legal proceedings, the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded in
2014 that Japan’s whaling program in the Southern
Ocean was contrary to international law. Australia,
the Applicant state before the ICJ, had alleged that
because Japan was a signatory to the International
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW),
it was obligated to adhere to a moratorium on
commercial whaling agreed upon in the 1980s.
According to Australia, Japan’s claim that it was
killing whales solely for scientific purposes was
simply not true and Japan’s actual intent was to kill
solely for commercial purposes. Though Japan did
not deny that it was killing whales, it claimed that
because the ICRW allows each signatory nation
the right to issue licenses for scientific whaling at
its own discretion, Japan’s whaling program was
perfectly acceptable. Thus, essentially, the ICJ had
to decide whether Japan’s whaling program fit within
the ICRW’s exemption for scientific whaling and
was therefore legal, or if it was actually commercial
whaling in disguise and therefore illegal.
When Judge Peter Tomka announced the Court’s
decision, people around the world watched intently
and word of Australia’s victory spread rapidly
through social media. But what explains such interest
in the whaling controversy? Despite the fact that the
number of whales killed every year is only a fraction
of what it was decades ago, global opposition to the
whaling industry seems to be stronger than it ever
has been. Kurkpatrick Dorsey’s Whales and Nations:
Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas provides
the background necessary to understand not only
how the whaling industry has changed from Herman
Melville’s time to ours, but why.
An overarching theme of Dorsey’s book is
sustainability. Though today that word would typically
be associated with the health of the whale population,
formostofthetwentiethcenturyitwasthesustainability
of the whaling industry that was most important.
Sustainability first became significant in the 1920s
as the technology of whaling improved dramatically.
No longer did a whaling mission involve 30 men on a
small boat seeking to catch one whale and bring him
back to shore. The invention of the stern slipway and
the improvement of harpoons and other tools allowed
whalers to pursue multiple whales far from the coast
and process their catches directly on the ship. Industry
observers soon realized that this increase in efficiency
could eventually threaten the whale population and,
therefore, the whaling industry itself.
The pace of Whales and Nations accelerates with a
discussion of the state of the industry at the end of World
War II when the United States was developing into
its new role as a global power. Though the continuing
concern about sustainability did lead to the creation of
the ICRW in 1946, the impact of the war on national
food supplies ledAmerican forces in Japan to encourage
Japanesepelagicwhalingasasourceofprotein.Dorsey’s
analysis of the geopolitics of the era is particularly
strong when discussing the efforts by Western whaling
nations to regulate the industry and the resistance to such
regulations by Japanese and Soviet whalers.
Though the Soviets effectively abandoned their
whaling program in the 1970s, the Japanese continued
to hunt, often taking advantage of the regulatory
program’s objection system. It is important for
readers to understand how this system functions. Put
simply, an individual country in a system such as the
one established to regulate whaling has the power to
prevent major change in that system. However, while
Japan was using the objection process as a tool to
defend whaling, its opponents significantly increased
WHALES AND NATIONS: ENVIRONMENTAL
DIPLOMACY ON THE HIGH SEAS, BY KURKPATRICK DORSEY
Seattle, WA: Univ. of Washington Press. 2014. Pp. 392. $34.95.
Reviewed by: Tom Krepitch
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2. Animal Law Committee Newsletter Fall 2015
30 30
in numbers in only a few short years. Among other
things, the recording and distribution of whale songs
quickly created a widespread impression that whales
were special, sentient beings. The argument against
killing whales thus had shifted completely away from
one of economic efficiency. As Dorsey puts it, the
“sperm whale that had once overwhelmed Captain
Ahab was now gentle and intelligent.”
This change in sentiment became clear in 1978
when Australia concluded that it would ban the
import of whale products, stop hunting in Australian
waters, and work to end whaling globally. Though
the commercial moratorium that was passed in 1982
(to go into effect in 1986) was anticipated by most
parties, it was not expected to be the end of the
issue due to the continuing survival of the objection
system. Happily for whale defenders, American
soft power ultimately forced Japan to withdraw its
objection and accept the moratorium. In May 1986,
however, the Japanese “launch[ed] a defense of an
expanded scientific whaling program that would
also put meat in the markets.”
Whales and Nations ends here—with the
pronouncement that would be the first step toward the
case that the ICJ would resolve in 2014. For a book
focused on the development and eventual decline of
the commercial whaling industry, this is a natural
ending point. Readers of this book, though, will hope
for a follow-up work from Mr. Dorsey. Because Japan
has already announced that it will revise its Antarctic
whaling program and quickly resume killing, the time
between 1986 and the present would yield a second
highly informative and readable book from such a
gifted writer. As the author points out in his epilogue,
though, the greatest threat to whales is no longer ships
carryingharpoons,butrather,shipscarryingpetroleum
products to consumers and solid waste products from
consumers to be dumped in the oceans. Perhaps a
book on the threats of climate change and pollution to
marine species is another option. In any case, Whales
and Nations should be read today by those who seek a
solid understanding of how environmental diplomacy
has shaped the whaling industry and how it might
impact other issues in the future.
Tom Krepitch is completing his final year of law school in
Phoenix, Arizona. He also currently serves as a legal intern
with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and as a District Leader
volunteer with the Humane Society of the United States.
WHALES AND NATIONS:...
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