Saving the Hungarian Whales

You may have seen the news recently that the Internation Whaling Commission voted to restore commercial whaling. This vote was merely a policy vote. In order to get rid of the moratorium on commercial whaling 75% of the members of the commission need to vote for the end and there are not yet sufficient votes.

There may ore may not be an ecological argument for the resumption of the commercial whaling. I will leave that to the experts. BUT, I read with interest the composition of the modern Internation Whaling Commission. While the commission started with the seven major whaling nations, it now has more members. St Kitts, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are on the water but have never had any commercial whaling. Mongolia, Mali and Hungary are landlocked and obviously have never had commercial whaling fleets. Why then, would these countries be on the commission and voting to restart commercial whaling. Perhaps because whaling proponent and original member Japan paid their member ship dues? Perhaps because Japan is a major supplier of aid? Might I be too cynical?

This sort of obvious stacking of panels happens all the time in internaitonal commissions and organizations. Just take a look at the Human Rights Organization for the United Nations. It politicizes the process and makes a mockery of good decision making. Why even bother having the Commission if we undermine the process and buy votes to change policy. It may be right to change the policy but if its all just a game why bother. We're not buying the crap anyway! Well maybe we are because most of the media didn't report Hungary's desire to restart commercial whaling.