A major review of Japanese government spending could spell the end to whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
The review committee, commissioned to cut wasteful programs by Japan's new government, has proposed massive cuts in subsidies to a body which funds the so-called whaling research program.
Without government subsidies, the whaling program would be doomed.
The Spending Review Committee recommended that the Overseas Fisheries Cooperation Fund (OFCF), which gives loans to the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) to run the discredited science program, have all of its funding revoked, except money needed for loans in 2010.
The OFCF claims it needs $780 million for various programm, including whaling, in 2010. The Review Committee and Cabinet Office will determine by early next year if the proposed operations for 2010 are actually "necessary" or should also be cut.
Waste of money? Well, yes...
Fact is, if the Review Committee wanted to know if whaling was a waste of taxpayers' money or not, they could have asked us. Our colleagues at Greenpeace Japan have been relentlessly attacking the whaling program domestically as a waste of taxpayers' money.
In particular, two activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, sparked a domestic debate in Japan when they revealed widespread corruption in the government-supported program. They set off a backlash from powerful interests, and found themselves arrested for "stealing" whale meat which they had presented to police as evidence of embezzlement.
But they have not been quiet. Both activists have spoken out against the cost of the whaling program and the fact that only a handful of fat-cat bureaucrats really profit from the program. Last year alone it cost nearly $90 million to run the annual Southern Ocean whale hunt. Of that, more than $10 million came from government subsidies. The rest is in theory covered by the sales of whale meat.
Whaling is bad business
The Institute for Cetacean Research, which runs the whaling program, has failed to repay government loans for several years now, as demand for whale meat has plummeted and the cost of whaling increased. Practices which would have lead to bankruptcy for any commercial firm have been the target of outspoken criticism not only from Greenpeace Japan, but from the business press and even the former spokesperson for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Tomohiko Taniguchi. Taniguchi lamented the financial propping up of a programme that caused endless headaches for Tokyo abroad and generated revenues worth "less than one-tenth the value of the country's annual market for toothbrushes."
With the change in government at the recent election, a new focus on reducing government spending and cutting wasteful programs has meant a more sympathetic ear for whaling critics like Junichi and Toru. The Prime Minster recently shocked conservative politicians who equate whaling and patriotism by admitting that he disliked whale meat -- something that would have been an unthinkable admission for his predecessor.
Fighting for three decades
Greenpeace has been fighting Japanese whaling for more than three decades, from the waters of the Southern Ocean to the courts of Japan.
We first brought whaling to the world's attention in 1975 when activists put their own lives on the line by navigating small inflatable boats in front of the harpoons. We have opposed whaling operations in countries including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Iceland, Spain, Norway and Russia and exposed and shut down pirate whaling operations. Over the years, our tactics have widened to include consumer pressure -- which was crucial in getting western corporations such as Gortons Seafood to distance themselves from whaling and financially isolate the whalers -- and domestic efforts in Japan aimed at communicating the cost of whaling to the 71 percent of the Japanese public that do not support it.
In 2008, we suspended our voyages to the Southern Oceans in favor of concentrating efforts on domestic pressure in Japan, including "Operation Silver Bullet" our ongoing investigation into whale meat embezzlement and scandals in the whaling industry.
Today, it seems that strategy is paying off. All of us who have worked together on this issue for decades are holding our breath -- that an end to Japanese whaling could well be on the way.
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