Whaling and Environmental Ethics

Keywords

Whaling, anti-whaling movement, environmental ethics

Objectives

Humans have used whales as food and raw material sustainably for more than 5,000 years, but in 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided that there should be a temporary pause in the commercial whaling of 13 large whale species, and this pause remains in place to this day. This move over whaling is in line with anti-whaling campaigns by animal welfare, animal protection, and environmental conservation groups as the numbers of people and governments supporting anti-whaling have risen; as a result, whaling and whaling culture face difficulty surviving in many parts of the world.
Behind such anti-whaling campaigns are historical changes in the relationships between whales and humans or the interpretation of whales or the environment in different parts of the world. In this joint research, we aim to grasp the current situation underlying whaling worldwide and the anti-whaling campaigns that stemmed from Europe and the United States, and to review how anti-whaling campaigns in different parts of the world, as well as the interpretation of whales and the environmental and animal ethics behind such campaigns, evolved and spread to the rest of the world and what impact they have had on whaling cultures around the world. In particular, we compare the actual states of whaling by indigenous people in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the Caribbean region, Japan’s scientific research whaling and small-type coastal whaling, and commercial whaling in Norway and Iceland; and international anti-whaling campaigns by animal welfare, animal protection, and environmental conservation groups and their impacts on the whaling cultures; as well as study the interpretation of whales and the environment behind such campaigns and the whaling policies in an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural manner.

Research Results

Whaling can be traced back over 8,000 years, but humans started to carry out whaling actively across the globe in around the 10th century (at the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period). From the Age of Exploration to the 1960s, the commercial whaling of large cetaceans was conducted extensively, but in the 1970s, a global anti-commercial whaling movement emerged. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided that there should be a pause in commercial whaling (called the commercial whaling moratorium), which is still in place. In 2019, Japan recommenced commercial whaling, but globally it has diminished.
In this inter-university research project, we divided current whaling by two types: whaling that falls under the jurisdiction of the IWC (aboriginal subsistence whaling, commercial whaling, and scientific research whaling) and all other whaling; and reported on and examined whaling and the anti-whaling movement. Cultural anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, ethics experts, area studies experts, animal protection activists, journalists, and former staff members of the Institute of Cetacean Research with differing opinions participated in the project’s meeting and workshops, and discussed whaling and cetaceans over a three and a half year period, and although a common conclusion was not reached, the workshops did serve as a forum. The results are as follows.
(1) Project participants reported and examined the latest information on aboriginal subsistence whaling in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, and the Caribbean; commercial whaling in Iceland and Norway; scientific research whaling in Japan; whaling by Canadian Inuit, the Lembata islanders of Indonesia, and the people of t the Faroe Islands of Denmark; dolphin hunting in Japan; and South Korea’s whale-eating culture. Although as an overall trend commercial whaling is on the decline, aboriginal subsistence whaling continues with international approval as an embodiment of both aboriginal rights and human rights in general.
(2) The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 was a major turning point in the human history of whaling. It marked the popularization of the anti-whaling movement by environmental conservation and animal rights groups. Using a beautified and deified image of the whale, several groups such as Greenpeace, WWF, and Sea Shepherd expanded the anti-whaling movement globally, and the number of people and governments against whaling grew. Since the 1990s, even in the IWC the whale problem (particularly the recommencement of commercial whaling) has become much more of a political problem than one based on science, and thus recommencing commercial whaling within the framework of the IWC has become increasingly difficult.
(3) Changes in ideas about the relationship between humans and animals are profoundly related to the expansion of the anti-whaling movement, as seen in concepts such as “animal welfare,” “animal rights,” and “environmental ethics.” Countries that promote whaling like Norway and Japan developed and implemented whaling techniques reflecting animal welfare. Animal rights and environmental ethics have provided an ideological foundation for anti-whaling and the protection of cetaceans. Animal rights emphasizes the rights of whales as individuals, while environmental ethics places importance on the relationship of whales with the environment as a specific species. The former cannot allow whaling as it causes suffering and injury to or kills whales, and thus violates “animal rights.” But the latter does not always reject the hunting or use of certain species of whales as long as a stable relationship is maintained between that species and the environment in a given environmental system. The ideology of anti-whaling claims today is based more on animal rights (animal ethics) than environmental ethics.
(4) Several problems were pointed out in regard to the future of commercial whaling being carried out by Japan, Norway, and Iceland as of 2020. In the case of Japan, the problem is whether it can maintain profitability without financial aid from the government. The problem with the continuation of whaling in Norway is that it is dependent on exporting minke whale meat to Iceland and Japan. The future of whaling in Iceland is dependent on the consumption of whale meat by foreign tourists to the country and the export of whale meat to Japan. This shows that the future of commercial whaling in these three countries is interrelated.