US Chief Justice John Marshall posed this question in his 1830 ruling defending the rights of the Cherokee Nation. The question is equally valid today. However, today animal welfare groups and protectionist environmental groups pose a powerful new threat to hunters and fishermen. Over the past decade the anti-use philosophy has rapidly gained momentum with its emotional appeals for the protection of a few high profile species, such as the harp seal, whales, and various fur-bearing animals. The urban public in the northern hemisphere eagerly supports anti-use campaigns. Protectionist groups rally such support with reference to past damages caused by unregulated industrial exploitation, and by misinforming the public about the relative status of various species populations. Some of the most blatant examples of protectionist deception today are found in current "Save the Whale" campaigns. The minke whale, with a population of several hundred thousands (possibly one million), is associated with endangered species like the blue whale, the giant panda, and the rhino. Significant differences between Norway's small-scale whaling communities and by gone industrial whaling enterprises are largely ignored.
While it is important to recognize and learn from past abuses, it is equally important to recognize that campaigns to ban the resumption of Norwegian minke whaling violate basic economic, social and cultural rights established by the United Nations in 1966 and ignore the fundamental importance of cultural diversity to long-term biodiversity conservation. With minke whales, as with other non-endangered renewable natural resources which span national boundaries, what is needed is a balance between international regulation and local responsibility. Proper natural resource management by an international body requires, above all else, a scientific basis for its management regime. But, to be effective, such bodies must win the support of those communities in direct contact with the natural resources. To do so they must allow such communities the freedom to develop forms of use which are adapted to local conditions and needs, and fall within the boundaries of internationally supported scientific recommendations. Sustainable development will ultimately depend on the ingenuity and resourcefulness of individuals, the rights given them, and their ability to maintain sustainable communities.
Unfortunately, the potential to maintain sustainable communities in the Arctic region and other marginal areas where populations are dependent on the harvests of wild living resources is being threatened by the growing political power of animal welfare groups and protectionist environmental groups. Just as President Andrew Jackson dismissed the ruling of the Marshall's Supreme Court 163 years ago due to political pressure, many leaders of today's liberal democracies are dismissing the rights of coastal people through out the Arctic and elsewhere in favour of politically expedient animal welfare agendas. This was made painfully obvious in the opening statement by Dr. Michael Tillman, commissioner of the US Delegation to the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in May 1993. Dr. Tillman stated, "The pending completion of the Revised Management Scheme prompted a review of US policy, we found no support among the American public or the US Congress for a resumption of commercial whaling...The US therefore will not support a resumption of commercial whaling, whether coastal or pelagic."
Contempt for Science
The UK, Australia, and New Zealand, all supported the US position
due to similar expressions of domestic public opinion. This influential
group gathered support from other non-whaling countries and blocked the
possibility of the IWC endorsing a resumption of limited, strictly regulated,
minke whaling. This possibility arose following the unanimous recommendation
by the IWC Scientific Committee for the adoption of the Revised Management
Procedure and their unanimous agreement on the monitoring, survey and analysis
requirements required under the Revised Management Scheme. The refusal
of the IWC parties to recognize this scientific advice in its management
decisions led to the resignation of the IWC Scientific Committee chairman,
Dr. Phillip Hammond. In his resignation letter to the IWC Secretariat (26
May 1993), Dr. Hammond asks, "What is the point of having a Scientific
Committee if its unanimous recommendations on a matter of primary importance
are treated with such contempt?"
In kowtowing to protectionist philosophies, governments from the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand reveal a disturbing inability to lead western societies into development patterns which are sustainable. UNCED highlighted the urgent challenge of meeting increasing global human needs in ways that conserve biodiversity. Yet western democracies are increasingly supporting anti-use policies based on the political expressions of a poorly informed (and often misinformed) public. The general public is being led to believe that the right of people to benefit from the harvest of wild living resources is not compatible with individual species' rights to existence. Furthermore, protectionist propaganda infers that nearly all commercial use of wild living resources inevitably leads to species extinction. But few alternative solutions for meeting human needs in a sustainable manner are offered. By default the public must assume that the food and clothing production systems which dominate the industrialized world offer more security to individual species.
Numerous surveys have revealed that the general public, in particular the urban public, has a very poor understanding of nature and natural systems. The reports and direct mailings emanating from animal welfare groups and some environmental organizations expose their exploitation of this public ignorance. In addition to personifying numerous wild species, these groups typically make apocalyptic statements concerning the possible effects of climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, and toxic pollutants on particular (charismatic) species.
Pragmatism Needed
While some of the concerns expressed by these groups do have a
legitimate scientific basis, the logical conclusion from the material distributed
is that nearly all human activity should stop until we know, without a
shadow of a doubt, what the full myriad of consequences will be. Unfortunately,
knowledge about ecosystems, and indeed most of the world's species, is
scant. It is generally accepted that our knowledge is insufficient to engage
in true "ecosystem management". Given our continuing research
on the functioning of ecosystems and the unpredictability of natural systems,
we need to remain pragmatic. We need to use the knowledge we have today
to manage resources according to current needs, but safeguard against over-exploitation
and allow modification of management decisions according to new findings.
Responsible government leaders should publicly refute the pseudoscientific
assaults on pragmatism. While conservative biases and safeguards are essential
to sustainable natural resource management, the "precautionary principle"
should rarely lead to bans on use.
In the case of whales and whaling, the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) of the IWC is consider by many to be the most advanced (and cautious) fisheries management procedure in existence. The RMP acknowledges uncertainty and sets safety margins accordingly. Furthermore, it establishes requirements for monitoring and management adjustments. In an article in Nature (18 June 1992), Dr. D.S. Butterworth of the IWC Scientific Committee, spoke out against "..... the near-farcical pronouncements of some international organizations regarding endangered species," and stated that the status of the minke whale was "...near the best, and best determined of any of the world's marine resources." Dr. Butterworth goes on to state that "...[the US, UK and others] are clearly not prepared to take the action they demand from countries with interests in whaling, when their own fisheries (and socioeconomic interests) are concerned." By allowing protectionist NGO's to set the agenda on international public policy (particularly on those issues of little domestic socio-economic importance), leaders shirk their responsibility to the global public good. This tendency brings to question whether sustainable development is within reach of western liberal democracies. A closer look at two associated but conflicting environmental concerns helps explain why.
Animal Welfare vs. Conservation
Within the broader environmental movement, the two issues repeatedly
brought to the public's attention are biodiversity conservation and the
inhumane treatment of animals (or animal welfare). Conserving biodiversity
requires us to maintain life-support services (i.e the equilibrium of the
atmosphere and renewable resource stocks), conserve the variety of life,
and use renewable resources sustainably. The question of animal welfare
philosophically addresses the treatment of domesticated, captive and wild
animals, but in practice it primarily focuses public attention on the humane
killing of wild animals.
The emergence of both the bio-diversity and animal welfare concerns can be linked to the same, slowly evolving revolution now denouncing the Newtonian and Cartesian ideas which have framed western societies' world-view. Those caught up in this revolution condemn the view of nature as an object or the "slave" of humankind. They prefer the spiritual appreciation of nature described by Father Zossima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov who called on us to "Love all God's creation, the whole earth and every grain of sand in it." Greenpeace, for one, seized this notion in its 1983 brochure The Greenpeace Philosophy, stating "Ecology teaches us that humankind is not the centre of life on the planet. Ecology has taught us that the whole earth is part of our 'body' and that we must learn to respect it as we respect ourselves." Advocates of biodiversity and animal welfare both contend that humankind must recognize and protect the intrinsic values of all life forms. They promote a broader sense of community which includes not only present and future generations, but also other living creatures in a ecosystems.
The conflict between the concerns of biodiversity conservation and animal welfare emerges when animal welfare groups broadly lobby against the killing of wild animals. The arguments are couched in terms of opposition to the inhumane killing of whales, seals, fur-bearing animals, etc. But the goal is undoubtedly to stop the hunting of wild animals. Whether species are considered threatened or not is of little import to these groups; campaigns against kangaroo culling in Australia proved this conclusively. If the ongoing wars against whaling, sealing and trapping are won, animal welfare groups will be forced to address the killing of other wild animals to maintain their reason for existence and to avoid embarrassing inconsistencies. Last year, the IWC's Humane Killing Workshop compared the killing of whales to the hunting of other animals for food, and even to some current livestock slaughter techniques. Some of the findings in the tabled reports suggested strong similarities in the relative humaneness of coastal minke whaling, chicken slaughter, bull slaughter, and deer hunting. And surely transportation and holding conditions for domestic livestock, as well as sport hunting, pose far greater animal welfare concerns.
Threat to Biodiversity
The uncompromising opposition to killing of wild animals stands
as a barrier to the conservation of biodiversity. The human species is
the most dominant agent of change on earth. Today, our single species,
out of the five to thirty million species that exist, consumes nearly half
of the total produce from land-based ecosystems and 25 % of all plant energy
from the land and sea.3 The human population is projected to double again
in the next century or sooner. 85% of the world's population will then
believing in the developing world, where enormous pressure will exist to
increase living standards. The prospects for sufficient resources being
made available to meet future human needs and those of other species is
zero. There will inevitably be a much lower number of species.4 To a large
extent, the outcome will almost certainly result in the continued existence
of those species that humans depend on; the more species humans depend
on, the more will be saved. Today there are less than 1 million elephants
yet 100 million cattle on the earth. These numbers do not reflect intrinsic
worthiness, but rather developed usefulness. 5
While we may "love all God's creation," we must confront these demographic realities honestly if we hope to conserve biodiversity and achieve sustainable development. This was one of the primary messages from the UNCED conference in Rio. The European Commission recognized this in their 1992 report Towards Sustainability. The Commission states: "In spite of measures taken by international agencies, the Community and individual member states, the major threats to nature conservation and maintenance of biodiversity persist and in some areas are increasing. Habitats are converted to human uses and the species that occupy them are made homeless." Protecting one species within any ecosystem when other species are being harvested provides no guarantee for the security of the species being protected. In the "Global Biodiversity Strategy: A Policy-makers' Guide," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the IUCN, and WRI identified one of the Six Fundamental Causes of Biodiversity Loss as "the steadily narrowing spectrum of traded products from agriculture, forestry and fisheries". Human concentration on a few economically valuable species results in a specialization of land and marine food harvesting systems and the conversion of habitats. This is recognized as a prime cause of species loss within any particular ecosystem. And the animal welfare campaigns are forcing further I imitations on our spectrum of traded and utilized natural resources.
Key to Survival
The threat that extreme animal welfare positions pose to biodiversity
conservation goes beyond this potential contribution to biodiversity loss.
It fails to take seriously the particular places in which people Iive.
It ignores the fact that the framework of each and every human society
is embedded in its local ecosystem. Human cultural diversity must be considered
part of biodiversity. WRI has compared cultural diversity to genetic and
species diversity stating, "some attributes of human cultures represent
'solutions' to the problems of survival in particular environments. And
like other aspects of biodiversity, cultural diversity helps people adapt
to changing conditions.6 Jeffrey A. McNeely, Chief Biodiversity Officer
of the IUCN (The World Conservation Union), has repeatedly referred to
cultural diversity as the "Key to Survival".7 The environmental
battles fought today pit the extremes of industry and anti-use idealists,
and the notions of sustainable use and cultural diversity become the forgotten
casualties. (Anti-use campaigners typically label proponents of sustainable
use or hunting communities as "pawns of industry".) The path
to sustainable development requires the defence and promotion of sustainable
lifestyle; life styles quite different than those practised by the growing
urban populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The sustainable community
is the needed rallying cry in the post-UNCED world.
Yet the dominant "environmental" groups continue to prioritize symbolic campaigns against the use of charismatic animals. In so doing, they threaten many small, self-sufficient communities which utilize these animals sustainably and offer models for the future. In the face of short-sighted environmental lobbying, democratic representatives must maintain their independence and exert responsible leadership. Otherwise, the UNCED process will have taken place in vain. The UNCED process and the resulting documents established the following basic principles of sustainable development: People have the right to the resources, and their derived benefits, needed for a decent standard of living, but with such right comes the responsibility to use resources sustainably. In fact, Agenda 21 called on states to commit themselves to the conservation and sustainable use of living resources, and said it was necessary to develop and increase the potential of living resources to meet human nutritional needs, as well as social, economic and development goals. Since the completion of UNCED, nearly all nations have affirmed their commitment to the principles and objectives laid out in Rio. Yet a number of western liberal democracies continue to oppose the right of many other people to sustainably use non-endangered living natural resources, such as the minke whale.
Political Posturing
This opposition to sustainable use is maintained purely for political
posturing. Both science and the UNCED principles support the resumption
Iimited minke whaling. In April 1993, the US State Department reaffirmed
that "scientific analysis now shows that some populations of minke
whales are likely to be able to sustain a limited harvest," in a letter
to the Icelandic government. While the US has expressed an "...understanding
of the economic and cultural disruption which the moratorium on commercial
whaling. has caused," it has stated that it would be extremely difficult
to support any proposal to resume small-type coastal minke whaling due
to domestic opposition.8
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