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Couzens, Ed --- "Whaling and Dealing: Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling, Politics and Poverty" [2012] ELECD 650; in Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan (eds), "Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law

Editor(s): Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781003282

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Whaling and Dealing: Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling, Politics and Poverty

Author(s): Couzens, Ed

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

6. Whaling and dealing: aboriginal
subsistence whaling, politics and
poverty*
Ed Couzens

6.1 INTRODUCTION: ABORIGINAL SUBSISTENCE
WHALING GENERALLY
Around the world, a number of aboriginal groups such as the Inuit/Eskimo
people and the Makah Indian tribe1 in the United States and the Chukotka
people in Russia hunt and kill whales. This aboriginal subsistence whaling
(ASW) is exempt from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) 1982
`moratorium'2 on commercial whaling. The ASW exemption was placed in the
1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, signed at
Washington, 2 December 1946 (ICRW), to preserve aboriginal cultures for
which whaling was culturally significant and to alleviate poverty among those
peoples. Although ASW is exempt from the moratorium, the IWC places
annual quotas on aboriginal takes.3
Currently, there is controversy over whether four Japanese coastal
communities should be classified as aboriginal subsistence whalers ­ at
present they are not. Opponents of such recognition claim that these commu-
nities engage in commercial whaling, rather than aboriginal subsistence
whaling; Japan maintains that the distinction is artificial. Japan, for instance,
explained at the 46th annual meeting of the IWC that it held the view that
`its small-type whaling had the same characteristics as aboriginal subsis-
tence whaling' and that `hence a similar treatment should be considered'
(IWC, 1994, p. 17).
According to Komatsu and Misaki, commercial whaling is `a straightfor-
ward proposition: whaling undertaken for financial gain made through selling
the catch'; and that one would presume therefore that `it would then differ
...