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The roles of activist NGOs in the development and transformation of IWC regime: the interaction of norms and power

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Abstract

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was originally established as a regime to manage whaling under the norm of conservation for use. However, over time it was transformed into a regime to prohibit whaling, largely due to the anti-whaling campaigns that were mounted by activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that favored a norm of pure preservation. This resulted in an IWC decision to place a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. In response to this decision, six whaling countries abandoned whaling under threat of US sanctions. In contrast, three countries, Japan, Norway, and Iceland, decided to continue whaling while their attitudes concerning the moratorium decision were rather passive or moderate when it was first introduced. Later, they became highly determined to continue whaling. In fact, they lead an upsurge in pro-whaling participants at the IWC, which is currently deadlocked between pro- and anti-whaling forces. This paper uses the concept of psychological reactance to better understand the behavior of pro-whaling countries in the face of considerable pressures from anti-whaling elements. We argue that the strong resistance of Japan, Norway, and Iceland to the whaling ban can be explained by the social and economic importance of whaling in each country combined with the different strategies adopted by the NGOs. Our results suggest that NGOs’ strategies vis-a-vis these countries were counterproductive and that persuasion, while more time-consuming and expensive, would have been more effective than pressure in the long run.

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Notes

  1. Though it is not always easy to measure the level of internalization, whether the norm has obtained the status of taken-for-grantedness is a key point to judge (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998).

  2. As a matter of course, Risse and his colleagues can argue that the spiral model only applies to human rights norms and that norms in other fields are totally beyond the scope of the model. However, the model was constructed based on three general factors (norms, power, and communication) and so there is no theoretical reason to limit its scope solely to core human rights norms.

  3. Because aboriginal subsistence whaling is not considered as commercial whaling, aborigines are legally allowed to catch even those whale species that are protected under the moratorium.

  4. The number of members of the IWC was originally 12 but increased to 22 in 1980, 29 in 1981, and 37 in 1982.

  5. According to NMP, when stock level exceeds marginal sustainable yield level by more than 20 %, it is defined as IMS (Burns 1997).

  6. Even though RMP was strictly based on precautionary principle, it required much less data to compute catch limits than NMP (Gambell 2003).

  7. However, recently both Chile and Peru joined the anti-whaling group.

  8. The ratio of whale meat to Japanese meat consumption was 26.7 % in 1960, and then declined to merely 3.5 % in 1975 (NHK Shuzaihan 1986).

  9. In Iceland, the Sea Shepherd also sank two catcher ships in 1986 (Ivarsson 1994).

  10. In Norway, seafood accounted for less than 10 % of the total export turnover (DeSombre 2000).

  11. The Iceland’s attempt to rejoin the IWC with an objection to the 1982 moratorium started at the 53rd annual meeting of the IWC in 2001. After a considerable dispute, it was approved by vote at the 54the meeting in 2002.

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Acknowledgments

This article was originally published in Kokusai Seiji, vol. 153, 2008, pp. 42–57, which is a Japanese journal of Japanese Association of International Relations or JAIR. The author is grateful to JAIR for its kind permission to post this updated article in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. He is also grateful to Kenki Adachi, Tatsuo Akaneya, Ken Ishida, Satoshi Oyane, Takahiro Yamada, and especially D. G. Webster, for their valuable comments to the article, and to Jennifer Bailey, Atsushi Ishii, Ayako Okubo, Junko Sakuma, and Yasuhiro Sanada for their kind assistances in collecting information.

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  1. Faculty of Law, Gakushuin University, 1-5-4 Mejiro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, 171-8588, Japan

    Isao Sakaguchi

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Correspondence to Isao Sakaguchi.

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Sakaguchi, I. The roles of activist NGOs in the development and transformation of IWC regime: the interaction of norms and power. J Environ Stud Sci 3, 194–208 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-013-0114-3

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