26/11/06
04:57:58 am, Categories: General, 450 words Buy a whale: help save a species
A counter-intuitive, but convincing argument for the establishment of a whale ownership scheme has been put forward by Kendra Okonski & Carlo Stagnaro at the International Policy Network. They present a case for the International Whaling Commission returning to its originals goal of sustainable management of the global whale population rather than its more recent focus on preservation.
Okonski and Stagnaro say:
"The debate about endangered whales is fundamentally flawed. Whale scarcity is not caused by whale hunting - the real problem is that no one owns whales."
"Think about it - environmental groups like Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare are not fussing about chickens, cats, or canaries. These creatures benefit from domestication and ownership, but whales are still subject to the "tragedy of the commons". Whales have become the victims of a massive international skirmish between environmental groups, and nations with a cultural practice of whaling, because no one owns them."
"Preserving endangered species is not rocket science. We should not rely on people's benevolence to ensure their survival. If we allowed people, businesses, communities, and environmental groups to own whales, then Greenpeace could buy up all the whales to protect them, and businesses could sell whale-watching or sell hunting rights or whale meat."
"New technologies would assist in protecting the whales – a small, harmless antenna could be implanted in whales to track their movements by satellite. The whales might even be valuable enough to merit a boat which travels with them to protect them. The IWC could assign property rights to whales and auctioning them to the highest bidders. If poachers violated those rights, they would be subject to the same legal procedures and punishments as for other forms of theft, and the owner would be awarded compensation."
"Regardless of whether the whales were kept alive or eaten, ownership would ensure that whales never go extinct. This is because markets harness the self-interest of individuals. Whale markets would be no different - they would be driven by prices and would be subject to the same incentives that drive creativity and innovation through our economy."
Apart from the issues they raise around cultural imperialism, (imagine being forced to stop eating Chicken McNuggets because chickens are venerated by people of another powerful culture), this discussion reminds me of my previous post on lions hunting elephants and our selective emotional attachment to certain animals. This is a case in which those attachments have been ruthlessly exploited by Greenpeace in order to further their own aim.
Technorati Tags: whale hunting, Greenpeace, whale+meat, whale whatching, IWC, whaling, hunting as conservation
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The site:http://whales.greenpeace.org/global
See this video:
Martina, an 8 years old girl , writes a letter to Mr. Toyama, Captain of the Nisshin Maru Ship asking him to stop whale’s hunting. NM is the factory ship of the Japanese whaling fleet that is in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, iligaly hunting 945 whales.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6CbG7qopX0
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26/12/06 @ 11:27 