INTRODUCTION

  The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), that inter alia established the International Whaling Commission (IWC), was signed in Washington in 1946. The primary objective of the Convention is given in its preamble: "to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry". The full Convention texting including the latest Schedule[1]is published each year, most recetnly in the series "the Annual Report of the International Whaling Commission". The present short document presents some thoughts on the questions outlined in the call for evidence distributed on behalf of the Select Committee with respect to the working of the IWC. It supplements the presentation made to the Select Committee by Nicky Grandy on 16 September 2003. It respresents the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the IWC.

SPECIFIC QUESTIONS GIVEN IN THE CALL FOR EVIDENCE

 (a)   How is the need for scientific advice recognised?

  In its time, the ICRW was a particularly progressive natural resource management convention, in that it explicitly referred to the need for conservation and the need for scientific advice ("amendments to the Schedule shall be based on scientific findings") as well as the interests of the industry. The Convention also makes a number of references to the need and responsibility of the IWC and its members for scientific studies, data collection and analyses, and the publication of results related to the objective of the Convention.

  The practical embodiement of these needs and responsibilities is the IWC Scientific Committee. In its early days, the Scientific Committee was a relatively small body (ca 20-30 government scientists), directly responsible for providing advice, primarily on commercial whaling catch limits, to the Commission. The Scientific Committee has now become a much larger body with a wider remit (see Table 1 below).

IWC Scientific Committee—160 scientists.

Publicly available "Terms of Reference" and detailed "Rules of Procedure"

Members:

—  National delegates;

—  Invited and "self invited" participants;

—  Relevant intergovernmental organisations (IGOs).

Observers:

—  Non-member governments;

—  Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs);

Work Programme and Meetings:

—  Commission agrees programme and priorities based on proposal by Committee;

—  Meets annually for two weeks (plus intersessional work and workshops);

—  Splits into sub-committees;

—  Designs original scientific investigations and reviews outcome of governmental and other research;

—  Report agreed by all at end of meeting and later formally published (now in the Journal of Research and Management).

Current Topics of Concern:

—  Management procedures for commercial and subsistence whaling;

—  Assessment of all whale stocks, especially those that have been severely reduced;

—  Effects of environmental change on cetaceans;

—  Whale sanctuaries, small cetaceans, whalewatching;

—  Review of Scientific Permits.

  The Committee still includes a large number of government representatives (usually, but not exclusively, scientists), but there are now a larger number of other categories. Invited participants comprise two groups, those experts that the Committee (as determined by a small group elected by the Committee comprising the Chair, the Vice-Chair, sub-committee Chairs, supplemented by appropriate members of the Secretariat) believes are necessary for it to complete its work and another group (self-invited) who apply to attend the meeting and who are normally accepted provide that they have demonstrable scientific competence and/or are submitting a paper on an important topic on the agenda. Certain relevant intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) are routinely invited. Scientists from non-member governments (NGOs) may either be invited participants or act as observers. Non-governmental organisations may also apply to send observers. Observers receive all documents but do not participate in discussions unless invited to do so on a specific topic by the Chair or Chair of a sub-committee.

 (b)   To what extent does scientific information and evidence go through a peer review/quality control process?

  There is a multi-faceted peer review process within the Scientific Committee that has increased over the years. At present, this can be summarised as follows:

(1)  all data upon which management decisions (related to whaling) are based must be available to the Committee at least six months before the meeting at which they are to be discussed;

(2)  analyses of these data must be submitted at specific times in advance of the meeting at which they are to be discussed;

(3)  all relevant working papers submitted to a meeting or workshop are discussed in detail at sub-committee meetings and are publicly available after the meeting;

(4)  the reports of the sub-committees are reviewed by the full plenary session of the Committee;

(5)  the full reports of the plenary and sub-committee meetings are formally published in a supplement to the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management;

(6)  important papers are submitted to peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management and reviewed in the normal scientific manner.

  It is our view that this review process, particularly in the politico-ethical climate referred to in the concluding section, represents an extremely rigorous peer-review process.

 (c)   How should international agreements deal with scientific uncertainty, having regard to the precautionary approach? Is there a need for consistency between agreements on the treatment of scientific uncertainty, and if so is there sufficient consistency?

  The Scientific Committee has pioneered work on this issue. In summary, it has recognised the need to explicitly take uncertainty into accounts in its development of the Revised Management Procedure for commercial whaling and the Aboriginal Subsistence Management Procedure. This is not the appropriate place to discuss this in detail, but in summary the management procedure approach is as follows:

(1)  Agree management and conservation objectives, state them explicitly and assign them priorities—in the IWC context, a general principle is that conservation objectives are given the highest priority;

(2)  Agree and specify realistic data and analysis requirements;

(3)  Accept scientific and practical limitations and take the inevitable uncertainty explicitly into accounts by determining a precautionary method of calculating catch limits involving rigorous testing via computer simulations for both quantitatively and qualitatively known sources of uncertainty (see Table 2);

(4)  After steps (1)-(3), adopt a management procedure that incorporates the process right through from data requirements and analysis to determination of catch limits (or other management advice);

(5)  Include feedback monitoring to ensure that the agreed objectives are being met.

  Several different population models and associated assumptions;

  Different starting population levels, ranging from 5 per cent to 99 per cent of the "initial"

population size;

  Different maximum sustainable yield (MSY) levels, ranging from 40 per cent to 80 per cent;

  Different MSY rates, ranging from 1 per cent to 7 per cent (including changes over time);

  Various levels of uncertainty and biases in population size;

  Changes in carrying capacity (including reduction by half);

  Errors in historic catch records (including underestimation by half);

  Catastrophes (irregular episodic events when the population is halved);

  Various frequencies of abundance surveys.

  The main difficulty in such an approach is obtaining agreement on how much uncertainty is plausible. Any management represents a balance between the "conservation" and "user" objectives. Put simply, it can be argued that the catch of even a single whale out of a very large population results in a tiny (but not zero) increased risk that the population will be overexploited.

  A similar but implicit approach to dealing with scientific uncertainty is followed within the Scientific Committee when addressing other management issues other than catch limits.

  This general approach to scientific uncertainty is slowly being adopted in some national management strategies but we believe that it would be greatly beneficial if the approach were to become widely recognised in the management of all natural resources. This does not necessarily mean that the level of precaution adopted by the IWC should become the norm, but rather that the approach of explicitly taking scientific uncertainty into account is accepted and implemented in the provision of scientific management advice, preferably within a feedback management procedure context.

  In conclusion, it should be noted that whilst the "precautionary principle" as expressed in the Rio Declaration has become generally accepted, there is no broadly accepted definition as to what that means in practice in quantitative terms. If this could be addressed it would go a long way to avoid suggestions of double-standards being applied across international agreements and national policies (eg where levels of precaution might be said to be correlated with the level of economic interest in utilising a resource and/or the cultural "value" attached to the resource). The question of consistency of views across agreements is discussed further in the concluding section.

 (d)   How are competing views on scientific issues addressed and incorporated into agreements and implementation of agreements

  The Scientific Committee tries to work to the extent possible on the basis of consensus. Where this is not possible, the Committee report provides an idea of the relative balance of views within the Committee, eg by the use of such phrases as: "most members"; "some members"; "other members"; "a minority view was expressed". Although there is a mechanism for voting (one vote per delegation), this has been confined to administrative matters such as the election of the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee.

  However, once this advice is presented to the Commission (either directly or via another Committee or sub-committee of the Commission), the final decision is taken by the Commission. If there is anything other than a full Scientific Committee recommendation, this is usually achieved by voting (one vote per member government). Perhaps not surprisingly, such voting is usually carried out based on the general policy of individual governments rather than an appraisal of the scientific validity or balance of views within the Scientific Committee. Although it happens only rarely, it is possible for the Commission to vote against a unanimous Scientific Committee recommendation.

 (e)   What role does the scientific community in the United Kingdom play in contributing to the scientific input used in formulating, applying and implementing international agreements, and how might that role be enhanced?

  It is probably not appropriate for us to comment in detail on the UK's scientific contribution to the work of the Scientific Committee, other than to say that UK scientists from both governmental organisations (eg the Sea Mammal Research Unit, St Andrew's and the Fisheries Research Laboratory, Lowestoft) and universities (eg RUWPA, the University of St Andrew's) have made major contributions to the work of the Scientific Committee over the years. Without commenting on the UK itself, we would suggest that the following principles should apply to the scientific contributions of any member government:

(1)  the delegation should include the most appropriate and competent scientists in the field;

(2)  members of a delegation should be freely available to comment on any scientific issue irrespective of the impact of those comments on the preferred view of the member government; and

(3)  member governments should wherever possible contribute to the attendance of scientists from their countries who have been identified by the Committee as being able to make a valuable contribution to aspects of its work.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

  The overall question asked by the Select Committee is:

How satisfactory are the existing arrangements for incorporating scientific advice and other scientific input into the negotiation, application and implementation of international agreements; and how could these arrangements be improved?

  In our view, the arrangements for the provision of scientific advice within the IWC are excellent, both in terms of the wording of the convention and the mechanism for putting it into practice (the Scientific Committee). Where problems arise, these are related to a much broader issue within the IWC that may well be unique in terms of similar management Conventions—in fisheries conventions, for example, all parties usually believe that it is morally acceptable to kill fish, even if they disagree strongly about how to manage fish stocks.

  This broader politico-ethical issue concerns the variety of views held within the Commission on the "value" of cetaceans. The two "extremes" can be summarised as follows:

(1)  whales are such special creatures that they should not be commercially caught under any circumstances; and

(2)  whales are a natural resource like any other that can be exploited provided that it is undertaken sustainably.

  There are a number of views that fall within these "extremes" and a number of other related issues that arise, including questions of animal welfare and humane killing, the legitimacy of lethal research, the relationship between lethal and non-lethal exploitation (whaling and whalewatching)—and the level of precaution considered acceptable in the face of scientific uncertainty for cetaceans as opposed to other species[2]

  These different views have clearly polarised the IWC to an extent where some have argued that it is no longer properly fulfilling its mandate. At present, whales are killed under three categories by IWC member nations (aboriginal subsistence whaling, commercial whaling under legal objection to the "moratorium", scientific permit whaling) but under only the first does the IWC set limits.

  The question of consistency was raised in question (c) above. One example of where some might argue that attitudes and positions held within an IWC context are not consistent within cetacean issues is the question of cetacean bycatch.

  With respect to large whale commercial catches, the effective principle within the IWC is that the burden of proof is on the commercial exploiters—no catches are allowed unless it can be shown that they are absolutely safe, within, and in some cases beyond the RMP context. If catches are allowed, a foolproof system to ensure the catch limits are not exceeded must be in place. In addition, a number of countries also adopt the view that no catches should be allowed unless it can be shown that, in addition, the method of killing results in times to death similar to those in commercial abattoirs. Others believe that it is never morally acceptable for large whales to be killed, irrespective of scientific advice on sustainability.

  With respect to bycatches of cetaceans, however, the views are often different—with countries showing different attitudes in different national or international fora. For example, the burden of proof is often reversed, ie it must be shown that bycatches of cetaceans are unsustainable, not that they are sustainable, before action to reduce (not immediately stop) them is initiated. Where data on cetacean bycatches and abundance estimates are provided at all, there is no insistence that the numbers be accurate and collected in a "foolproof" manner. With respect to animal welfare issues, the absolute numbers of cetaceans killed incidentally in fishing operations are often very high and the manner of death cannot be regarded as humane.

  The example above is not provided to suggest what the most appropriate "values" to attach to cetaceans are, but rather to point out that there is often inconsistency in attitudes that are not conducive to reaching agreed international conservation and management measures. However, where there are completely different values attached to internationally managed species, there is a case to be made for more objective criteria (eg scientific status) to be the basis for management.

October 2003

2   It would be naíve to assume that scientists do not share this range of views on the values of cetaceans. However, it should be possible for scientists not to allow this to interfere with their scientific judgement. Back