Whales and hypocrisy

Only a few days ago we were confronted with the possibility of Japan again becoming a pariah to Australians, their push to extend the killing of whales beyond supposed scientific research being strongly opposed by the Australian Government along with the conservation movement and many people.

Now Tasmanians find another side to Japanese culture, where the face of the corporation is to be saved by stating a refusal to accept woodchips from ‘old growth forests’, being environmentally credible at Mitsubishi Paper has importance.

‘A way forward’, the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, has allowed the killing of the giants of the forests of tomorrow and the destruction of the associated ecosystem as an acceptable practice regardless of the global rarity of ancient forests [or indeed forests with a high degree of biophysical naturalness] whilst the same government has stood resolutely against all killing of the giants of the sea and their close and smaller relatives.

The sustainable management of any resource is a modern goal, the natural wealth of the oceans and forests, the huge expanses of the continents with less technologically developed peoples that were overrun by imperial expansions from the European powers in a grab at what appeared to be endless land, trees and sea creatures, has exhausted the historic abundance.

This natural capital was converted into the wealth that the developed world has today.

Australia’s unsustainable practices continued into the latter end of the last century, whaling ending in 1968, the killing of kangaroos coming under management by the states, the mining industry seeking environmental credibility by handling its waste disposal in a better way and forests coming into sustainable management from the early 1980s when NSW began phasing out rainforest logging in its few remaining remnants and declaring some national parks such as Nightcap.

Tasmania’s first modern step into the brave new world of nature conservation was forced on it by the High Court’s decision to give the power to the Federal Government to determine whether a series of dams or a wild river in the wilderness was the best allocation of the Franklin and lower Gordon Rivers.

Many of the succeeding steps of conservation on the land have been part of agreements that brought funding for conserving forest. Sustainable management of fisheries has had a less conflict ridden and socially fraught movement into a more sustainable mix of use and conservation.

The conflict over the allocation of native forests involves a powerful industry in Tasmania. Now the state’s largest single business by a huge order of magnitude has made the case that it was dependent on continued access to old growth forests, only recently agreeing to a further reduction in access.

Nature-based tourism

We have no whale killing industry, instead Australia has many nature based tourism businesses dependent on and a number of interested people who enjoy whale watching.

Conversely, Japan has many steep areas and a cultural relationship with nature through 2 major religions, Shintoism and Buddhism. Protection forests for the provision of both natural and cultural services has kept some 70% of Japan’s forests in a natural state, the balance carefully managed as a result of their experiences with disasters associated with unsustainable forestry practices in earlier centuries before the modern period.

Whaling in the oceans of the globe may be a post World War 2 activity for Japan. However, shore based killing and eating of cetaceans has a long history, the consumption of these animals being a local activity due to the difficulties of transport. Many other indigenous and islander people have had this relationship with whales.

The decline of whale populations that led to the moratorium on hunting was a result of several centuries of whaling with the western world leading that slaughter. Had whales been protected from all but indigenous and traditional hunting from shore to satisfy long standing practices then the oceans would be filled with the giants as well as the smaller whales.

Instead each nation has seen the oceans resources as free goods, to be plundered without let or hindrance in the search of some goal of immense personal wealth or feeding a standing room only population on the land with no thought for sustainability.

Whilst we Australians may wish to see cetaceans free from any hunting and killing, whilst we continue to cut down our ancient forests rather than transfer to plantation grown wood for pulp and paper manufacture and limit logging of native forests to secondary growth for supplying sawn timber, our hypocrisy in standing up for whales and eating kangaroos or feeding them to dogs will not go unnoticed by the proponents of killing whales.

Their can be no excuse for killing populations of endangered animals as there is none for destroying the remnant complexities in ancient forests. However, if we are to tell other cultures that they must change long standing practices, we have to change ours as well.

phill Parsons has sat on the seashore sipping latte and watching cetaceans pass by, first the dolphins then the southern right whales, a moment of pleasure before eating something dead. Unimpressed with the scientific whaling argument he hopes that the conundrum facing the competing interests around whales can be resolved without Japan et al becoming rogues pirating what belongs to all. Here is Ian Campbell’s challenge. [Minister for the Environment]