What Do We Do About The RMS?

What, Me Worry?, the infamous slogan of the grinning cartoon character Alfred E. Neuman, has been adopted as the environmental flag of the US Administration, Congress, and well-greased political pundits. Alarmed environmentalists watched the November elections proceed with environmental issues at the bottom of the polls. For the second time in recent election failures, the Democrats ignored the environment and thereby actually strengthened their opponents. Amidst the greatest pullback of hard-won regulations and laws in recent history, and in spite of clear evidence of human impacts such as global warming, the trend to burn the candle in the middle as well as both ends is actually accelerating.

But, masked by fear, war, and lock-step US government policies, the Neuman Philosophy prevails for now. To be blunt, if you care but don't react to this challenge you're only helping things to get worse. How does the Public really feel about all this? Somehow the message that there won't be much left for their children has not sunk in. Getting the message out is CSI's task, and yours.

The children, on the other hand, give us great hope. Recently CSI's Bill Rossiter presented a program to 80 fifth graders at Tiverton Middle School, Rhode Island. Thanks to a homegrown and sophisticated program created by the school's teachers, these kids had an excellent understanding of cetaceans, the environment, and human impacts. The questions they asked were insightful, their energy was gratifying, and the message they gave back was clear: they are becoming aware that their future is being compromised as the current generation gorges itself. At an average age of ten these kids would understand and agree with David Brower who said, "The bottom line rests on the earth."

Photos of Bill Rossiter's school presentation

What about the older children in the US, the "tweens" who in four years may be old enough to vote for the first time? To most they represent a $330 billion market, and the emphasis seems to be to get them to buy even more. Actually, they are the most computer and Internet-dependent population on earth, more likely to act together than independently. As such they are difficult to reach in traditional ways. They read the old adage "virtually anything is possible" in new ways, and perhaps as their future. Some of their biggest challenges are to manage more information that any previous generation, know the difference between virtual and real, accept that the Internet can lie, and that even "whales" can be removed from an encyclopedia with a keystroke. There are reams of deliberate misinformation on the Internet and in current books. For example, which book is pro-environment: Science Under Siege; Balancing Technology and the Environment, by Michael Fumento, or Science Under Siege: the Politician's War on Nature and Truth, by Todd Wilkinson? The clue is "Balancing", a common Wise Use euphemism for exploitation.

The lives of this generation are so crammed and busy that nothing off-schedule can intrude. The need is to get them interested on the first click, to give them some reason to plow into a subject that they should know about, but won't be given ... perhaps on purpose. If we reach them what do we say? That their sky is falling, again and again? How can they miss the many pieces of information raining down even now?

The IUCN Red List, for example, was released in November by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (http://www.iucn.org/). It declares that 15,589 species around the world are now at risk of extinction. That's one in eight birds, almost half of turtles and tortoises, one in four mammals, and one in three amphibians, up to 1000 times the "natural" evolutionary rate. Species Survival Commission Chair David Brackett said, "We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction wave on the planet Earth, caused by the intervention of humans." He added that, "Species should come and go on an evolutionary time scale, not on our time scale." Is "What, Me Worry?" an appropriate response?

As CSI and other animal welfare and environmental organizations adapt to four more years of "What, Me Worry?" it may serve us all to recall the UN's 2001 "NGO Primer for Working with Permanent UN Missions," which deserves a far wider application:

1. Remain focused on the issue. Do your homework. Make sure your information is accurate. Don't undermine your argument by presenting inaccurate details.

2. Pay close attention to what governments are saying, both inside and out of the UN. Make sure you fully understand their positions before presenting yours.

3. Be persistent in developing long-term strategies. It takes time to build trust, and often governments do not at first see the benefit of working with NGOs. Stress the mutual benefits that can result.

4. Be transparent. Do not operate with a hidden agenda.

5. Form coalitions that concentrate on key issues. Do not dilute your power with a dozen annoying, separate petitions when you can join to pursue one powerful agenda.

6. Consider that while each NGO concerns itself, usually, with one major issue, governments must deal with conflicting interests. Be prepared to demonstrate how your proposal helps resolve those conflicts.

7. Offer your expertise freely to smaller missions that lack the resources and the personnel to do their own research. Work together on common projects toward common goals.

8. Act as a facilitator, providing access for parties to meet in nonthreatening surroundings.

9. When preparing a document, be sure that it is relevant to the central issue. Do not use it to change the agenda.

Tesco PLC, a multinational supermarket chain, showed the result of such techniques, when in November the retail giant agreed to stop selling cetacean products in its Japanese stores and halted all purchases of cetacean products. While Tesco said they made the decision "due to a lack of customer demand," CSI congratulates the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) and Greenpeace for their successful campaign, which emphasized that Tesco's involvement in this trade was tacit support of the Japanese government's refusal to abide by the moratorium on commercial whaling.

So, What Do We Do About The RMS? The International Whaling Commission has created two obstacles to commercial whaling, an international moratorium and the need for a Revised Management Scheme (RMS). At IWC/56 in Sorrento, Italy, Resolution 2004-6 was adopted to make the RMS become reality. The Resolution among other things created a Working Group and set up November's intersessional meeting in Sweden, to have RMS drafts prepared prior to IWC/57.

As far as the RMS is concerned, we focus here on the core points. Everyone realizes and accepts that Japan, Norway and Iceland kill whales for commercial purposes. Effective opposition to this travesty has not worked. Thirty years of fervent but hopeful opposition has failed to move the whalers towards respecting, much less loving whales. The whalers seem to believe that as long as whales exist, they represent easy future profits as food for an ever-increasing human population. Japan continues to purchase even landlocked developing nations for new IWC membership. Through these tactics, it seems almost certain to control a majority vote at IWC/57. Thus, after Japan has secured enough votes, in 2005 the IWC may approve the RMS, leaving the moratorium to fall. Although many nations oppose this, the US supports a limited RMS with feeble hopes that the moratorium will not fall, relinquishing its IWC leadership to Australia, the modern champion for whale conservation at the IWC.

Many NGOs, behaving as if they were actually nations with influence, have defaulted to the queasy position of supporting the US position and an RMS that limits the killing as much as possible. However, can anyone deny that if the IWC agrees to allow commercial whaling to all members, the future killing will be far more uncontrollable and unenforceable than the past? It is certain we will see decades of species recovery vanish before the killing can be stopped.

CSI cannot support any RMS as a matter of principle, and we are convinced that our members did not join us to support commercial whaling. Led by Robbins Barstow, CSI has for decades declared "Just Say No!" If that sounds too simple and direct for the complex realities today just recall that true principle is always simple and direct.

We are pleased to be joined by the Animal Welfare Institute, in a joint statement that begins: "The undersigned groups oppose, as a matter of principle and as an obligation to our members, the development, adoption and implementation of a Revised Management Scheme (RMS) within the International Whaling Commission (IWC)." The Statement includes technical, economic, and human health justifications, but rests on the fundamental certainty that whaling is cruel and inhumane. We cannot both oppose whaling and set the rules for its resumption. We welcome anyone that wishes to join with us.