Japan, Norway wasting millions on whaling - WWF

Major whaling nations Japan and Norway are wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money to prop up what is likely a loss-making industry, an international conservation group said yesterday.

"It is clear that whaling is heavily subsidised at present," said a report by the WWF, which analysed the direct and indirect costs of hunting the ocean mammals and selling their meat.

"In both Japan and Norway, substantial funds are made available to prop up an operation which would otherwise be commercially marginal at best, and most likely loss making," it added.

While demand for whale meat is on the decline and prices have about halved over the past decade in Japan, the government had dished out $12 million during the 2008-09 season for the industry to break even, WWF said.

Total Japanese subsidies had amounted to $164 million since 1988, the report added, citing government data.

Meanwhile Norway had spent a total of nearly $20 million since 1993 in direct and indirect aid on its whaling activities, said the report, which was co-published with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

Government subsidies had accounted for almost half of the gross value of nearly all the whale meat sold in the country between 1994 and 2005, the report added, citing a national fisheries sales body.

That proportion had decreased in the past three years after the government replaced a costly inspection scheme on whaling boats with an electronic logbook system, the report said.

"In this time of global economic crisis, the use of valuable tax dollars to prop up what is basically an economically unviable industry is neither strategic, sustainable nor an appropriate use of limited government funds," WWF species director Susan Lieberman said in a statement.

The report came as the International Whaling Commission prepared to meet on Monday in Portugal's Madeira island, although hopes were muted for much progress on reaching compromise on whaling and conservation.

Japan launched its latest whaling mission in April with the aim of catching up to 60 minke whales off its northeastern coast.

The focus of negotiations is now whether to allow Tokyo to conduct commercial whaling near its coast if it scales down its Antarctic hunt.

Japan defends whaling as a tradition and accuses Western critics of disrespecting its culture. It has threatened to leave the IWC if the body does not shift to what Japan believes is its original purpose - managing a sustainable kill of whales.

Japan agreed in 2007 to suspend plans to expand its hunt to include humpback whales, which are popular with Australian whale-watchers.

Norway and Iceland are the only nations that hunt whales in open defiance of a 1986 IWC moratorium on commercial whaling.