There was a victory for those seeking to conserve whales at the 64th meeting of the (IWC). But the meeting in Panama City, which closed today, also brought news of an impending battle.

The triumph was the refusal of IWC members to grant an increase in the number of whales that Greenland can catch to support indigenous peoples amid reports whale meat was being sold to tourists.

And the looming battle will be over the much criticised announcement by South Korea that it intends to resume whaling under the guise of scientific research.

Every few years, the quotas that the IWC grants under the special category of aboriginal subsistence whaling have to be renewed, and the countries gathered in Panama duly voted to renew them for the US Inuit people, the Russian Chukotkan people, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

These were not without controversy but, when it came to the request from Denmark on behalf of its people on Greenland, the Commission was presented with an important test case. Greenland wanted to catch more endangered fin and humpback whales than allowed by its current quota, which was agreed, after difficult negotiation, by the IWC only two years ago in Agadir, Morocco.

Perhaps more important than the small proposed increase was the growing realisation that the whales being killed off Greenland were not just being used to provide essential food to indigenous peoples. They were also available in supermarkets and, significantly, being promoted to tourists in restaurants.

This was made clear in reports recently released by the and the detailing their undercover studies in Greenland of the widespread commercial sale of whale meat to tourists visiting the country.

In fact, there are many problems inherent in the Greenlandic hunt, which for example uniquely asks for its whales as a “tonnage of meat” rather than in numbers of whales. However, leaving these issues aside, and putting it simply, the Greenlandic request posed a significant challenge to the existing moratorium on commercial whaling. In the face of this, and despite some coordination problems, the European Union countries stood firm – as did their allies in the Latin American block – and the defeat of the request was a triumph of common sense over contrived nonsense, and of conservation over commerce.

It is clear that the aboriginal category was originally intended only to meet the nutritional subsistence and cultural need of people in remote communities. It was certainly not intended to satisfy the epicurean curiosity of foreign visitors.

Some years ago, it became apparent that a strategy being run by those in favour of lifting the moratorium on whaling included the deliberate blurring of the distinction between commercial and aboriginal subsistence whaling. Given that there are indigenous peoples with genuine needs, this is a dangerous and morally reprehensible strategy. Indeed, at this meeting of the commission, we heard Japan and, in a new development, South Korea make the case that their coastal communities should be afforded similar rights to the indigenous peoples granted aboriginal quotas.

In addition, South Korea made it clear that it is seriously considering restarting whaling using Article VIII of the whaling convention; the clause that allows nations to issue a permit to kill whales for “research”, and intended by the original treaty authors to ensure at least “some science” was undertaken in the peak whaling years of the middle of the 20th century. This, now clearly outdated part of the , has been used ruthlessly by Japan as a thin disguise for its commercial hunts. Now it seems that South Korea means to do the same. The country says that its whalers are frustrated that the moratorium remains in place and makes claims that a recovering whale population threatens fish stocks. These arguments mimic those made by Japan and have no scientific credibility.

South Korea may also be reacting to its inability to limit its own existing illegal whaling. It reported to the IWC Infractions Sub-Committee that during 2011 its fishermen harpooned 21 minke whales.

And between 1999 and 2003 alone, 458 minkes were reported as being “entangled” and killed in nets. A previous using DNA profiling to estimate the total number of minke whales entering South Korean commercial markets puts this figure at almost double the official records.

South Korea has fined and imprisoned guilty parties when prosecuted, but evidently there is an ongoing commercial market and it seems to be worth the risk for the perpetrators. Perhaps it is a lot easier for the authorities to legitimise all this by setting up a pseudo-scientific whaling programme, rather than have to face the hassle, cost and international embarrassment of having to deal with escalating infractions every year.

South Korea has used the excuse of scientific-whaling before – in 1986. It involved the collection of biological data, but was poorly planned and came in for considerable criticism at the IWC Scientific Committee. Under political and scientific pressure, the government of South Korea decided to undertake no further lethal research work.

Any whaling conducted by South Korea will inevitably affect the genetically distinct and depleted population of minke whales known as the ‘J-stock’, which lives off its shores and, in conservation terms, would be extremely reckless.

South Korea has said it will present its new “research plan” to the IWC’s Scientific Committee in a year’s time. Hopefully, it will not start whaling before then and it can be dissuaded from going down this route. There is much work for conservationists ahead.

Mark Simmonds is international director of science at the . He has been a member of the IWC’s scientific committee, which works on understanding environmental threats including climate change and chemical and noise pollution

It is an ill-informed view, for the relationship is actually one of
long standing and shows no sign of faltering for this reason. More significantly,
the view fails to appreciate the precautionary approach to environmental
protection – an important development in scientific thinking which increasingly
underpins international environmental policy. It has arisen from a fusion
of the ideas of scientists and environmentalists working together over some
years.

The precautionary approach that has emerged helps to avoid potentially
damaging activities when there is reason to assume harmful effects – especially
when there is no conclusive scientific evidence of any causal link. This
shifts the burden of proof so as to give the environment the benefit of
any doubt. The approach contrasts with the current strategy of retrospective
action when environmental damage has first to become obvious, and when the
problem is usually beyond simple remedies.

Precaution is part of everyday life. We do not normally accept unqualified
personal risks to life and livelihood. We try to anticipate, avoid, reduce
and remove them. We insure against them. The threats to global integrity
of the spiralling consumption of non-renewable resources, nuclear proliferation,
chemical contamination and the shrinking ozone layer are increasingly clear.
In response, we must extend precaution beyond the activities of the individual
so that it becomes a global axiom of environmental protection.

The traditionally expected scientific response to environmental concerns
is an attempt to demonstrate, sine qua non, a simple causal relationship
between effects observed in the environment and human activity. Acid rain,
forest die-off, marine fish disease, coral bleaching, global warming and
marine mammal epizootics have all been the subject of considerable research
and also controversy. Too often, lack of definitive evidence of a causal
mechanism justified a ‘no action’ policy. The problem is exacerbated because
it is actually considered inappropriate for environmental scientists to
make any final judgment of environmental safety. It has been conveniently
argued that because costs must also be weighed, decisions must be left to
politicians and financiers.

In the environmental sciences, expert opinion and prediction based on
professional judgment are widely used. Evidence is weighed and advice given.
In the political forums where protective legislation is enacted, the debate
often turns solely on the question of the weight of scientific evidence
to hand. The true fiscal, environmental and other costs of a particular
course of action are rarely quantifiable either, but this is conveniently
ignored. More often than not, a verdict of ‘not proven’ is returned based
on a perceived lack of scientific evidence of actual harm. Remedial action
is then postponed and commercial profits maintained until proof is forthcoming.
This is not an appropriate strategy when demands for ‘scientific proof’
are usually impossible to fulfil. In a complex world where interacting environmental
variables are not well known, much less understood, the uncertainty of scientific
understanding exposes science itself to the exploitative surgery of political
and financial interpretation.

The emergence of the precautionary approach into scientific thinking
helps to avoid these problems. It is a product of the thriving relationship
between scientists engaged in trying to understand planetary processes and
environmentalists actively working to try to protect the planet. It has
helped to rekindle awareness of the social responsibilities of both groups
to a system too often given over to political expediency and simple profit/loss
accounting. The precautionary approach is often criticised for being scientifically
unsound because it advocates action in the absence of scientific proof.
But the more enlightened view holds that such an approach actually increases
the rigour of the scientific process because it is based on an understanding
of the real limitations of science. It allows the scientist to incorporate
a simple ‘don’t know’ or ‘don’t know yet’ into the wider argument, conferring
a greater degree of professional freedom.

In the wake of this reversal of the burden of proof in environmental
studies, it follows that scientific inquiry will need to answer very different
questions in the future. In turn, this will require far-reaching changes
in the way we fund and prioritise our science. Not surprisingly, under current
orthodoxy it often appears that the supposedly impartial scientific process
and its supporting infrastructure are actually biased against environmental
protection. There is, in fact, an unprecedented need for truly independent
research, as we struggle to understand and correct the problems caused by
past and present practices. The powerful instrument of precaution can ensure
the ‘objectivity’ of this scientific work and aid its translation into effective
political action.

Environmentalists and scientists have a joint responsibility to work
together in communicating an honest appraisal of a given situation. They
owe this to the public and to the policy makers who represent the public
interests. The broad methodology obviously differs, but it is wrong to think
that scientists and environmentalists belong to mutually exclusive sets
or that the schools of thought are necessarily polarised. The development
of the precautionary approach attests to the productivity of the working
interface and the genuine desire to extend its breadth and depth. A full
evaluation of green science is not possible if the emergence of this approach
is not taken into consideration.

Any potential problem resulting from scientific uncertainty and which
might threaten interactions between scientists and environmentalists has
thus been resolved for some time. Their relationship is certainly not doomed.
On the contrary, the way is now paved to confront the future challenge of
eliminating the institutional and narrow-minded abuses of science. Then
we will all be able to concentrate on the real task: preserving the planet.

Paul Johnston and Mark Simmonds are environmental scientists working
with the Greenpeace International Science Unit. They have been based at
Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, since 1986.