Posts Tagged ‘Denmark’
Day Two of IWC 2016
This is meant as a brief update on progress and hurdles this morning at IWC66 in Slovenia. We shall update when we get another gap between sessions. IWC66/09 South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary The day started badly for the whales when the Schedule Amendment that would have established the South Atlantic Sanctuary (#SAWS) was defeated with…
Read MoreDenmark: Wanting their whale and eating it
So Denmark has submitted its opening statement to the IWC and I guess the question is, have they learned their lesson since the last meeting? One reading of the statement would suggest that Denmark wants to ‘have their cake’, and, as the old saying goes, quite literally, ‘eat it’. I asked in a previous post…
Read MoreA Kingdom divided
It seems that whilst Denmark has been doing its utmost within the EU to pander to its overseas territories in Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the Danish citizens of these two distant lands are not so grateful. The Arctic Journal (20th October 2016) reports that Greenland and the Faroes are demanding that Denmark, their representative…
Read MoreA day of highs and lows for whales: round-up of final day of the IWC meeting in Slovenia
The day began with the Distinguished Commissioner for Australia reporting on the Finance and Administration Committee, noting that Japan has offered to Chair the ‘Working Group on Support for New Countries’. There is some laughter in the margins, as many people believe Japan has already been running its own ‘Recruitment Working Group’. There is some debate…
Read MoreGreenland and the IWC – what comes next?
The issue of whaling in Greenland is, of course, an emotive one. For those that do not wish to see any whales killed, they find it hard to understand why anyone would or could kill a whale in any circumstance. For the indigenous hunter in Greenland whose parents and grandparents have hunted whales for millennia,…
Read MoreWhilst the EU sacrifices political capital for Greenlandic whaling, what are Greenland and the Faroese doing?
So the EU Commission is extending itself to support Greenland’s demands for overturning the IWC’s accepted criteria for aboriginal subsistence whaling (ASW), but what is Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Denmark’s two North Atlantic overseas territories doing to help the EU Commission? Well, nothing it would seem. The Arctic Journal reports that whilst ‘foreign policy in…
Read MoreHas The Netherlands broken ranks to criticise Greenlandic whaling?
The EU Commission has been working hard to keep all EU members aligned with its instructions that they must support Denmark and Greenland and to date, has suffered no criticism without retalitory private hand slaps being handed out to wayward countries that didn’t swallow the Greenland pitch that it should be able to sell to tourists…
Read MoreWho really benefits from the EU Commission’s drive to deliver Greenland a quota?
With apologies to Abba Eban, one used to be able to say that ‘the EU could always be counted on to do the right thing…but only after they have exhausted all other possibilities’. And, whilst that particular line is a cliché applied to many nations and institutions, it’s normally true in my experience in respect…
Read MoreThe whale hunters killing in the name of Science
On a day when the Japanese Prime Minister once again pledged the Japanese taxpayer to foot an increasingly costly programme to reopen Antarctic whaling, the BBC is reflecting on British whaling in Antarctica and its place in history. The contrast could not be more real. One country with a tradition of whaling, the UK, consigning…
Read MoreThe Longest Days
Hans Peter Roth, an independent Swiss journalist who is conducting outreach in the Faroes in collaboration with WDC, shares his perspectives through another blog. Monday June 24th, 2013 Slættaratindur is a lonely place. Yet it is hardly ever silent on the Faroes’ highest mountain. Storms roar and oftentimes the subarctic peak sticks into the clouds. Once…
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