Earlier this year I was Rapporteur for the Canberra Panel of Independent International Legal and Policy experts which examined the legality of Japanese special permit whaling in the Southern Ocean in light of Japan's obligations as a party to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and other instruments, including the 1991 Environmental Protocol, which make up the Antarctic Treaty System.
The Chair of the Canberra Panel, Professor Don Rothwell, and I have now co-authored a short piece for a new US journal - the Michigan State University Public Policy Journal - which explores several of the themes considered in the report of the Canberra Panel.
Abstract
In 2009, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Over its fifty-year existence the Treaty and the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) built upon it, have promoted freedom of scientific research in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Despite the many successes of the Antarctic legal regime, there has been growing disquiet over the conduct by Japan, an Antarctic Treaty party, of its ‘special permit’ whaling program in the Southern Ocean. This program now has a lengthy history stretching back to the late 1980s, and has been undertaken purportedly in reliance on the 1946 International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, which allows whaling for scientific purposes in limited circumstances. It has also been pursued on the assumption that the global whaling regime takes priority over the disciplines imposed by the regionally-focused Antarctic Treaty System which seeks, among other things, to promote scientific research in Antarctica and to protect the Antarctic ecosystem. The article examines the interaction between the Antarctic and whaling regimes and argues that the main environmental text in the ATS, the 1991 Environmental Protocol, imposes obligations upon Japan to minimise or eliminate the environmental risks of its burgeoning Southern Ocean whaling program.
You can find the full text of the article here.