Against this background, how long can the IWC survive? IWMC believes that the only way to protect whale species in the long-term is to have in place an agreed international management system. By deliberately delaying the RMS, anti-whaling countries and their NGO collaborators are risking the conclusion of the most vital step in the process of protecting whale species. Without an RMS, the IWC is as pointless as a bus that has no seating for any passengers. The RMS is the IWC’s core purpose.

Moreover, an institution whose edicts are diametrically opposed to its mission, that defies all scientific and technical information in its decision-making, that is inconsistent in its approach to quotas, and which makes up its rules as it goes along, is not a reliable protector of whale species.

IWC nations that are not closely aligned to either voting bloc should carefully consider these facts before responding to what has become known as the Berlin initiative. In the 1980s, executive power in the IWC shifted from whaling nations to the bloc that opposes all whale hunting under any circumstances. The new proposal would begin shifting that power again, to anonymous financial backers in wealthy nations, particularly the United States, who would underwrite the work of the Conservation Committee. This would fatally undercut what shreds of authority the IWC has left. Where there is money, there is power. Make no mistake, as soon as external funding groups start to put their cash into the IWC, the membership will be obliged to follow their tune or risk losing the money.

The Conservation Committee would delay the RMS, possibly forever. And it would therefore hasten the demise of the IWC itself, which would finally become so fundamentally divorced from the purposes set down by the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) in 1946 as to be forever irrelevant in whaling affairs.