Japan Welcomed Decision By Delegates At A UN Wildlife Trade Meeting

Friday, March 19, 2010 at 3:18 pm

DOHA : Japan welcomed on Friday a decision by delegates at a UN wildlife trade meeting to reject a ban on cross-border commerce in rapidly declining Atlantic bluefin tuna, a sushi mainstay.

Backers of a ban, the European Commission and the United States both regretted the result, with the Commission warning the consequences could be catastrophic for the future of the species.

After aggressive lobbying by the Japanese, the controversial proposal was crushed at a meeting in Doha of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The proposal, which had been put forward by Monaco with the backing of the United States and European Union, had needed the support of two thirds of the nations present.

In the end, there were 68 votes against the measure, 20 in favour and 30 abstentions.

“We welcome the rejection” of a ban on cross-border trade of bluefin caught in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic as well as an amendment to allow a moratorium on the ban, a Japanese foreign ministry statement said.

“We will continue our efforts to get understanding of our country’s position” so that the rejection will be adopted at a general meeting on March 24-25, it added.

US Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Tom Strickland lamented the vote as “a setback for the Atlantic bluefin tuna,” but vowed to “keep fighting” for the sustainable management of the fishery.

The European Commission warned that rejecting the ban threatened the species with extinction.

Environmental groups and experts also slammed the result.

“The abject failure of governments here to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna spells disaster for its future and sets the species on a pathway to extinction,” said Oliver Knowles of Greenpeace International.

Last November, ICCAT agreed to cut its catch for bluefin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean regions by 40 percent, from 22,000 tonnes in 2009 to 13,500 in 2010.

Industrial-scale harvesting on the high seas has caused bluefin stocks to plummet by up to 80 percent in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, the two regions which would have been affected by the ban.

A single 220-kilo (485-pound) fish can fetch 160,000 dollars (120,000 euros) at auction in Japan, which consumes three quarters of all bluefin caught in the world, mainly as sushi and sashimi.

Meanwhile, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned that another expensive delicacy, caviar, had pushed sturgeon into the most threatened creature on the planet.

“Four species are now possibly extinct,” it said in a report on the conference sidelines.