U.S. court upholds whaling

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 11

U.S. court upholds whaling

NZPA-Reuter Washington In a defeat for environmentalists, the United States Supreme Court upheld an agreement between the United States and Japan yesterday that allowed Japanese whaling despite an international ban. The nation’s highest court, in a 5-4 decision, overturned a United States Court of Appeals ruling that ordered the Reagan Administration to impose severe economic sanctions against Japan for violating an international whaling ban instituted in 1982. The case concerned an agreement between Washington and Tokyo reached two years ago that allowed Japan to take as many as 1200 sperm

whales over four years without facing American economic sanctions. In return Japan agreed to drop its objections to the world whaling ban and to cease all commercial whaling by 1988. The agreement was challenged in court by Greenpeace and 11 other environmental groups. They argued that the agreement violated a law passed in 1979 that required the United States Government to cut the fishing rights in half as a penalty for any nation certified as violating the international whaling ban. The Reagan Administration, backed by the Japanese fishing and whaling industries, said that sanctions would ruin Japan’s SUSSO million

($92.5 , million)-a-year whaling industry. Justice Byron White, writing for the Court majority, said the law gave the United States Commerce Secretary, Mr Malcolm Baldrige, discretion to decide whether Japan’s promise of future compliance contributes to the international whaling ban. Congress did not intend economic sanctions for each violation of the International agreement banning whaling, Justice White said. But Justice Thurgood Marshall disagreed: “Since 1971 Congress has sought to lead the world in preventing the extermination of whales and other threatened species of marine animals. "It is uncontested here

that Japan’s taking of whales has been flagrant, consistent and substantial. Japan should be punished under the law.” At issue were three near-extinct species of whales. The environmental groups said continued Japanese whaling in the Pacific and Antarctic oceans threatened the survival of the sperm and two other whales. The dispute over whales threatened to disrupt United States-Japanese relations, which already had been strained by growing trade tensions. The five-year international whaling ban was imposed in 1982 to help increase the depleted whale population and give scientists time to study the problem.