The sign of a successful conservation organization may be that it’s no longer necessary.
That could be the case for the International Whaling Commission, according to Peter Bridgewater, a former leader of the organization, which was founded in 1946 to address the threat of the whaling industry. The IWC was founded at the height of the whaling industry, which killed thousands of marine mammals per year for oil and other resources.
As global whale populations rebound with unprecedented stamina, Bridgewater and colleagues concluded that the IWC has “outlived its useful life.”
“As the convention nears its 80th anniversary, we propose that the IWC hands over several pending issues to other conventions and national governments and closes up shop,” Bridgewater and colleagues wrote in Nature last week. They note that the commission’s biggest success is in the past - a moratorium it implemented in 1985 has stopped almost all commercial whaling worldwide.
With whale populations rebounding and continuing to grow steadily, the group concluded that wrapping things up now would “send a powerful message about the importance of knowing when to stop.” They added: “By exiting with dignity, the IWC would set a powerful example for the international environmental community.”
The opinion was written alongside conservationists Rakhyun Kim of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, Robert Blasiak of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and Nikolas Sellheim of the Polar Cooperation Research Centre at Kobe University in Japan.
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