Elsa Cabrera, Executive Director, Cetacean Conservation Center

In The Odyssey, composed more than 2,500 years ago, the stratagem of the wooden horse did not describe an act of force but an exercise in intelligence applied to deception. After years of unsuccessful siege, Odysseus understood that the walls of Troy would not fall through direct confrontation. So he devised an apparently harmless gift in the form of a peace horse that hid in its belly the soldiers who would destroy it.

On September 28, the 70th plenary meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) begins in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. On its agenda is a peace offering called the Hobart Declaration. Although it is presented in conciliatory language and seeks adoption by consensus, in essence it recalls the epic Greek poem.

The metaphor is not arbitrary. Within the IWC, consensus is not a neutral mechanism. Its imposition is a door that, once opened, allows the interests of a minority to override those of the majority of its members. The Hobart Declaration—presented by Australia, which holds the chair, and Benin, the vice-chair—contains, in its latest version, a paragraph that is far from a gesture of balance. It constitutes a threat to the evolutionary process of this international body.

In its operative section, it states that the Commission commits to “work with relevant international agreements and bodies on matters related to food security…”  The inclusion of this language is neither accidental nor harmless. Among all the resolutions adopted by the IWC this century, only one—the 2006 St. Kitts and Nevis Declaration—mentioned this term. And it appeared in its preamble, not in its operative section. Since then, every attempt to introduce this concept into pro-whaling resolution proposals has been systematically rejected or withdrawn for lack of support.

Although these are just two words that might seem harmless to those unfamiliar with the IWC’s work, food security has been the weapon of Japan’s harpoon diplomacy to promote the elimination of the global moratorium on commercial whaling. Whale meat is falsely presented as an irreplaceable nutritional resource in order to exert pressure and align the IWC with whaling interests. The truth is that the mention of food security in the Hobart Declaration does not seek to alleviate anyone’s dietary needs. Rather, it seeks to open a legal crack through which, sooner or later, the obligation to address issues outside the Commission’s mandate will enter.

Paradoxically, Australia—which in 2014 won a case against Japan before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the asian nation’s whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary—will this week seek to push for the adoption by consensus of a declaration that undermines the very spirit of that historic ruling. That verdict was not only a historic victory for environmental law, but also for the evolutionary interpretation of the IWC—from a body created 80 years ago to hunt whales to one oriented toward conservation and the non-lethal use of cetaceans. The Hobart Declaration, led by the same country that won this case, has chosen to ignore the ICJ’s historic legal recognition of the IWC as an evolving body and to retreat toward a logic more typical of the early last century.

But the irony does not end there. In 2018, the IWC adopted the Florianópolis Declaration, a milestone that defined the Commission’s role in the conservation and management of cetaceans in the 21st century. It explicitly recognizes the evolution of the meaning of sustainable use to include the non-lethal use of these marine mammal species. It also highlights the importance of whale-watching tourism as an economic and cultural activity, as well as the role of living cetaceans in the functioning of marine ecosystems and the nutrient cycle.

By contrast, the Hobart Declaration omits any mention of non-lethal use. It does not recognize the enormous economic, social, and cultural value of whale-watching tourism worldwide. And it chooses to ignore the role of living whales in such pressing issues as climate change mitigation through nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. It also does not refer to the evolution of the IWC over the past eight decades.

What it does include is a dangerous nod to whaling interests in the form of food security and whale population management schemes—or how to calculate catch quotas—just when those interests are weaker than ever. Next February, Iceland will introduce a bill to permanently ban whaling, which would leave Japan and Norway isolated as the only two countries in the world that continue this anachronistic activity.

The minority whaling bloc is well aware of this reality and therefore desperately needs a symbolic victory. The Hobart Declaration, if approved by consensus as Australia seeks, will provide it with institutional recognition that will legitimize whales for food security. This will set a dangerous precedent for future resolutions and will be an unmistakable signal that the Commission would be willing to dismantle decades of evolution in the conservation and non-lethal use of cetaceans.

And it would do so in the midst of the grave consequences facing the planet and humanity because of the triple global crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. We are only just beginning to see the effects of the Super El Niño phenomenon, and whales—which already face serious threats such as vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, among others—will not escape its impacts. The IWC’s work should responsibly confront this reality and redouble its conservation efforts.

The Hobart Declaration, even in its revised version, must be rejected. A declaration that omits non-lethal use, ignores the role of whales in the ecosystem, and opens the door to food security is not a bridge for continued evolution but a trap to roll back decades of cetacean conservation.

Odysseus did not build a horse to pay homage to Troy. He built it to destroy it from within. The Hobart Declaration, dressed as commemoration and consensus, hides the same logic inside. It grants an apparently harmless concession that, once accepted, will allow the whaling bloc to strengthen and advance its interests at the very heart of the IWC.

If the myth of the Trojan Horse taught us that offerings dressed as peace are not always benign, the history of the IWC shows us that consensus, when built on ambiguity, only benefits a minority seeking to eliminate the moratorium and weaken whale conservation around the world.