IWC backs Brazil project to protect whales

Good.

have a naturally endowed right to eat other animals

This must be an attempt at humor. Waiting for the 'rights' were granted by a genetic supreme court.

Furious other nations won't agree with their view. Grow up and go with the group consensus really what's so hard about that?

"The biennial meeting of the 89-nation body passed the host country's "Florianopolis Declaration" which sees whaling as no longer being a necessary economic activity.

Then these anti-whaling nations should leave the IWC, an organization formed and existing for the benefit of the Whaling Industry, and form their-own Anti-Whaling organization.

The biennial meeting of the 89-nation body passed the host country's "Florianopolis Declaration" which sees whaling as no longer being a necessary economic activity.

Indeed. Consumption in Japan is low (going down since the late 60's) while the stocks are getting bigger (doubled between 2000 and 2009, certainly even higher now). Link in japanese :

http://www.asyura2.com/15/senkyo190/msg/913.html

Meanwhile, food waste is several million tons :

https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/Japan-throws-out-620-000-tons-of-food-a-year-while-3-mil-kids-don't-have-enough-to-eat

From the Ministry of Environment, food waste in 2015 was 6.4 million tons. Link in japanese :

https://www.env.go.jp/press/105387.html

It’s not the ideal situation for a whale where “co-existence” means having a harpoon exploded into oneself, is it?

Ask any Japanese about consuming whale and they will go back in time to Junior High where the state included it in their lunches.

Ive met very few Japanese adults choosing whale to be part of their diet

It's high time that the nations with no problems with sustainable whaling quit and form a new body. If the IWC isn't serving the purpose stated in its own name, there's no useful reason for it to exist.

Whales mate and produce offspring - like cows and elephants and all sorts of animals.

The simple thing is you make sure you don't catch them faster than the population is able to naturally replenish itself, and there exists a number above zero at which that is possible. Figuring those rates out is the perfect job for an international organization, but it's not being done (at least by this IWC-joke)

Countries on both sides of the debate on Wednesday voted to renew quotas for limited hunts for indigenous communities in Alaska, Russia, Greenland and the Caribbean -- taking into account their cultural and subsistence needs.

Double standards. Ok for the primitive people to eat their food, but if you dare have high-speed internet you must give up your whale meat.

Whaling should be permitted where it is sustainable, and on no grounds other than that. In the multi-cultural global organization this is the only sensible way.

Australia's commissioner Nick Gales pushed back against suggestions that his country's support for aboriginal whaling was at odds "with our opposition to the commerce of whaling. It is not."

There's nothing wrong with commerce when conducted within the bounds of sustainability, which is the whole point of having an IWC at all.

It wasn't the commerciality of whaling in the past that was at fault, but the lack of sustainable management.

Bintaro,

Consumption in Japan is low (going down since the late 60's) 

The numbers of whales being caught has been going down since the late 60's, and since the 1980's the "moratorium" has seen numbers of whales caught at very low levels.

There's a logic problem if you point at something which is not abundant in supply, and say that low consumption means something of significance. Consumption of anything is naturally correlated with levels of supply, and in case of whales, it's not like supply can be ramped up like it can for, say, coffee beans.

while the stocks are getting bigger (doubled between 2000 and 2009, certainly even higher now).

Certainly, you think. I find recent numbers from last year (2017) at the link below, and the number is less than that in your old link.

http://www.maff.go.jp/j/tokei/kouhyou/suisan_ryutu/reizou_ryutu/

I recall that back in the noughties, Japan was catching higher numbers of whales under it's old research program than it is now.

So again, there is a correlation between the amount that could be consumed, and the availability of that thing to be consumed.

At the end of the day, who cares what the possibilities for consumption are?

What we should focus on is sustainability. If we get that right, commercial operators would take the risks of running their businesses as they see fit.

After a 30 year moratorium, a lot of damage has surely been done to the natural inclinations of most Japanese to eat whales regularly, so I really don't understand what anyone is worried about - unless the worry has nothing to do with sustainability, and is more of an intolerance for it on cultural and/or political grounds.

Whaling does Japan's international image more harm than any other single issue I can think of. 

Seriously? I think the Chinese and Koreans might disagree with you on that.

Whaling is not even a Japan issue. Iceland and Norway and all these other places have historical inclinations to eating whales. Japan is not alone in this, and it isn't even a national issue anyway. People from all over the world have opinions on both sides of the fence, as we see by the range of opinions stated here in English. 

So why these government types see fit to turn up in Florianopolis and pretend like they are speaking on behalf of their citizens is beyond me. I doubt most citizens in any country actually care about this issue at all, it's just a bunch of whale-huggers in some places who make enough noise to get some representation, and are able to disrupt the whaling nations, for which this too is a similarly insignificant issue. Were it a big deal, they surely would have quit the IWC already.

The anti-whaling member nations of the International WHALING Commission just cut their own nose off to spite their face. Japan will now rightfully cancel its voluntary membership in the IWC and the IWC will lose all control or influence over nations that engage in commercial whaling. With this myopic decision and adoption of a "permanent no take" stance the IWC has ceased to exist as an honest body whose charter it is to ensure conservation while managing commercial whaling, not banning it outright.

It's natural and normal in the environment for animals to eat other animals, it's the cycle of life.

Animals eat other animals, including their own kind too. It's natural and normal in the environment for animals.

Wanna try? Lol