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Convention for the Regulation of Whaling |
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Link
to text of agreement
Status
of agreement
| Basic information |
| Date of adoption | 24 September 1931 |
| Place of adoption | Geneva, Switzerland |
| Entry into force | 16 January 1935 |
| Authentic text(s) | English, French |
| Summary of agreement |
The Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was adopted, in September 1931, as a result of concerns about the status of large whales following a period of considerable expansion and industrialization of the whaling industry in the early part of the twentieth century. The Convention was formally negotiated under the auspices of the League of Nations, by a subcommittee of the Economic Committee of the League, although it was in fact the product of a number of years of cooperative effort between whaling nations which first took place within the Whaling Committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in the mid-1920s. In particular, at the 1927 meeting of the Committee, the Norwegian delegate proposed that whaling countries prohibit the further expansion of whaling and institute a licensing system, and in 1930, on the recommendation of the Committee, the International Bureau of Whaling Statistics was established.
The main objective of the Convention, which applied only to "baleens or whalebone whales", was to establish, for the first time, a set of regulations for whaling activities of global application (including territorial waters within national jurisdiction). Under the Convention, contracting parties undertook to take appropriate measures to license their vessels. Salaries of gunners and crew were required to be based on the size and species of the whale and the value and yield of the oil. The Convention also contained a number of specific conservation measures, something which at the time was still relatively uncommon in marine resource treaties. In particular, the Convention prohibited the taking or killing of calves, immature whales and female whales accompanied by calves and the taking of right whales and several other species was prohibited.
Despite the introduction of regulatory and conservation measures under it, the Convention had little impact on the whaling industry, in part because it was not accepted by a number of major whaling nations (notably Japan, the USSR, Argentina and Chile). Despite a number of commercial agreements between whaling companies in the 1930s to limit production so as to maintain prices (following significant oversupply of whale oil as a result of high catches, particularly in the 1930-1931 season), the over-harvesting of whales continued throughout the 1930s and, in 1937, a new agreement was negotiated: the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling.
| Further information and references |
- Bibliographic references
Vallance, 'The International Convention for Regulation of Whaling and the Act of Congress Giving Effect to Its Provisions', 31 American Journal of International Law 112 (1937)
- Additional references
155 LNTS 349