JAPAN is inching closer to forcing the resumption of commercial whaling. Over the next few days, it may wrest control of the International Whaling Commission, which has imposed a global ban on commercial whaling for 20 years. Environmentalists are accusing Japan of buying votes on the IWC by promising foreign aid to small island nations that agree to join the commission and vote with it. But such tactics are not new: the claims are reviving memories of how conservationists secured the moratorium in the first place.
That campaign was led by Peter Scott, head of the then World Wildlife Fund.…
