Togo is cosponsoring a proposal to review commercial whaling quotas, drawing criticism from whale conservation groups. The draft resolution was submitted for discussion at the upcoming 70th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which will be held Sept. 27 to Oct. 2. Togo was the only African nation to support the proposal, which was spearheaded by the Caribbean island nation Antigua and Barbuda. Neither of these countries conduct commercial whaling themselves. In response, the West and Central African Coalition for Whales which facilitates dialogue about whaling among African nations, issued a public statement calling on governments to remove support initiatives that weaken international whale protections or revive commercial whaling. The resolution “is hard to reconcile with West and Central African priorities, where no country conducts commercial whaling and where the urgent issues are bycatch, habitat degradation and the protection of marine ecosystems,” Colonel Abba Sonko, a Senegalese wildlife conservation expert and representative of Senegal’s CITES Management Authority, told Mongabay via email. In 1986, the IWC global moratorium on the exploitation of whales went into effect and set catch limits for all whales to zero. However, a few countries, including Japan, Norway and Iceland, continue whaling. Togo’s support of the recent proposal is not the first time an African nation has backed a review of whaling. Countries such as Senegal, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire have endorsed similar proposals before and played a key role in blocking the creation of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary between Latin America and Africa, which…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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