Academic proposes whale-watching tax to end Japanese whaling+

SYDNEY, Sept. 7 Kyodo -
An Australian academic proposes that whale-watching tourists be taxed A$5
(about $4.50) to help compensate Japan for the loss of their whaling industry,
a local daily reported Tuesday.
Clevo Wilson, an economics professor at the Queensland University of
Technology, told The Courier-Mail newspaper that paying whalers to stop their
annual hunt would be more effective than legal action.
Australia launched a legal bid in May in the International Court of Justice to
stop Japan's whaling activities in the Antarctic Ocean.
''Traditional communities in whaling countries fear that their livelihoods and
their way of life would disappear if they were to stop killing whales,'' Wilson
told the newspaper.
Wilson said whales are worth more to Japan dead and believes a levy on
Queensland's lucrative whale watching industry could fund a compensation scheme
for Japan and other pro-whaling nations.
''If the countries for whom whales are worth more alive than dead charged a
small levy of, say, A$5 per whale-watching tourist, whale-watching countries
could compensate those (countries) for whom a dead whale is worth more than a
live one,'' Wilson said.
Hervey Bay, a small town off the coast of Queensland, earns about A$50 million
a year from whale watching tourism alone, he said.
According to Wilson, the global whale-watching industry has grown from ''9
million whale watchers across 87 countries in 1998 to 13 million whale watchers
in 119 countries in 2008.''
However, Queensland whale-watching operator Peter Lynch told the Australian
Broadcasting Corp. that such a levy would hurt local tourism.
''If you put more economic pressures on operators, you might end up with less
operators. Therefore you get less people seeing the whales and less interest in
protecting them,'' Lynch said.
==Kyodo
2010-09-08 00:04:24