Resolution 1999-5

RECALLING the directives by the Commission to the Scientific Committee and its Standing Working Group on
Environmental Concerns (SWGEC) to consider and act on all priority areas for assessing the impact of
environmental change on cetaceans;
NOTING that, while it has identified a number of priority areas that need to be addressed in future years, the
SWGEC has agreed to focus on one or two priority topics for consideration at each meeting in order to ensure
maximum effectiveness of the working group;
NOTING that, at the 51st Annual Meeting, the SWGEC identified, and the Scientific Committee strongly
endorsed, its research priorities as:
(1) SOWER 2000, a collaborative, interdisciplinary, international survey programme in the Southern Ocean with
CCAMLR and Southern Ocean GLOBEC; and
(2) POLLUTION 2000+, an interdisciplinary programme of work to investigate pollutant cause-effect
relationships in cetaceans;
RECOGNISING that, in order to research and provide recommendations to the Commission on these topics, as
well as additional priorities, the Scientific Committee will need additional funds to allow it to initiate research
programmes and to invite participants with relevant expertise in these priority areas; and
RECALLING that the Commission has agreed that the Scientific Committee should develop a co-operative
research programme that will enable it to provide advice to the Commission on stock structure and abundance of
fin and minke whales off West Greenland
NOW THEREFORE THE COMMISSION:
ENDORSES the SOWER 2000 and POLLUTION 2000+ research programmes recommended to it by the
Scientific Committee;
DECIDES to provide £126,000 from its budget for 1999/2000 as core funding for research on environmental
threats to cetaceans, of which £100,000 shall be withdrawn from the Commission reserves;
URGES Contracting Governments, other governments, international organisations and other bodies to contribute
financially and in kind to these programmes;
DIRECTS the Chairman of the Scientific Committee to ensure that scientists with relevant expertise in the
priority areas of the SWGEC are adequately represented in the list of Invited Participants to the Scientific
Committee; and
AGREES to the feasibility study recommended by the Scientific Committee concerning research into fin and
minke whales off West Greenland and, in the light of the results, to give due priority to research on these issues
in 2000/2001 and subsequent years.