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 Following my impassioned post on Iceland and it's tiny-brained whalers and tiny-brained hunters a few weeks ago - which I concluded by saying that "I tell you now, if the Icelandic Tourist Board [ITB] offered me a free birding holiday and 5-star luxury accomodation - and Iceland has some great birds somehow surviving amongst its shotgun-toting 'hunters' (to quote from the The Icelandic Hunting Club website: "Seabird (puffin and guillemot) hunting is a very popular sport in Iceland... Hunting from boat, 100 birds per day per hunter is common. Iceland is the only country in the world where you can hunt puffins. No limit" - I'd chuck it back in their face so bloody fast it would hurt..., I recieved an email from an Icelander, Edward Rickson, that has set me thinking quite long and hard.
Edward agreed that Iceland was wrong, for a number of reasons, to have declared themselves a whaling country again, but then went on to say, "...I'm not sure boycotting a country wholesale is an approach I understand. People can do what they want of course and I'm no spokesman for the Icelandic tourist board, but I believe the positive reasons for visiting Iceland far outweigh the negatives reasons for not doing so...I was curious to know how you reconcile your decision not to visit Iceland on the grounds that it hunts whales with your decision to visit such atrocious human rights abusers and environmental vandals like China and the US? I'm not expecting you to justify yourself to me, it's your conscience you have to convince, but it just seems to me that effectively tarring everyone in a country with the same brush just because of one aspect of a country's 'way of life' is misguided and Iceland is a very soft target."
Within an hour of recieving Edward's email I mailed him back offering space on this blog to outline what those "positive reasons" are, and I'm delighted to say that he responded enthusiastically:
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"I can understand your frustration at the latest news that Iceland is unable
to shift its stock of whalemeat. That was known all along. Many people here
in Iceland were dismayed by the decision to recommence commercial whaling,
seeing it as a real step backwards, detrimental to the country's image and
even for those for whom money is the bottom line, a commercial non-starter.
The government was hoping that the issue would be brushed under the carpet
so it's good that you are keeping it in the public eye on your blog.
However, I can't help thinking that suggesting Iceland be boycotted is a
little misguided. Of course, it's up to you, people are free to boycott what
they like. But I think boycotting Iceland as a tourist destination is likely
to come down hardest on the very industry that has been the most vocal
critic of the government's decision, i.e. the Icelandic whalewatching
industry, which has grown rapidly in recent years and I think attracted
90,000 people last year. I should point out that I am not connected with the
tourist industry in any way (and certainly not the government) but I can't
help thinking that Iceland is also a bit of a soft target. How many people
who earnestly say they will boycott Iceland because it hunts whales own
Japanese cars or electrical goods. Quite a few I imagine but selling your
Toyota or Sony may be a bit too inconvenient for some people. Where do
people draw the line when applying a blanket boycott to a country? Would
they visit Brazil, where the rainforest is being destroyed on a large scale,
East Africa where poaching continues due to government ineffectiveness in
many cases? And would people who boycott Iceland have no qualms about
holidaying in countries with appalling human rights records such as China,
the US, Indonesia etc.?
As I said before I have no vested interests in the Icelandic tourist
industry, but just don't see the point of demonising a country due to one
facet of it. In my opinion the positive reasons to visit outweigh the
negative: it really is one of the best places in the world to go
whalewatching, seeing two Blue Whales in 2002 was one of the absolute
highlights of my wildlife watching anywhere in the world. Other good reasons
to visit Iceland which spring to mind, based on personal experience include:
seeing Arctic Foxes patrol the clifftops in the midnight sun, visiting the
biggest seabird colonies in the Atlantic in remote NW Iceland, watching
breeding Harlequins, Barrow's Goldeneye, Red-necked Phalaropes bobbing
around on the same stretch of river whilst a Gyr Falcon looks on,
experiencing the bright nights whilst listening to Great Northern Divers
call out on the water, seeing Snowy Owls stalk Ptarmigan on the tundra,
seeing more breeding Whimbrels and Snipe than you ever thought existed,
watching Great Skuas against the backdrop of Europe's largest icecap,
visiting the vast 'duck factory' of Lake Myvatn, seeing what your
Pink-footed Geese get up to during the summer in the magnificent central
highlands, standing in a massive Leach's Petrel colony with the northern
lights above.
You're free to boycott what you want and right to be indignant about the fin
whale hunt but I'd just like to say that there's more to Iceland than whale
hunting. In the unlikely event that you are offered a free trip here
(nothing is free in Iceland), then you might actually enjoy it and you can
take the opportunity to tell those behind the fin whale hunt exactly what
you think of them."
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There are some very fair points in those paragraphs - and to be fair to myself too, I did say in the original post that "Iceland has some great birds somehow surviving amongst its shotgun-toting 'hunters' " - and they're worth considering. Was I, for example, suggesting some sort of mass boycott of Iceland - or expressing my personal intention not to go there? How can I reconcile not going to Iceland, with continuing to globe-trot to some truly apalling countries? Am I "effectively tarring everyone" by not going to Iceland, rather than just the nation's idiot whalers and hunters?
Plenty of questions there, so I'm going to crack on...
Was I suggesting a boycott, expressing a personal intention - or both? What exactly is a boycott anyway? In sensu stricto to "boycott" is "the act of abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with someone or some organization as an expression of protest or as a means of coercion" Wikipedia: Boycott (the term comes directly from the actions of a Capt. Charles Cunningham Boycott, an English land agent in Ireland whose ruthlessness in dealing with tenants in 1880 led his employees and local businesses to refuse all cooperation with him and his family).
"Abstaining from...dealing with someone or some organization...as an expression of protest". What I wrote was that, "if the Icelandic Tourist Board offered me a free birding holiday and 5-star luxury accomodation...I'd chuck it back in their face so bloody fast it would hurt": clearly then, a boycott. But was I urging everyone to do the same? It's debateable of course, but I really don't think so. It's not my business to organise boycotts, I don't have the influence to make one work, and - contrary to what Edward perhaps thinks - I have had to think about the subject at some length before.
In 2003, during strategy discussions on stopping the catastrophic reclamation of Saemangeum on South Korea's west coast, I was asked - as a founder-member of Birds Korea - whether or not I thought a boycott of South Korea would be an effective form of protest. Many years ago my initial reaction would probably have been "Yes", but in that instance - and in almost all instances since - it was "No". I've no doubt that some of our supporters disagreed with me, but I had a number of reasons then that I think are still valid now.
- Firstly, Birds Korea is a Korean organisation and therefore has many Korean members and supporters - suggesting a 'boycott' in this case would have alienated the very supporters the organisation needs to 'involve'. (In fact, to quote Birds Korea Director Nial Moores on 'involvement', "we feel we need to work with all people of good mind, irrespective of their nationality, for the benefit of the planet.")
- Secondly, a boycott to support a specific campaign has to be highly targeted and rigorously applied.
- What were the targets going to be if we announced a "boycott of Korea", and how could it be related to Saemangeum? Stop tourists from visiting Korea because of a wetland development? That was never going to happen. Somehow affect its economy by boycotting its products? The economy of South Korea is vast (its GDP in 2006 was about USD897.4 billion), and its companies so 'multi-national' that they operate all over the world making it almost impossible, for example, to differentiate between a British-made Korean DVD player and a Korean-made DVD player on sale in Britain.
- Thirdly, if you propose a boycott you have to be sure - for your own and your organisation's sake - that it will be effective: it's a harsh lesson to learn, but your opponents will be watching your efforts keenly and will be looking for ways to discredit you. One of the quickest ways an organisation or an individual can isolate themselves (and/or damage their credibility) is to propose or publicly back a boycott that no-one supports.
How could a small conservation organisation have gone about organising a boycott against such consumer favourites as Hyundai, Daewoo, LG (Lucky-Goldstar), or Samsung - and have any chance of success? It couldn't - what it can and should do is to create a campaign that publicises the organisation's objections as widely as possible, suggest positive solutions or strategies that involve as many stakeholders as possible, and provide accurate and indisputable information that enables people to make up their own minds about the merit of the protest.
The Saemangeum reclamation continues today - as many people will know the sea-wall finally closed off a massive 40,100 hectares of tidal-flat and estuaries last April - but does that mean the strategy Birds Korea followed was the wrong one? I'm convinced that it wasn't: we've helped permanently change the understanding of the value of Korea's wetlands both internally and internationally; we've forged very important links with other conservation organisations and NGOs - both within Korea and overseas; and we're continuing to survey the damage done to what was once one of East Asia's most important wetland for migratory shorebirds to provide accurate scientifically collected information that can be used in any future anti-reclamation campaigns.
We assessed what we could do - rather than what we wanted to do - and achieved a huge amount by doing so.
So how does any of this relate to my Iceland post (you might legitimately ask at this point)? Well, to be very honest, I think I made a mistake in expressing myself in the way I did. What I wrote certainly sounded like a call to boycott Iceland - but I neglected to adhere to my own guidelines and opened myself up to the valid criticisms that Edward went on to make. What I wrote was a statement of my personal intention that (in the admittedly very unlikely circumstances of one being made) I wouldn't accept an invitation from the ITB to visit Iceland with them. Weak, but factually true. What I then did was to make some vague suggestion that other people might do the same: it was half-hearted and a cop-out for reasons I'll look at further down this post.
Firstly though I want to say a few word about Tourist Boards, which are little more than well-funded organisations that have just one aim - to sell a product. They exist solely to persuade a consumer to spend their more limited funds in their country rather than someone else's. The world over they paint the glossiest picture possible whilst ignoring the ignoble or distasteful actions of some of its citizens. The British Tourist Board, for example, will sell images of the guards outside Buckingham Palace without mentioning how our soldiers went abroad and created an Empire on the back of theft and slavery; Korea's Tourist Board sends out glossy photos of the countryside while turning a blind eye to the environmental catastrophe sections of its government sanctioned at Saemangeum; the Indian Board likes to promote the country as "the world's largest democracy" while ignoring the plight of the "untouchables" - a whole sub-class of people with less protection than its cows; China's Tourist Board promotes its long cultural history without a mention of the oppression of Tibet or its awful human rights record; and very few Tourist Boards in the US are currently highlighting America's role in springboarding the rest of us towards World War Three.
Iceland's is no different. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the ITB would ever to want to impress me with a free holiday, but prior to discovering the execrable The Icelandic Hunting Club website, I'd read the following paragraph on the 'Living with Nature' page of the Iceland Tourist Board's website: "Iceland is also home to some of the world's largest colonies of puffins, seabirds beloved the world around whose colorful, clown-like beaks are their most identifying feature. By protecting these remarkable natural sites, Iceland is not only helping to preserve the world's biological heritage, it also helps promote a healthy economy. Increasingly, tourism, including bird watchers who come to see the colonies, has become one of the nation's most important sources of income." How on Earth - in a relatively small country with a low population - can its Tourist Board expect to get way with proclaiming its wealth of seabirds and the protection it gives them while ignoring the fact that it is legal to hunt those same birds with NO BAG LIMIT? It's a ridiculously untenable position to hold. If the ITB wants me to believe it cares about the products it promotes then it should be doing more to change the law to bring Iceland into line with wildife protection laws enforced in most countries within a few hundred miles radius.
So that explains why I aimed my wobbly arrows at the ITB, but not why I think I made several mistakes in the post: I didn't clarify a target nearly clearly enough (Edward's right, of course all Icelanders don't deserve to be 'tarred with same brush' - though I do think it's legitimate to ask just what Icelanders who oppose whaling and hunting are doing to change the current status quo because I for one don't have a clue?), and more importantly I was guilty of "wanting my cake and eating it too" - I didn't actually advocate a mass boycott in what I wrote, but I came very close to it.
So why didn't I? Because I was very unsure what would be achieved if I had. I chickened out. I'm not a conservation organisation, or a world leader - I'm a birder who blogs. I write this blog because I have opinions (which is probably a euphemistic way of saying "I'm opinionated"), and I generally want people to think about what I write and aim to provide the information that, to be frank, I hope will allow readers to agree with what I say (in other words, like every other blogger on the planet I want to be listened to). But at the same time I'm actually quite a reserved and self-questioning person who constantly wonders whether what he has to say has any value. In effect, I want to be influential without appearing like I'm trying to influence anyone in case they turn round and tell me to go away and shut up because I got it all wrong again. I can be frustratingly half-hearted and uncertain really, and it sometimes leads to a diffident writing-style that hints at things without exploring them - like the post on Iceland (though in my own defense I would say that the blog is not my 'job' and I don't have nearly enough time to be as thorough as I'd like).
I'm sure that when Edward wrote in he wouldn't have been expecting me to end up penning a soul-bearing response (friends who know me well will have sighed and taken cover I suspect), but that's been the outcome: he has made me think, and made me aware that I need to say exactly what I mean and be prepared to back up my words when challenged to do so. Like most people I'm practically powerless to change the world I live in on my own - I have limited funds and I have limited time so writing a blog and trying to persuade readers to take action is the extent of what influence and power I do have, and I really ought to be more responsible with that opportunity and be far more clear in stating what I think.
So, in that spirit:
- I know that Iceland has some fantastic wildlife, but until the Government gets its act together and protects that wildlife properly I for one will not go there as a tourist. Being 'real world' I'm not in a position to tell my airline employers which countries I am or am not prepared to work to. Like most people in the developed world I have to work for a living and if I'm told to go to "human rights abusers and environmental vandals like China and the US" then I have to go - so, yes, if I was told to fly to Reykjavík I would go. It's hypocritical, but so are most people's lives to some extent. Let's face facts too: I'm 46, not specialised in any trade or skill, and my chances of getting a job elsewhere now are not high (and - like it or not - I actually enjoy what I do). What I would say though is that if I WAS sent to Iceland when I got there I would try and link up with conservation groups or environmentalists if I could and/or I'd write about the problems and/or solutions I found as clearly as I possibly could (which is what I've been trying to do up to now, but with limited success - I'm going to have to try a lot harder).
And I don't believe for a second that if I came to Iceland waving my tourist pounds around that I'd have any influence whatsoever on the whalers and the hunters. I'd not be remotely likely to meet them and if I did neither side would change their stance. The only people who can influence them are other Icelanders - bird- or whale-watching tour-operators who stand to lose my business, for example, or Icelanders genuinely ashamed that the image their country presents to the world is being drawn by a few whalers ...
My not going to Iceland will change very little, of course, but perhaps publicising the apallingly antiquated and cruel actions of its whalers and the selfish, stupid antics of its puffed-up moronic hunters may do...so that's what I'll continue to do.
And on the other side of the coin, promoting any Icelandic conservation-minded body/group/NGO/individual might change things too. If you're reading this and are Icelandic (or involved in Icelandic environmentalism/conservation) and would like to make a suggestion how we birders can make a positive impact in Iceland then please mail me and I'll post what you have to say.
I hope that's a little more clear.
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Technorati tag - birds, Iceland, boycotts
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