Sexy

Vassili Papastavrou of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has just asked me how many hits or visitors Chez Rémi gets everyday. So, I've thought I'd try to increase the number today, by giving this catchy title to this post. It's well known that, according to Internet statistics "sex" is by far the word people all over the world look for and click on the most on Google and other search engines. I suppose that by extension, the word "sexy" is a good magnet too. (Sorry, guys, if reading this piece feels like a coitus interruptus).

I'm in Florida this week, at a fairly small intersessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), where discussions are on-going on the future of what many world citizens consider (in the NGO jargon) sexy animals (iconic, that is).

The three-year process called "Future of the IWC" is reaching an end, with the next annual meeting of the whaling commission scheduled to take place in three months in Morocco.

This week's Small Working Group is looking at a "not agreed draft" available on the IWC website. The Secretariat has also posted on the website several useful documents, including the Power Point presentation used by the meeting's chairman yesterday to summarize the state of play so far, and the presentation by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand who chairs the so-called IWC Support Group which is trying to flesh out a compromise package liable to put the IWC on a new track.

As you can see, even though I'm in Florida, I'm not exactly having fun this week (no sex either of course). But no-one among the governments represented here rules out that there could be a breakthrough in whale conservation in the next three months. And that would be exciting.