In a letter sent to tuna importers last August, the WDCS says: ‘No one
currently trading in tuna can be completely confident that the tuna being
bought, or the canneries being dealt with, are in fact ‘dolphin-friendly’.’
It goes on to demand that tuna producers ‘cease the printing of labels carrying
‘dolphin-friendly’ statements or logos immediately, and remove any such
labelling from existing cans’.

But not one company has responded. Tony Dwerihouse of John West, Britain’s
biggest importer of tuna, says: ‘In August WDCS contacted us and said they
weren’t totally happy with the dolphin-friendliness of our products and
asked us to remove the labels. But you can’t take these things off willy-nilly
and we didn’t think they were justified in making this request.’

In 1990, the WDCS made an agreement with most of the country’s importers.
Only two companies belonging to the industry association, BACFID, which
represents 75 per cent of companies, did not sign up. Any company that signed
up to the WDCS scheme ‘must be dolphin-friendly’ says Walter Anzer, of BACFID.

According to Greenpeace, tens of thousands of dolphins are killed each
year by tuna fleets. They die entangled in the ‘wall of death’ drift nets
or are killed by boats using a technique called ‘setting-on-dolphins’, where
dolphins are rounded up in order to catch schools of tuna that swim beneath
them.

The WDCS launched its labelling scheme in a blaze of publicity. Canners
that joined the scheme agreed to buy tuna caught by methods other than drift
netting or setting-on-dolphins. Under the agreement, they have to keep records
of fishing methods, and dates and locations of the catches, and to allow
representatives of the society to inspect the canneries. Signatories to
the scheme agreed to stop buying from any suppliers who broke the agreement.

The scheme has been controversial from the start, partly because the
WDCS has been secretive about the terms of the agreement. Wildlife Link,
a coalition of 10 wildlife organisations, including the World Wide Fund
for Nature (WWF), the RSPCA, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
and Greenpeace, has never accepted that ‘companies which label their tuna
‘dolphin-friendly’ have first substantiated the claim’.

Sales of tinned tuna rose 4.1 per cent in 1991, and a long-term growth
of 5 per cent a year is forecast by Princes, another leading importer. Andy
Ottaway of Greenpeace attributes the increase to the labelling scheme. ‘Sales
are up because dolphin-friendly labels lead to massive consumer complacency
by making people think the problem has been solved. It hasn’t. The sad fact
is that dolphin-friendly labels were a commercial decision by companies
looking to protect their profits, not dolphins.’

Dwerihouse says: ‘No one has put the dolphin-friendly claim on their
cans unless they feel justified in making the claim. At the end of the day,
importers put labels on their cans based on the strength of their own work
with the canneries.’

After the failure of its current labelling system, the WDCS is now developing
a new scheme, with the Earth Island Institute, the group that oversees the
American ‘dolphin-safe’ scheme.

But David Bowles of the EIA is not convinced that such schemes protect
dolphins. He calls for a scheme with government support, backed by European
Community laws and a powerful monitoring body. Ottaway agrees: ‘Only when
we have a ban on dolphin-deadly tuna, linked to an international agreement,
will we really see dolphins being saved.

A report released during The Other Economic Summit (TOES), a regular
event which takes place in parallel with the main meeting, listed details
of what it described as the G7’s ‘failure to address nine crucial issues:
atmosphere and energy, species and habitats, water and oceans, transport,
land use, agriculture, waste, global relations and the public right to know’.

Andrew Lees, campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, said that the
last two summits had been ‘tinged with green’. But he added: ‘Whilst the
G7 may have learnt green reform, they have since done nothing’.

John Major, who is hosting the G7 meeting, last week called for decisive
leadership on environmental issues. ‘We have been too much like Billy Bunter,
happily consuming without reckoning the cost,’ he said. It is widely expected
that, partly as a result of Major’s pressure, considerable reference will
be made to environmental issues in the summit’s final communique, due to
be published later in the week.

However on a G7 scorecard prepared by various environmental groups,
Britain comes bottom on pollution and global warming. It has no action plan
for reducing greenhouse gases or increasing energy effeciency, renewable
energy or clean-up equipment for power stations to curb acid rain. ‘If Billy
Bunter had failed so badly, he would have been expelled from school,’ said
David Gee, director of FOE.

Other European countries fared equally poorly on the scorecard. Germany,
usually seen as Europe’s leader on green issues, scored worst on transport.

‘Whilst we’re the only G7 country with no motorway speed limit’, said
Dr Angelika Zahrnt, of FOE-Germany, ‘our new transport policy for the eastern
part of Germany relies on roads. A chance to develop a green transport policy
from scratch in Germany has been lost’.

The Italians scored lowest on waste. ‘Despite plans to phase out nuclear
power,’ said a representative of the Italian Green Party ‘the illegal export
of toxics to the Third World continues’.

But it was the US, the most powerful of the G7 countries which produces
23 per cent of all greenhouse gases, which was most heavily criticised.
‘If all nations used this much energy we’d have a five-fold increase in
greenhouse emissions and a five degree temperature rise in ten years’, said
Jim Tripp of the US Environmental Defense Fund.

The most damning criticism of the G7 came from the Third World. Maneka
Gandhi, India’s outspoken former minister for environment, accused the G7
countries of ‘keeping the Third World on the debt/poverty hook, whilst vastly
over-consuming and polluting themselves’.

Over-consumption in the First World relies on under-consumption in the
Third, but the Third will be the first to suffer the consequences, she said.
‘If global warming occurs, the cyclone that killed 150 000 in Bangladesh
will be far more devastating . . . and the famine that is killing millions
in Africa could wipe out life itself in that region.’ Douglas Korsah-Brown,
of FOE-Ghana, said that 60 per cent of Ghana’s foreign exchange earnings
are eaten up in debt repayment, for which the country had to rely on natural
resources. ‘With rising population and an economy which can’t create any
capital, the first victim is the environment’ he added.

Like Gandhi, he believes the G7 will fail the Third World if concrete
agreements on debt relief are not reached during this week’s summit. ‘Not
only do we need debt relief, but we need a reversal of the outflow of resources’,
said Korsah-Brown. ‘For Africa, if not most of the Third World, this is
now a matter of survival.’

The TOES meeting called for the G7 countries to stop recycling their
old rhetoric and start drawing up concrete legislation, timetables and budgets
to address crucial environment and development issues. Delegates to the
alternative meeting said that a business-as-usual approach was no longer
acceptable.