But Francis Chow, a local businessman who is blamed for restraining and stressing out eight dolphins in a tiny shallow pool for six months informed that his park was neither killing nor breaking any laws on dolphin trade rather exporting them to marine parks in Australia or the US. In response to the protest, Chow said the hypocrite protestors should stop driving Japanese cars, and should harass the Japanese whalers.

However, Chow seemed to be unaware of the fact the people behind the protest played a part to delay Japanese dolphin or whaling hunt last season. Renowned dolphin activist and member of Earth Island Institute’s Marine Mammal Team Ric O’Barry along with his son Lincoln O’Barry exposed the world to the shocking truth of slaughter of thousands of dolphins in Japan in an award winning documentary called ‘The Cove’ last year.

Despite opposition from both the Australian and New Zealand governments, Solomons dolphins are captured and sold to aquariums, marine parks and even hotels around the world, often fetching as much as $200,000. The Earth Island Institute’s effort to stop dolphin trade is believed to have converted the so-called ‘Darth-Vader’ of the Solomons’ dolphin trade, the Canadian Chris Porter from a seller to a savior.

Makili said the Solomons government once banned the trade but now, in the pursuit of much-needed revenue, ignored directives by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Though Solomons government allows about 50 from the earlier quota of 100 dolphins, the CITES recommends just 10 numbers.

Some Solomon Islanders still hunt dolphins for food and use their teeth for traditional ‘shell money’ but since 2003 they have also been hunted to exploit the lucrative live export market. The documentary ‘The Cove’ had exposed the senseless annual slaughter of approximately 20,000 dolphins at the remote Taiji, Japan.

The O’Barry father-son combine is showcasing another mini-series on massive ecological crimes happening worldwide. The Animal Planet on August 27, 2010 would be airing a three-part mini-series titled “Blood Dolphins”, and would highlight how the tiny nation of nearly 1,000 islands in the South Pacific has emerged as a major challenge in the blood trade of wild dolphins.

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The Trade Minister’s words were marked by clear ideas on which the country’s economic path would be paved in the coming years regardless of its size. He said NZ started its reform process 30 years ago with very high protectionist barriers but now was solidly centred on reciprocal trade liberalisation.

Groser shifted his focus from the FTA talks to WTO negotiations and expressed dismay over the inertia at the WTO. He said the WTO negotiating process was suffering from sclerosis, and criticized the WTO Director General’s use of the metaphor of having done 80 percent of the negotiation. He added that but last 20 percent or whatever number one chose to illustrate the remaining negotiating gap – was proving elusive.

He arrayed data on NZ trade policies including the collective effort in the early 1990s that it would not put all its eggs in the then GATT or now WTO basket. He pointed out since then, while emphasising multilateral trade policy, successive NZ Governments had aggressively and successively pursued a bi-partisan strategy of developing FTAs with economies which were either major trading partners or promised to be – i.e. the emerging economies.

“All projections suggest that in even twenty to thirty years’ time, the countries with the largest populations will have the largest economies. We will be living in a truly multi-polar world in which we are highly likely to have four economic super-powers with huge populations (China, India, the US and the hybrid model of the 27 Member EU) plus a range of very significant economies on a second tier including Japan, Korea, Indonesia and, of course the other of the so-called ‘BRICs’ – the formulation that includes not just China and India but also Brazil and Russia”, claimed Groser.

The gist of the address disclosed that NZ current FTAs including China, Thailand, Singapore and Chile and future FTAs or any other trade deals were and will be designed to follow an extreme application of what is called ‘first mover advantage’ strategy – getting in first, to avoid the possibility of being left to last.

NZ is the first developed country to have established a comprehensive FTA with China. Besides, NZ has negotiated a parallel FTA with Hong Kong – NZ is the only country in the world so far, other than China itself, to have such a relationship.

At a glance, the NZ-Russia FTA opens up business opportunities for not only the NZ dairy industry but also extend to other areas such as agro-tech, tourism and education. New Zealand’s exports to Russia are worth NZ$187mn ($127mn) last year, of which about two-thirds are dairy products. That’s just a fraction of the more than the $30bn of food Russia purchases annually.

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Nevertheless, both Smith and NZ Prime Minister John Key, at different occasions reiterated that the ETS would take effect on the energy and transport sectors in July despite calls from business groups, farmers and Act, an agro-friendly and anti-ETS organization. The business groups fear NZ firms bearing the cost of the domestic ETS will be competitively disadvantaged compared with rivals from countries with no effective carbon pricing mechanism, a view that is shared by the Federated Farmers and Act.

According to latest reports, apart from the Federated Farmers and Act and nine other business groups including Major Electricity Users’ Group, the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) has also joined the side in exerting pressure on the government to delay international commitment on carbon reduction. The EMA chief executive Alasdair Thompson said “Our financial situation is far too fragile to absorb the extra $255mn the government calculates the ETS will cost all of us.”

Though Smith claims an average NZ family could expect a meagre 165 NZ dollars (US$116) annual increase in expenses from July, it is estimated, particularly since the ETS would be covering transport and energy, the annual family expenditure would be manifold than his assumption. The ETS would be introduced in come July on the energy, transport and industrial sectors with a 50 percent obligation.

The NZ ETS legislation allows for a formal review of the scheme in 2011 along with an increase in obligations from Jan 1, 2013. The ETS is effective on forestry from 2008; and agriculture, which makes up the half of NZ’s emissions, will be included in the scheme in 2015. Some of the major reasons for growing opposition in NZ against the ETS are cited as the absence of consensus among many nations on paucity of time on implementation, trade disadvantages, cost escalation on essentials and stringent NZ ETS norms on all sectors.

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The US action comes after the EU re-introduced its export subsidy program in early this year. Many industry observers felt these moves would only trigger more protectionist measures from countries those are affected by this action. Though these declared subsidies are within the WTO limits there would be political pressure within the affected countries to retaliate and prompt them to reverse their decision.

Trade Minister Simon Crean and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke of Australia in a joint statement said that they would try to garner support from other countries to pressurize the US to reverse its decision at the Cairns Group Ministerial meeting in Bali in early next month. The Cairns Group is a coalition of 19 agricultural exporting nations which account for over 25 percent of the global agricultural exports that aims to liberalise trade in the respective sector.

New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser said dairy farmers the world over were under pressure, but the US move was a short-sighted response while the international dairy market had recently been showing signs of stabilising. New Zealand is the largest dairy merchandise export earner and second largest meat export earner with nearly 24 and 12 percent share respectively in total goods exported. The price advantage enjoyed by New Zealand dairy products will get diluted in the global market with the re-introduction of US handout to its dairy exports.

Nonetheless, the president of the Australian National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) David Crombie warned the US handout would only shore up domestic jobs in the short-term but undermines the possibilities of faster global economic recovery. Similarly, Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter echoed the sentiments of the NFF, contending that the US decision had the potential to damage a world dairy market which remained fragile.

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