Idiots. Morons. Blockheads. Numbskulls. Nothing quite captures the mind-withering stupidity of what has just happened in Doha. Swayed by Japan and a number of other countries, some of them doubtless bought off in traditional fashion, the members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) have decided not to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Those who opposed suspending trade in the species argued that the temporary ban proposed by Monaco would devastate their fishing industries. There is some truth in this: for the years in which bluefin stocks would have been allowed to recover, the export ban would have put people out of work and reduced the output of their industry. But the absence of a ban ensures that, after one or two more seasons of fishing at current levels, all the jobs and the entire industry are finished forever, along with the magnificent species that supported them. The insistence that the fishing can continue without consequences betrays Olympic-class denial, a flat refusal to look reality in the face.

One of the commenters on a Guardian thread this week, who lives in Japan and uses the tag Kimpatsu, related his experiences of trying to discuss these issues.

"the Japanese policy towards both Bluefin tuna and whales has two engines of motivation. The first is the fact that the average Japanese is in denial about the imminent extinction of these creatures; the thought runs that as they have always eaten these animals (and many Japanese mistakenly think that the whale is a fish) since time immemorial, they will be able to continue doing so indefinitely into the future. When pressed on the subject of hunting to extinction, they grow aggressive. (I know from personal experience.) The second reason is the low-grade paranoia that informs all Japanese interaction with the outside world; the notion of Nihon tataki (Japan-bashing) is omnipresent. If you protest against whaling or tuna fishing, you're a cultural imperialist. If you point out that some Japanese are members of Greenpeace or oppose whaling (my GP is one), then "you don't understand Japanese mind so much". Remember: all your actions against whaling and overfishing are driven by a deep-seated, irrational hatred of Japan. Consequently, when you push, they push back."

I have no idea how representative this is, but the attitudes Kimpatsu describes were powerfully represented in The Cove, the film about the secret dolphin slaughter in Japan which won the 2010 Oscar for best documentary. The massacre it exposed is pointless, counter-productive and profoundly damaging to Japan's international image, but it was fiercely defended by what seemed to be the entire political establishment. Denial is evident everywhere on earth, but in the Japanese fishing and whaling industries it seems to have been raised to an art-form.

But it would be wrong to blame only Japan for this. In fact the only nations which unequivocally stood up for a ban were Monaco, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, Norway and Kenya. It's good to have the UK and US on board, especially after eight years of sabotaging international treaties by the Bush administration, but the feeble or hostile response of many other countries was deeply depressing. The EU, some of whose members are major tuna exporters to Japan, supported a ban, but only if it was delayed until May 2011, by which time tuna stocks might pass the point of no return. Several nations simply rebuffed what the fisheries scientists say and insisted that they could carry on as usual without ill-effect. It's Easter Island all over again.

This proposal was brought before the meeting in Doha for just one reason: the nations charged with managing the tuna fishery have flunked it. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat), which is supposed to discharge this task, is in urgent need of a new name: it should be called the the International Commission for the Cleansing of Atlantic Tunas. It has repeatedly set catch limits way above what its own scientists have proposed, and turned a blind eye to illegal bluefin catches which probably outweigh the legal take.

Now Japan, as if to show that it really doesn't care what happens to the industry it claims to support, has said that it should be Iccat, not Cites, which continues to decide how many tuna are caught. It's like putting Cruella de Ville in charge of the Battersea Dog's Home.

Behind all this lurks a simple calculation. The businessmen currently fishing the Atlantic bluefin to extinction know that while any members of the species survive there is no cut-off point for the profits they make. The scarcer tuna become, the higher the price each carcass fetches. Once the fish have been exterminated, the investors can just shift their vast profits into another industry. It makes perfect economic sense. The shocker is that the nations which are supposed to regulate these crooks have let them get away with it. In doing so, they are reducing the king of fish to an expendable asset in a bent accountant's ledger.

monbiot.com