Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.07.2019, Blaðsíða 4

What Are Icelanders
Talking About?
Whales, sugar and an army base
Words: Andie Fontaine/Valur Grettisson Photo: Art Bicnick
The lack of any real market
for whale meat has prompted
Iceland’s whalers to forego the
hunt this season, for the first time
since 2003. The Icelandic National
Broadcast station, RÚV, reports
that this applies not only to endan-
gered fin whales, but also to the far
more plentiful minke whales.
Gunnar Bergmann Jónsson, a
minke whaler and the CEO of whal-
ing company IP Útgerð, said that
his company would skip whaling
to focus on sea cucumbers instead.
The company will, however, import
minke whale meat from Norway to
meet what little demand there is in
Iceland for it, and will likely begin
hunting minke whales again in the
spring of 2020.
After previous attempts led to
lukewarm results, the Directorate
of Health is taking another stab at
a sugar tax, which could be 20% or
higher.
There have long been calls for
the government to establish a sugar
tax. According to a 2013 report from
the Directorate of Health, about
21% of adult Icelanders have a BMI
of 30 or greater, and 5% of children
are overweight. This, among other
findings, the Directorate says,
leads them to the conclusion that
greater measures must be taken to
get Icelanders to eat healthier. A
higher tax on foods high in sugar—
such as candy and soft drinks—has
been one proposed way to do that.
“The last time this was tried, the
price of soft drinks only went up by
about 5 ISK per litre, while at the
same time the price of chocolate
decreased,” assistant director Kjar-
tan Hreinn Njálsson told report-
ers. “Now we are proposing a 20%
increase, which consumers would
actually feel the effects of, while
the 5% hike did not in any way go
far enough.”
According to a declassified 2020
fiscal budget report from the US
Department of Defense, the US
military plans to spend some
$57 million USD on the Keflavík
Naval Base. This will include some
$18 million USD towards upgrad-
ing the airfield’s “dangerous cargo
pad,” a paved area for the loading
and unloading of explosives and
other hazardous cargo, $7 million
USD for beddown site prep, refer-
ring to launching areas for military
aircraft, and the remaining $32
million USD to expand the park-
ing apron, the area where mili-
tary aircraft are parked when not
preparing for take-off.
A proposal currently on the table
with the Parliamentary Budget
Committee suggests repurposing
some 300 million ISK from the 600
million ISK the Icelandic govern-
ment originally allotted for inter-
national aid and direct it instead
towards helping the US build up
the base.
4The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11— 2019First
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NEWS
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Icelanders will not hunt any whales this summer for the first time in 17 years.
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