Connecting to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission for the Okinawa Dugong
On July 10, 2020, led by the Okinawa Environmental Justice Project, seventy-one Okinawan and Japanese civil society organizations and groups (including one Philippine organization) sent a letter of request and a civil society report to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission (MMC), the U.S. federal agency in charge of overseeing the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act. Okinawa Group's Visit to MMC in 2014 The letter asks the MMC to review and comment on the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) efforts for the conservation of the Okinawa dugong, an endangered marine mammal, Japan’s Natural Monument, and Okinawa’s cultural icon, in relation to the construction of a U.S. military base in Henoko-Oura Bay, Okinawa, Japan. In particular, it calls on the MMC to examine the DoD’s contention made six years ago that construction and operation of the base would have “no adverse effects” on the marine mammal. The report details how the DoD contention was influenced by the Japanese government’s f