Abstract. – After the whaling moratorium had come into force in 1986, the Greenlandic whaling is still categorized as aboriginal subsistence whaling, which means that it is considered as a legitimate subsistence economy of the Greenlandic Inuit. On the contrary, the Japanese coastal whaling is continued as “scientific whaling,” which is internationally criticized as an illegitimate practice with a suspected background of commercial interests. The consideration of the regulation of the international whaling as a form of global environmental regimes shows that the decisions within the International Whaling Commission will be determined by global models and categories of the world polity. [Greenland, Japan, whaling, world polity, global models, culture, indigeneity, environmental regimes]