Resources for International Cooperation

  • Evaluation
    • Japan has achieved major decoupling of environmental deterioration from economic growth during the two last decades in terms of SOx, NOx, fertilizers and pesticides.
    • With the First and Second Basic Environment Plans, Japan established the necessary platform for integrating environmental concerns in sectoral planning; the Central Environment Council reviews progress reports from the various ministries implementing the plans. Environmental concerns are also part of the annual national budgeting process.
    • Integration of environmental concerns and fiscal policies has begun with the ongoing greening of the automobile tax and automobile acquisition tax.
    • Despite quite advanced and sometimes exemplary policies, the decoupling achieved in the 1990s has not been sufficient in some areas. For instance, CO2 emissions continue to grow at about the same rate as GDP.
    • Strategic environmental assessment is not yet systematically applied to environmentally relevant sectoral policies, plans and programmes.
    • Concerning market-based integration, little use is made of economic instruments such as fees, charges, taxes, tradable permits or deposit-refund programmes. Most environment-related taxes are earmarked for road construction and maintenance.
  • Recommendations
    It is recommended to:
    • better integrate environmental concerns in physical planning, transport, agriculture, energy and urban policies;
    • ensure that coordinated and integrated sectoral plans, associated with the Second Basic Environment Plan, are developed through close co-operation among the ministries concerned, and assure accountability for implementation of the plans;
    • take the necessary steps to systematically carry out strategic environmental assessment during the development of environmentally relevant policies, plans, and programmes;
    • strengthen efforts to buy and use "greener goods" (e.g. via green procurement policies and the green consumer movement) so as to promote more sustainable production and consumption patterns;
    • continue to restructure environment-related taxes in a more environmentally friendly way;
    • review and further develop the system of road fuel and motor vehicle taxes, with a view to promoting more sustainable modes of transport, to internalizing environmental costs, while paying attention to the demand for transport infrastructure and to introducing more flexibility in the allocation of the revenue;
    • continue to reduce sectoral subsidies that have negative environmental implications.