ABSTRACT
Japan has benefited greatly from its use of enormous amounts of global natural resources, and this has allowed the country today to be the world’s third largest economy. As a consequence of Japan’s tremendous demand for natural resources, the sustainability of supply of some of these overseas resources has been put at risk, as has the integrity of the natural world from where they were extracted. Japan itself is singularly lacking in natural resources, with the result that it has become increasingly dependent on foreign supplies; along with that reliance has come a diminishing self-sufficiency in much of its food produce. A good example is seafood: Japan is one of the world’s largest consumers of that commodity, and, according to the MAFF, its self-sufficiency rate of 86 per cent in 1965 had dropped to 66 per cent by 2007. This one item illustrates Japan’s dependency on, and inseparable relationship with, the rest of the world for supplies. With Japan’s industrial activities, a similar situation exists: to maintain its economy in the energy sector alone, the country needs to import vast amounts of coal, natural gas, crude oil and uranium. With the benefits that Japan receives from using global resources, there comes the responsibility for the environmental degradation that this consumption brings about.
