Introduction (theoretical frameworks)

This book is about the future shape of globalized environmental policy and governance-which is much discussed but little understood. Environmental problems stretch across scales of geographic space and require action at multiple levels of jurisdictions, such as individual level, community level, national level, and global level. Multi-level governance and cross-scale coordination will open up opportunities for a variety of stakeholders to participate in decision-making. While potentially increasing the capacity of environmental governance, crossscale and multi-level approaches may face difficulties in policy coordination created by the plurality of stakeholders and may also be attended with organizational complexity. Much of the scholarly work to date surrounding new approaches to environmental governance tends to overlook the role of subnational governments.1 This book will examine an aspect of the potential of subnational participation to make policy choices, mediated by local governments, which are congruent with global strategies and national mandates in a consistent way. The findings from this book should be interpreted as a set of heuristic test cases to yield a good, but not necessarily conclusive, explanation for the possibility of generalization. Nonetheless, the global environmental challenges facing the international community suggest that a new approach to environmental risk reduction needs to be framed as a cross-scale and multi-level issue. I start from the perplexing fact that in the early 1970s Japan had one of the world’s strongest environmental regulation regimes but today appears to have lost its innovative edge to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Environmental policy-making in Japan has developed as the nation has gone through different phases of environmental protection, namely from addressing domestic industrial pollution to global climate change. The dynamics of environmental policy-making have changed as environmental issues reveal multilayered and complex connections over the cross-border effects of environmental risks. In the process of global environmental challenges, Japan has lagged behind major European countries in environmental initiatives and innovations. Thus the question is how Japan should regain its reputation. Obviously, state-centric governance, which ensures that state sovereignty does not integrate at the supranational level more than it desires and thus does not impinge on its sovereignty, will not solve environmental problems. Multi-level

and cross-scale governance, in which the state still can accept and reject international agreements yet pay the insurance premium in its sovereignty to reduce environmental threats, has a potential for environmental problem-solving. A shared space of emerging relations among individuals and organizations in the policy area of environmental protection has expanded physically (e.g., geographic space) and non-physically (e.g., shared experiences, ideas, values) over the past two decades. It serves as a foundation for environmental policy-making. Policy ideas reside in a shared space, which exists at cross-scale/multi-level interactions. The experience of a Japanese environmental activist provides a useful story to illustrate this point. Kenrō Tarura graduated from the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University in 1995. Two years later, the COP-3 (United Nations [UN] Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference) negotiations that Japan hosted in Kyoto had a profound effect on his career path. In 1998 he joined the Kiko Network, which was created as an umbrella organization of Japanese environmental citizens’ groups to coordinate their activities before and after COP-3. After that, he worked as head of the Secretariat involving policy analysis, policy proposals, information dissemination, public awareness campaigns, and school education programs. Kenrō was destined to find it no longer easy to separate policy-addressees from policymakers, or to distinguish between public and private actors in policy-making while actively promoting the diffusion of climate mitigation and adaptation measures. He helped less resourceful citizens bring their capacity onto an equal footing with policy-makers. He proposed that local knowledge would play a key role and would be necessary in judging the usefulness of professional expertise as policy predictions at higher levels of government could fail to equal the diversity of local experiences. He understood himself to be a player in a global game when feeding ideas, along with other NGOs (non-governmental organizations), into the international negotiation process. His career offers probably the best example of actors moving relatively freely across traditional levels and spheres of authority when pursuing public purposes. Kenrō’s story indicates that ba (field of sharing or interaction), where environmental concerns are made visible through sharing the feelings, thoughts and experiences of people, has transformed over time to transcend multiple spaces depending on the nature of the environmental issues and the actors involved.2 In all likelihood, the earliest case of environmental problems that became salient in the history of modern Japan was a serious pollution problem which arose in the late nineteenth century due to mines and smelting factories, such as the Ashio Copper Mine, located in mountainous communities. The ba space took shape exclusively between the Meiji national leaders and the directly affected farmers. Due to Japan’s drive to catch up with the West, little had been done to control the pollution, although some statutory regulations, such as the 1911 Factory Law, were implemented. In post-WWII Japan, industrial pollution problems spread throughout major industrial areas. Human tragedies such as the cases of Minamata disease (mercury poisoning) and of itai-itai disease (cadmium poisoning) increased public awareness. Anti-pollution residents’ movements

against big industries in Minamata and other areas had a dramatic effect on publicizing the issues. By the late 1960s, a majority of Japanese people had come to believe that industrial development must not be allowed at the expense of a healthy living environment.3 Some local authorities were quick to initiate new environmental policies and the national government followed, particularly by enacting or amending 14 pollution control laws in what became known as the “Environmental Pollution Diet” of 1970.4 The cost of environmental risk reduction was relatively concentrated on a limited number of polluters and victims in the affected areas, although the number of stakeholders in policy-making increased significantly. Therefore, the formation of environmental policy essentially took place within a domestic-level process. Additionally, the oil crisis of 1973 served as an external shock to trigger the transformation of the interaction field. The business and government sectors showed great concern about energy efficiency rather than showing a genuine concern for environmental degradation. In the mid-1970s, the focus of environmental protection shifted from identifiable sources of industrial pollution to diffuse, no-point sources of non-industrial pollution. The disintegration of antiindustrial pollution movements marked a transformed field where Japanese environmental movements failed to establish powerful national interest groups while the government sector facilitated manufacturers’ initiatives in energy conservation.5 Despite the dominance of this industrial coalition, however, pioneering local authorities were exploring an alternative interaction field in the absence of national environmental initiatives while most localities acted in a piecemeal fashion according to national-level guidance. These frontrunners clearly demonstrated their willingness and capability to contribute to environmental risk reduction. There were several cases, such as those in Toyonaka and Hino Cities, which were reported as being faithfully citizen-led policy-making for municipal environmental plans. The local initiatives were meant to enhance an individual sense that they could make a difference-that is, their sense of political efficacy-in policy-making. The frontrunners sought to ensure the informed participation of all stakeholders through information disclosure and environmental impact assessment-specific modes of participatory accountability mechanisms-at the local level. They also structured incentive mechanisms to gain local officials’ responsiveness through environmental performance disclosure and environmental policy coordination.6 The two international oil crises in 1973 and 1979 acted as a catalyst for adaptation to changes in the international environment. Yet the interaction ba remained domestic in the sense that the oil crises caused unilaterally systemic effects on policy formation in terms of international causes and domestic effects, while providing little room for the interaction of domestic and international factors. This policy environment, however, appears to have significantly changed over the last three decades. As environmental risks spill over to other domains in a non-territorial way, the interaction ba has rapidly expanded beyond national boundaries. It has transformed from a predominantly contentious interaction among domestic players to a far more complex process in which sub-national

actors, for example, involve both local coordination with national policy and local adaptations to global environmental strategies. To reduce environmental risks at the regional and international levels, Japanese local governments have been working with counter-partners, such as overseas local authorities, domestic/ international NGOs and international organizations, building transnational coalitions and exchanging information to work internationally on global environmental strategies. Most local environmental officials have experience in international environmental cooperation, such as bilateral cooperation (e.g., Kitakyushu-Dalian), sectoral networks (e.g., Shiga-United Nations Environmental Programme [UNEP] partnership over environmental lake management), and international networks (e.g., Yokohama’s CITYNET to support South-South cooperation).7 With the enactment of the Basic Environmental Law in 1993, which defined environmental policy principles and directions, Japan’s environmental policy was facing another turning point. A series of new legislation, such as the Container and Packaging Recycling Law of 1995, the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of 1997, and the Basic Law for Establishing the Recycling-based Society of 2000, reflected an adaptation to a new policy-making environment at the international level. Probably, external pressure, which was globalized in the sense that environmental problems largely required global strategies and global solutions demanded national pledges, was the most important factor determining the course of events regarding this new development. In the years following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Japan, like any other country, was under pressure to implement concrete measures to achieve sustainable development, something agreed on at the UN conference. In December 1993, Japan’s National Action Plan for Agenda 21 (national plan of action to achieve sustainable development) was submitted to the UN. One year later, the Basic Environment Plan was adopted under the direction of the Basic Environment Law. The action plan identified the measures to be undertaken by the national and local governments, as well as the roles of citizens, social groups and businesses involved in effectively pursuing environmental policies. In 1997 the Japanese government hosted the Kyoto Protocol Climate Conference (COP-3) and it pledged “internationally acceptable CO2 reductions” as its reputation was at stake in the success or failure of the conference.8 Since the conference was reported and discussed almost every day somewhere in Japanese national newspapers, the course of COP-3 events certainly raised public awareness on the impact of climate change in Japan.