ABSTRACT
As Japan’s economic development increased from the 1950s and into the 1980s and sustained and substantial trade surpluses developed, significant pressure mounted on Japan to increase its global commitment. This chapter examines Japan's environmental aid activism in the 1990s. It examines Japanese environmental aid policy at the end of the century and explores how an initially reactive foreign aid policy has developed. It argues that three factors continue to limit a proactive environmental foreign aid style in Japan: the lack of institutional adjustment within the aid program; a corresponding lack of effective voices articulating a unified and concerted approach to environmental issues; and continued ambivalence about environmental protection by aid recipients. Japan’s official development assistance targeted the Asian region throughout the postwar period. Asian countries not only receive a disproportionate share of Japanese bilateral aid, typically 70% in any given year, it also became the locus of new Japanese aid initiatives.
