ABSTRACT
Over the last twenty years, EIA in Japan first progressed rapidly then slowly regressed, paralleling the rise and fall of Japan’s environmental policy. The first rudimentary EIAs were performed in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s the US National Environmental Policy Act was used as a model for an EIA bill. Several laws were amended to include EIA provisions and a number of ministries incorporated EIA into their planning procedures. However, as experience with impact assessment grew it became obvious that the NEPA could not be adopted without threatening Japan’s whole-hearted pursuit of economic growth. The pro-development ministries feared that EIA would result in legal battles, added costs and delayed development. The hierarchical nature of Japan’s planning system required environmental factors to be considered with minimum changes to existing power structures and priorities. In 1984, after eight years of negotiations and revisions, the EA abandoned its efforts to introduce EIA legislation. Instead, the Cabinet approved a (non-enforceable) decision which incorporates the bill’s main points.
