Can Japan shift to “Green Economy” after Rio+20?

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Abstract

Japan is now at a crossroads after the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 facing difficult national problems, such as, the ongoing radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, a huge amount of public debt, the prolonged economic downturn, and poverty among the youth, single women and the elderly. Despite these serious domestic issues, Japan is trying to take a greater part for the R+20 conference in June 2012 for achieving the dual objectives of (i) reducing the world poverty while ensuring ‘green economy’ and (ii) forming the institutional framework for poverty reduction and sustainable development. The propositions made by Japan for R+20 - e.g. making use of the experience of disaster management and green technology, or proposing the post MDGs – are all important, but broader discussions to highlight more fundamental problems underlying the economy and society are necessary for the country to achieve the dual objectives. It has been suggested that (i) the incentive systems (e.g. environmental tax) should be introduced for firms and households to curb sales or purchases the products which would directly or indirectly increase CO2 emissions, and to promote the ones which would increase O2 emissions, (ii) population policy (e.g. of curbing urban population) should be integrated into environmental policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, (iii) poverty and inequality – not only income inequality, but also the inequality in opportunities, education, employment and wages and gender inequality – should be fully addressed, and (iv) the institutional weakness of the decision making for the global warming should be overcome to encourage the wider participation of the people in realising green economy and to allow “a multi-scale approach to coping with climate change” (Ostrom, 2010, p.27). Japan should not treat the low economic growth or the falling birth rates rate as “problems” in shifting to Green Economy under the new paradigm where various paths for development are allowed, which would make a departure from its old post WWII paradigm in which the primary national goal was maximising GDP per capita growth.

Keyword(s)

Poverty, Climate Change, Japan, Rio+20, Paradigm Change

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