At the Arche Summit in 1989, Japan pledged to expand its ODA contributions in the environmental field. Over the intervening decade, environmental ODA from Japan has improved both in qualitative and quantitative terms and facilitated the implementation of environmental countermeasures in numerous countries. In the meantime, developing countries themselves have increasingly demonstrated a heightened awareness of environmental issues and sought to put a variety of countermeasures into effect.

However, most environmental problems in individual developing countries or of global scale have not been reversed despite extensive efforts to date. Not only that, but many industrialized countries face an increasingly widespread array of environmental problems attributable to their own modern modes of life. Examples include endocrine-disrupting chemicals (the so-called "environmental hormones") and the environmental pollution and biohazard posed by dioxins.

In contemplating the environmental outlook for the developing world, it will be important to encourage the formation of industrial societies that devote enough attention to the environment during their developmental stages, particularly to ensure that they do not experience the newest wave of environmental problems now confronting many of their industrialized counterparts. To that end, transfers of advanced technologies and expertise to the developing countries will be essential, and in this respect, ODA clearly will continue to have a crucial role to play in the environmental field.

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Section 1 Actions under the "Initiative for Sustainable Development toward the 21st Century: ISD"

On the occasion of the UN General Assembly Special Session on the Environment and Development (UNGASS) gathering in June 1997, Japan announced its "Initiative for Sustainable Development toward the 21st Century (ISD)," a comprehensive package of Japanese guidelines for ODA-led environmental policy and programs in the years ahead. Currently, work is under way on a variety of fronts to put the ISD into action. In FY1998, ODA for environmental purposes came to ¥413.2 billion (on a commitments basis), an amount equivalent to 24.5 percent of the total in ODA committed that year.

Among the focuses of collaboration under the ISD, acid rain is a challenge with widespread environmental impact. In November 1998, China announced plans to participate in the East Asia Acid Deposition Monitoring Network¹ (EANET) that was inaugurated with the initial participation of nine countries. These developments have added momentum to the drive to lay the foundations for collaborative monitoring throughout East Asia. To promote the activities in EANET, Japan has implemented programs in several target countries to provide training for monitoring and countermeasure techniques. Also, in October 1999, it held the East Asian Workshop on Acid Deposition in Thailand. Japan has also been furnishing material aid for countermeasures against acid rain. For example, it has provided assistance to China, a suggested source of acid with adverse effects in Japan, through the establishment of desulfurizers for such projects as the Liuzhou Environment Improvement Project and the Shaanxi Hancheng No. 2 Thermal Power Plant Construction Project.

As an effort under the Japan-U.S. Common Agenda² in the field of nature conservation, Japan has begun providing aid to the project for the Establishment of the Palau International Coral Reef Center, a facility that conducts research on the conservation of coral reefs and runs educational programs designed to enlighten citizens about the importance of conserving marine ecosystems and resources. Grant assistance has been provided for the construction of center facilities, and technical cooperation is also under study.

TOPICS 11.Project for the Improvement of Weather Warning Services Related to Natural Disasters in Bangladesh

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Section 2 Measures against Global Warming (the Kyoto Initiative)

The temperature of the Earth's atmosphere will remain stable as long as incoming solar heat is in balance with the heat radiating back into space. However, if concentrations of greenhouse gases³ build up and block this release of heat energy back into space, the temperature of the atmosphere will rise. The issue of global warming refers to the enormous effect on natural ecosystems and other foundations of human survival that can be triggered by climate changes caused by rising atmospheric temperatures.

Efforts by the international community to address this problem intensified in the late 1980s. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, and in December 1997 the third session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 3) met in Kyoto and hammered out the Kyoto Protocol. This latter document sets binding emissions targets for the reduction of various greenhouse gases for Annex I countries (developed countries and countries in economic transition) to the Convention.⁴

Although the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol spelled out targets for reduced emissions only by the Annex I countries, it stands to reason that greenhouse gas emissions by developing countries will rise in the years ahead, as their populations and economies grow. This prospect suggests that the reduction of emissions by developing countries will become a major issue to be tackled. At COP 3, Japan announced its Kyoto Initiative⁵, a package of measures designed to provide developing countries with ODA to combat global warming. Since then, Japan has been working in earnest to implement the initiative. For example, in FY1998 JICA provided technical cooperation for the training of about 1,000 personnel in measures against global warming. Additionally, yen loans totaling ¥243.3 billion were extended with the most concessional terms (a "special environmental interest rate" of 0.75 percent annually, with 40-year repayment period) to 20 projects⁶ designed to combat global warming.

TOPICS 12. Cooperation for the Development of Renewable Energy Resources in Vanuatu (Solar Powered Generation)

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Section 3 The Environmental Center Approach

Encouraging developing countries to assume the initiative in formulating their own environmental programs will be key to the effectiveness of assistance in the environmental field. For this reason, Japan has placed priority on the provision of aid for capacity enhancements. As one of several measures designed to reinforce the environment-related administrative capabilities of developing countries, Japan has followed an "environmental center approach." This strategy has been applied in tandem with grant aid and project-type technical cooperation including the dispatch of experts, accepting trainees from the recipient countries and the supply of equipment. The objective is to help with the human resources development of environmental administrators and the organizational foundations to implement their own environmental research and training.

Beginning with the Project on Environmental Research and Training Center in the Kingdom of Thailand in 1990, Japan has provided assistance of this kind to five additional countries: Indonesia, China, Chile, Mexico, and Egypt. It has been almost a decade since Japan began providing aid to Thailand in this area. The following is a brief outline of the environmental center-related aid that has been furnished to date. The six environmental centers have essentially been following independent programs of action shaped by local environmental conditions and administrative and institutional arrangements in their home countries. They resemble each other, however, in that they have assumed a leading role in environmental monitoring activities, the formulation and implementation of training programs for domestic environmental administrators, and programs of research in the environmental field.

For example, the Environmental Management Center in Indonesia has assumed a pivotal role in disseminating monitoring technologies nationwide. Further, as a domestic node in the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia, it has also become the central institution for the implementation of acid deposition monitoring programs inside Indonesia. The other centers have a similar mission, and are now receiving technical cooperation that will enable them to assume a pivotal role in establishing the technologies for environmental monitoring purposes in their respective countries.

Training programs and seminars for environmental administrators are also one of the top priorities of each center. For example, during the period that it received Japanese assistance, from 1992 to 1997, the Thai center prepared its own instructional materials in the Thai language and implemented training programs for more than 2,000 participants. When the Japanese assistance program reached its end, the center was prepared to plan and implement training programs on its own, and has since been engaged in training around 500 personnel per year.

Together, the six centers have already conducted training programs and seminars for a combined total of more than 7,400 personnel. They are also engaged in research spanning a range of environmental themes, have published numerous technical reports, and have delivered papers in a variety of international forums.

Although the center-oriented aid packages provided by Japan may be described as somewhat unique, they are especially noteworthy in terms of their scale. Because they are for the purpose of technology transfers, they require that the recipient developing country invest human and capital resources on a scale commensurate with the amount of aid. In the process, such countries become more self-reliant and will be better prepared to improve their standards of environmental administration. Furthermore, the establishment of environmental centers can help developing countries accommodate a heightened influx of assistance from other donors as well, resulting in benefits that far exceed the scale of Japanese assistance alone. For example, the Japan-China Friendship Environmental Protection Center Project in China now receives assistance from several other donors, including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, and the World Bank.

As a future goal, it is hoped that efforts will be made to reinforce the capacity of the centers now receiving assistance to function as environmental training facilities for personnel from cooperating countries nearby (third-country training).

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