The japan journal

January, 2008

COVER STORY

Cooling Japan
A United Front against Global Warming
At this summer's G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit, measures to combat global warming
are likely to figure prominently on the agenda to be set by Japan. In this article we
highlight some of the environmental initiatives pursued by Japan to date at individual,
private and public levelsto fight pollution both at home and overseas and to counter
global warming.
Located nearly at the center of the Japanese archipelago, Biwa-ko is the largest lake in
Japan. Designated a registered wetland under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the
lake is home to many valuable and endemic species and has long supported the local
population as a source of drinking water, a fishing ground and for agricultural use.
Thirty years ago a large part of the surface of Biwa-ko turned a reddish color and the air
filled with the stench of rotting fish. It was a large-scale red tide. The eerie spectacle,
which some saw as the lake's lament, greatly shocked nearby residents.
One local who was gripped by a sense of crisis was Fujii Ayako, now chief director of
the Environment Co-operative Union Shiga, who says her first thought was that the lake
might die. Six years previously her husband had been transferred, and they had
relocated to the town of Moriyama on the shores of Biwa-ko in Shiga prefecture. As a
student, she had been affected by Minamata disease, one of the four big pollutionrelated illnesses of Japan, which occurred when a chemical plant released mercury into
the sea in the 1950s, causing outbreaks of neurogenic diseases among local residents
and their unborn children after eating fish contaminated with the mercury. As a result,
Fujii felt more uneasy than most about the incident at the lake.
The widespread use of synthetic detergents containing phosphorous in place of
powdered soap at the time was identified as one reason for the red tide. The
phosphorous present in the detergent causes eutrophication in the lake. The awareness
of being both victims and perpetrators mobilized the residents and the Soap Campaign,
which collected used cooking oil and turned it into powdered soap free of phosphorous,
gathered momentum.
At the time, Fujii, who was involved in food safety at a regional cooperative covering
four cities and seventeen towns, and her colleagues were driving the movement forward.
Before the red tide in 1977 about 10% of households used powdered soap, but as a
result of the campaign, close to half of all households switched to powdered soap, and
in 1979 the prefectural government introduced legislation to control synthetic
detergents. The residents had managed to sway the government.
Nanohana Project

When it peaked in 1980, the ratio of powdered soap use had risen to 70.6% but as
synthetic detergents free of phosphorus became commercially available, usage declined
again. Fujii was left fretting that there would be nowhere to take the waste cooking oil
that had been collected.
Around this time, Fujii visited Germany where a project to grow rape blossoms on
fallow land to produce bio diesel fuel (BDF) as an alternative to fossil fuels had been
underway since the oil shock in 1973. In much the same way as fossil fuel, BDF
produces CO2 when it combusts, but since the plants that provide the raw material
absorb CO2 during the growing process, bio diesel fuel does not add CO2 to the
atmosphere. Not only is it environmentally friendly, it creates a framework for the local
production of energy for local consumption and so also ties in with regional selfreliance and regeneration.
As Fujii tells it, "The scales fell from my eyes. I thought that we could refine the waste
cooking oil, and turn it into BDF and I promptly started negotiations with the Mayor of
Aito (now, Higashiomi) in Shiga prefecture at Biwa-ko and set about developing plans
for a refinery."
The test plans were brought to fruition with the help of subsidies from the national and
prefectural governments. Test vehicles using BDF for fuel were soon driving around
with the smell of deep-fried food wafting from their exhaust pipes. The fuel has been
used in four of the town's official vehicles since 1995.
As the applications for BDF broadened to include city buses, tractors and fishing boats,
it soon became clear that the demand could not be met by collecting waste oil from
households. Yet again, Fujii took a leaf out of the German book and proposed sowing
rapeseed on land that had been taken out of cultivation.
"There was certainly no shortage of agricultural land. By this time I had visited every
nook and cranny in the town so when I mentioned the idea of planting rapeseed, lots of
people said that we could use their fields," reminisces Fujii.
This was the start of the Nanohana Project, a system to recycle resources by growing
rape blossom ("nanohana" in Japanese) for cooking oil, collecting the waste oil, and
turning it into BDF, and it all happened the year after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted at
the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (COP3) in 1997.
The main premise for the recycling system is the participation of citizens.
"In Aito, the waste household oil is collected by roster and taken to a storage depot in
the town. Local children also participate by planting and harvesting the rape. That's not
all, electrical power generated with BDF is used to light 250,000 bulbs. Local people
are quite excited about the project because it goes beyond recycling garbage." When
Fujii talks about the project, her eyes light up. She recalls how in 1987 local residents
had formed a human chain around Biwa-ko to raise money to build a new facility for
children with disabilities. Such cooperative acts, she feels, have strengthened residents'
unity and contributed to the success of the Nanohana Project.

The Nanohana Project is expanding across the country, with around 1,000 hectares
planted with rape in Japan and more farmers joining every year. At the prodding of Fujii
and other project members, large corporations such as Yamato Transport and Matsushita
Electric Industrial have recently started to use BDF in company vehicles that operate
locally. The project is also now spreading across the seas to Korea, China, Mongolia and
elsewhere.
"The project started as a way to improve the environment at Biwa-ko, but it has now
moved beyond the boundaries of an environmental project and has contributed to
revitalizing the local economy, and it has created a region that will be sustainable
through our children's and grandchildren's generations," says Fujii.
The Soap Campaign started as a measure to preserve the environment, but it is plain that
BDF has a role in the fight to counter global warming. Having surmounted one kind of
pollution, the Nanohana Project, which is linked to efforts to counter global warming
and to the revitalization of an entire region, seems to be pointing out the way for all
kinds of environmental projects in Japan.
A Long History of Pollution
In the summer of 2007, Japan was assailed by a record-breaking heat wave. Abnormal
temperatures were being recorded across the nation, with one spot registering 40.9C, the
highest temperature in the history of domestic meteorological observations. The abnormal
heat caused many people to directly feel the effects of global warming. According to the
2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average
temperatures worldwide will increase by 0.2C per decade until 2030. Reducing CO 2
emissions has become a problem for the entire world.
In fact, it has been barely ten years since we first heard vociferous demands like the ones we
hear today to reduce CO2 emissions. Before that time, the urgency was in removing the
pollution that had become a common blight under the strain of industrialization.
The origin of pollution in Japan can be traced back to an incident that occurred in the 1880s
as a direct result of mining. The incident took place during a time of rapid modernization, as
Japan underwent the transition from Edo period society to the Meiji period. The incident
caused grave harm to local residents and the surrounding environment, and it stayed in the
minds of many people for years to come.
After the postwar reconstruction, as the country rushed into the era of rapid economic
growth, the atmospheric pollution caused by factories releasing soot and smoke, sulfur oxide,
and nitrogen oxide into the air turned into a social issue. The awful state of air pollution in
Japan was reported in newspapers in the United States and elsewhere and Japan acquired a
bad reputation throughout the world. The situation grew even more grave in the mid-fifties
with the advent of Minamata disease and other fatal illnesses caused by pollution. This was
when people's attitudes to pollution began to change.
The government also embarked on countermeasures, making its basic stance on the
environment clear by enacting fourteen pollution-related laws including the 1967 Basic Law
for Environmental Pollution, which clearly stated the obligations of corporations, the national
government, and local authorities in preventing pollution. The following year saw the
enactment of the Noise Regulation Law and the Air Pollution Control Law, which established
controls for exhaust gas from automobiles, and in 1970 the Water Pollution Control Law

followed. In 1971 the Environment Agency (today, the Ministry of the Environment) was set
up with responsibility for environmental policy. Since then, legislation for the environment
has been improved and strengthened on a continual basis.
Technological Development
Faced with these stringent regulations, companies began to step up their antipollution
measures. Previously, the corporate sector had invested about 2-3% of total capital outlays
in antipollution measures, but according to the Environmental White Paper for 1991, this
ratio increased to nearly 20% at its peak between 1974 and 1976. Shortly after that, the
Japanese economy was hit by the second oil shock and registered its first period of negative
growth since the end of the war, making it very difficult for companies to increase any kind of
investment.
However, there were no signs of regret from the corporations. One might speculate that this
was due to the legacy of past pollution incidents, such as the Ashio incident, which was fresh
in the minds of management, and that decision-making reflected the gravity of having to pay
out compensation to victims and suffering a sullied image. The problems posed by the oil
crisis also spurred corporations to develop technologies to save energy. Corporate
persistence at the time became the driving force that transformed Japan into a nation in
possession of advanced environmental technology.
By the late 1980s, environmental problems on a worldwide scale such as global warming and
the destruction of the ozone layer had been identified. In 1992, the Framework Convention
on Climate Change was adopted and the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
As one of the ratifying countries, Japan found that measures to counter global warming
demanded a broader outlook than antipollution measures for a restricted area.
At this turning point, Japanese environmental technology which had been developed to
counter pollution became increasingly sophisticated.
For example, automobiles are responsible for roughly 17% of worldwide CO 2 emissions. As
might be expected, the burden on the environment is considerable and for automobile
manufacturers, environmental initiatives are a matter of life or death. Every manufacturer is
developing cars that emit less exhaust and are more fuel-efficient, but Honda Motor stole the
march on the competition in 1971 when the company developed the CVCC (Compound
Vortex Controlled Combustion) engine which reduced the harmful substances in exhaust
gases through lean burning. At the time, Honda took the world by surprise when it became
the first company to clear the strict exhaust gas standards set by the Muskie Act in the
United Statesstandards which were thought impossible to achieve.
Just in Time for the Twenty-first Century
In the 1990s, as the world began to clamor for measures to combat global warming, Toyota
Motor started the work of sketching out a new vision for the car of the twenty-first century.
Tajima Hidehiko, general manager of the CSR & Environmental Affairs Division at Toyota
Motors tells it like this: "At the time there was this sense of crisis that if you didn't build good
products that were environmentally friendly, you would no longer be a going concern at some
point in the near future. Sooner or later resources would run dry, too. It meant that as a
manufacturer of cars, you had to take responsible action."

That is why in 1994, ten members of staff from each division of Toyota gathered to launch
the G21 project to develop a car for the twenty-first century. At first, the vision was to
improve fuel consumption by 50% by introducing a direct fuel-injection gasoline engine. Not
only did senior management reject the idea, they raised the hurdle by saying that an
improvement of 50% was not enough; it had to be a 100% improvement.
The driving force to resolve this challenge could only be found in the hybrid system, which
was under development in a different project. In December 1997, when the first Prius hybrid
vehicle went on sale with the slogan "Just in time for the twenty-first century," peripheral
technologies such as battery performance and control systems evolved by leaps and bounds.
The hybrid system, which combines an electric motor with a gasoline engine, gets twice the
mileage of a standard gasoline-powered car because energy is converted and stored in the
electric battery when the vehicle decelerates during driving. The price tag for the vehicle is
2.15 million yen (18,700 dollars), keeping the price difference with other popular cars below
500,000 yen.
There were more improvements to come when the second generation Prius went on sale in
2003. Driving performance had been improved to match or outperform gasoline-powered
cars and sales shot up. The vehicle was also very popular abroad with many Hollywood film
stars favoring the vehicle, which contributed a great deal to raising Toyota's image.
In May 2007 worldwide sales of Toyota hybrid cars, including existing models fitted with the
hybrid system, breached one million. By preliminary calculation this represents a reduction of
3.5 million tons of CO2 worldwide. While keeping a close eye on emulators among the
competition, Toyota aims to sell one million hybrid vehicles a year as early as the second
decade of the twenty-first century, and plans to further expand the range of models and to
continue the pursuit of improvements.
Since the start of the 1990s, the theme for the Tokyo Motor Show has been the environment.
This year, at the 40th Motor Show, domestic and international manufacturers displayed about
seventy experimental models including hybrid cars, fuel cell cars, electric vehicles and diesel
cars. Toyota unveiled its 1/X concept car which, in terms of weight, has been reduced to one
third of the Prius while getting twice the mileage and maintaining the same interior space.
The car can run on bioethanol and is fitted with a plug-in hybrid system which can be
charged from an external power point. Expectations were high for a successor to the Prius
that will reduce CO2 emissions and is geared towards energy diversification. As for the
future, Toyota will continue to develop versatile eco cars that provide a fit with the market.
Toyota DNA and the Environment
The undivided attention to the environment is evident on the shop floor. "From the moment
of creation, the Toyota production model incorporates an ethos that is linked to
environmental measures," Tajima explains. For example, there is the "yosedome" approach
to reducing CO2 emissions during the production stages. By introducing improvements at the
production site, this approach reduces equipment downtime, consolidates production lines,
and bolsters productivity at each line.
Kawaguchi Takamori, project general manager with the Environmental Affairs Department at
Toyota's CSR & Environmental Affairs Division explains the approach: "We cannot afford to
miss out on any opportunities to improve productivity and reduce costs so that we can offer
customers vehicles at a reasonable price. In terms of results, this approach ties in with CO 2
reduction." Production and the environment are two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

"If we say 'improved productivity' it might be that only the specialists in each department
understand what we mean, but if we say 'reduce CO 2' everybody understands what we mean
and we can roll it out across all factories. It's no exaggeration to say that 'the environment'
is a common language throughout the company."
Adds Kawaguchi, "Our environmental measures are definitely not high-profile. I would say
that the fundamental approach is to plug away steadily on day-to-day management and
improvements."
"Kaizen" (continuous improvement) is the philosophy at the heart of Toyota. It was
introduced when the company was founded as a way of competing with the Western giants.
Productivity and quality were improved as a result of thoroughly excluding wasteful
processes. This is the DNA that Toyota shares with other manufacturers and in the current
climate of environmental awareness, Japan's approach to manufacturing is still getting the
message across.
Developing Countries and Global Warming
Japan has broadened its approach to the environment from antipollution measures to efforts
to counter global warming. This is the time to take on the role of sharing the accumulated
experience with the rest of the world, including developing nations. With the environment as
an important pillar of international cooperation, Japan is extending technological cooperation,
interest-free financial aid and yen loans through overseas development assistance (ODA). In
recent years, aid with an environmental focus has comprised 30-40% of all ODA, and 4060% of yen loans only.
In the midst of this, a new concept for supporting work in the environmental field has
emerged and this is where Japan is taking the lead. It is the concept of using ODA for clean
development mechanism (CDM) projects.
Until recently, the international community had not approved ODA contributions to CDM
projects. This may have been due to concern among developing nations that ODA would shift
from emissions trading to CDM projects. However, Japan has pointed out that current CDM
projects are weighted towards the BRICs and other newly industrializing economies, and has
argued that it is possible to eliminate such skewed distribution through ODA. In 2004, the
OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) approved the use of ODA for CDM projects
marking the start of yen loans to the Zafarana Wind Power Plant in Egypt, which became the
first CDM project to use ODA.
The Co-benefits of Aid
Japan is also focusing on "co-benefit projects" which contribute to developing the economies
of emerging nations while advancing measures to counter pollution and global warming. One
such example is the Japan-China Environmental Model City Project underway in the city of
Guiyang in Guizhou Province in the south of China.
Guiyang is the capital of Guizhou Province and sits surrounded by a beautiful rural landscape
of terraced rice-fields in a mountainous region. The concentration of heavy industry to the
city has resulted in remarkable economic development. As the city is surrounded by
mountains on all four sides, the smoke and soot emitted by the factories tends to settle over
the city and had turned it into a particularly serious case of damage from air pollution and
acid rain.

In 1997, the governments of China and Japan came up with a plan for a project to use
Japan's expertise in combating pollution to improve the urban environment in China and to
raise the standard of environmental management. Guiyang was selected along with Dalian
and Chongquing as environmental model cities. Obtaining yen loans and back-up for
technological cooperation from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the project experimented with various urban
improvements in Guiyang including the introduction of new technology to factories that had
been using mercury and refitting deteriorating steel factories.
Much effort also went into developing human resources. Guiyang dispatched staff members
to Japan to visit Kitakyushu (city in Fukuoka prefecture) and other local governments that
possess know-how in environmental management systems, developed from their experience
fighting pollution.
The deputy director general of Development Assistance Department II at JBIC, Kitano
Naohiro, tells the story.
"Based on these observations, Guiyang became the first city in China to bring in economic
policies with a recycling orientation and regulations that pressed for waste recycling and zero
emissions during manufacturing. This became the impetus for drafting regulations in other
cities and in 2006, the central government incorporated these measures in its five-year plan
for the country. Measures that were implemented at the local level by learning from Japan
through the yen loans have had a bottom-up impact that has reached as far as the central
government. Guiyang has become a model for the whole country on soft issues as well."
Keeping windows open used to be impossible but the changes have been such that now a
food market is opening near one of the factories. The project has substantially reduced air
pollution but that is not all; CO2 emissions have also been reduced by 1.07 million tons a
year. In short, the project has not only countered pollution but has played a part in
combating global warming.
The newly industrializing economies and developing countries that are eager to develop their
economies must not view measures to counter global warming as obstacles to economic
development. This project has demonstrated that the key to involving countries that hesitate
when faced with the effort to combat global warming is to provide aid in a form that shows
that development and measures to counter global warming can coexist. In addition, CDM
projects have the potential to engage in emissions rights trading for the portion of CO 2 that
is reduced. The government of Japan is planning to make the concept of "co-benefit projects"
the centerpiece for aid with an environmental orientation.
In the past, Japan has had experience with pollution caused by economic development that
spun out of control, destroying the environment, and even taking human life. Today the
country is still dealing with the issue of on-going lawsuits that stem from illnesses caused by
pollution. There is no mistaking the fact that this is a stain on the nation's history. It may be
that the most significant contribution Japan can make in the fight against global warming is
to use this experience as a springboard for increasing international contributions in order to
avoid repeating the same mistakes.
KAMAHORI Miki, The Japan Journal