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Erschienen in:
2017 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel
9. Interpreting the Historical Transformation
verfasst von : Kazuhiro Okuma
Erschienen in: The Evolving Relationship between Economy and Environment
Verlag: Springer Singapore
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Abstract
This chapter, by synthesizing the results of previous chapters, analyzes Japanese history of the relationship between economy and the environment.
In the 1960s, the economy-environment nexus, characterized by consuming an increasing amount of environmental resources with low costs, contributed to the growth regime of the high-growth era.
In the 1970s, driven by local residents’ campaigns and the oil crisis, institutions for pollution abatement and energy-saving were formulated. In spite of their costs, they positively impacted growth by reducing energy importation, inducing investments, and enhancing technological competitiveness. This can be considered as an example of Green Growth.
After that, the powers of actors requesting environmental measures became weaker as damages went temporally and spatially afar. Moreover, global competition took priority over other domains of institutional coordination.
In the 1990s, public awareness and international movements led to progress in the formulation of environmental institutions, although most of them emphasized voluntariness and flexibility and did not involve a significant increase in production costs.
After 2008, institutions, such as stimulus measures aiming at Green Growth, began to be introduced under cooperation between actors on the economic and environmental sides. Stimulus measures cannot last long under budgetary constraints. Policies involving an increase in costs can form stable institutions, and would probably impact the growth positively, though the introduction of such policies depends on how the scope of cooperation between actors can be extended.