Environment: Questions from Tokorozawa - Residents' Power over Information Disclosure and Waste Disposal 1999

Environment: Questions from Tokorozawa - Residents' Power over Information Disclosure and Waste Disposal 1999

In the 1990s, social unrest in Japan was spreading due to the tightening of waste disposal facilities and the dioxin problem. In early 1999, Saitama Prefecture decided to disclose the names of companies that contracted industrial waste disposal services and the locations of final disposal sites. This was an epoch-making change, as this information had previously been withheld on the grounds that it was "trade secrets.

Behind the decision was a lawsuit filed by a housewife in Tokorozawa City to revoke the nondisclosure order. She wanted to know which contractors were disposing of her waste and where, in order to protect her children's health, so she filed a lawsuit against the government. The lawsuit drew a huge response and developed into a residents' movement. As citizens increasingly demanded information disclosure, the prefectural government was also forced to change from its traditional "secrecy" policy.

At the time, the National Diet passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1998, and transparency of administrative information had become a nationwide trend. In the environmental field, the government was also promoting the institutionalization of public participation through the Environmental Assessment Law and pollution prevention agreements. The Tokorozawa lawsuit and the prefecture's change in policy were symbolic examples of how the "residents' right to know" was changing waste administration in step with these nationwide trends.

In other words, this event was a symbolic episode in which the linkage between information disclosure and residents' movements advanced Japan's environmental administration in the sense that the actions of a housewife moved the community and further changed the prefectural government's policy.