Hiroya Masuda (Governor, Iwate Prefecture) - November 2000

Hiroya Masuda (Governor, Iwate Prefecture) - November 2000

Around the year 2000, Japan was in what can be called a "turning point in environmental legislation. First, in the late 1990s, illegal dumping of industrial waste and dioxin contamination became a nationwide problem, and local governments were strongly required to strengthen proper disposal and monitoring systems. Against this backdrop, the government developed a series of related laws and regulations, most notably the 1997 Outline of Global Warming Countermeasures, the 1999 Law Concerning Special Measures against Dioxins, and the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society, which came into effect in May 2000. In addition, a series of institutional reforms emphasizing waste reduction and resource recycling were being prepared, including the Home Appliance Recycling Law (to be enforced in 2001) and the Food Recycling Law (to be enforced in 2001).

However, these national legal systems alone could not compensate for the actual on-site burden, and in particular, localities suffering from a shortage of final disposal sites and a concentration of illegal dumping were forced to take their own measures. Iwate Governor Hiroya Masuda, along with Aomori and Akita prefectures, proposed the introduction of a "broad-based environmental tax" on industrial waste disposal companies. The discussion at the "North Tohoku Environmental Forum" in November 2000 was an experimental attempt to supplement the top-down measures of the national government and to seek a regionally initiated institutional design. The discussions at the "North Tohoku Environmental Forum" in November 2000 were also an experimental attempt to seek a locally initiated institutional design that would complement the top-down national policy.

As a result, this proposal demonstrated the potential for local governments to utilize their own taxing authority and promote environmental policies without relying on the national government. This phase, in which the broad framework of national laws and regulations and the unique local policies of Masuda and others intersected, was an important turning point in the history of environmental policy in Japan, when the "division of roles between the national and local governments" began to be questioned in earnest.