Communal Environmental Ethics" as Seen in the Introduction of a Forest Environmental Tax (around 2007)

Communal Environmental Ethics" as Seen in the Introduction of a Forest Environmental Tax (around 2007)

In the mid-2000s, local governments were focusing their attention on the creation of mechanisms for "local communities to protect the environment on their own. Ishikawa Prefecture introduced a forest environment tax, under which residents and businesses pay taxes to finance thinning, afforestation, and forest road maintenance. The background to this system was the increase in neglected forests and dissatisfaction with the government's uniform forestry planning, which called for a shift to community-led nature conservation. In the Kaga and Noto regions, the amount of thinning was increased to four times the previous level, and reforestation was promoted to prevent disasters and conserve water resources. The ideological core of this system lies in the "community ethic of protecting nature as a public good. The idea is that forests are not the property of the state, but rather common assets of the local community, and that the local residents themselves are responsible for maint
aining the environment. This was a criticism of centralized environmental administration and meant the revival of regional autonomy. Ishikawa's efforts later spread to other prefectures, pioneering the nationwide forest environment concession tax system. It is a symbolic example of the "fusion of environment and autonomy" in Japan in the 2000s, in that it demonstrated a new public philosophy in which the local community is the main actor in environmental policy.