<Articles>Emergence of Global Environmental Policy in Japan: Saburo Okita and the Ad Hoc Group on Global Environmental Problems

Abstract

The nature of environmental policy changed dramatically in the 1980s. Until the 1970s, environmental policies were limited to stopgap measures in response to environmental problems, with little benefit to the economy. By contrast, since the 1980s, a new type of environmental policy has emerged that is compatible with economic policies. However, the research on the emergence and development of this new type of environmental policy has been scant. This article focuses on Japan’s environmental policy and explores the emergence of global environmental policy, one of the new types of environmental policy compatible with economic policies. It thus reveals two key conclusions. First, Japan’s systematic global environmental policy originated in 1980, when the Ad Hoc Group on Global Environmental Problems was established as an advisory body to the Environment Agency. Saburo Okita (1914–1993) and Tsutomu Tanaka (1936– ), a bureaucrat closely acquainted with Okita, played key roles in the establishment and early activities of the group. Okita was then an internationally renowned economist and former executive of the Economic Planning Agency in Japan. Tanaka, originally a bureaucrat at the Economic Planning Agency, was seconded to the Environment Agency from 1979 to 1982 when he served as Director of the International Affairs Division. Although an outsider in the Environment Agency, Tanaka used the knowledge and experience gained during his interactions with Okita to initiate a new policy agenda: global environmental issues. Second, although the Ad Hoc Group is now largely forgotten, it played an important role in promoting global environmental policy internationally because the group’s report led to the establishment of the Brundtland Commission, which stimulated the global diffusion of the concept of sustainable development.