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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION has become an important issue in international politics in recent years. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro highlighted the political importance of environmental issues as well as revealing the differences in perspective on those issues between developed and developing nations, and between the developed nations themselves. Since the late 1980s, Japan has, in public statements, emphasized the importance of environmental protection and its willingness to assist in conservation efforts in the developing world. In particular, it has expressed its willingness to increase foreign aid for environmental protection. In part, this is an attempt by the Japanese government to define for itself a role which will help it meet its international responsibilities, and, in part, it is a response to a new issue in international politics.
In the late 1980s, one scholar pointed out the potential dilemma in Japan's commitment to provide environmental aid. On the one hand, he predicted an increase in Japanese aid activity for conservation efforts. On the other, he noted that the Japanese experience in providing environmental aid was new, dating from the mid-1980s at the earliest, and that the institutional arrangements for a coherent environmental aid program had not been worked out.(1) This paper examines Japan's aid for environmental protection since the Arche Summit in 1989. It assesses the achievements and problems of this new aid orientation. It argues that Japan's aid for environmental protection is limited for two basic reasons. First, the lack of institutional adjustments within the aid program has hampered the ability to implement the new policy. Second, the developing countries which receive Japanese aid continue to be ambivalent about the importance of environmental protection. This paper examines each limitation in turn. It concludes with a case study of Japan's aid for environmental protection in Thailand.
JAPAN'S ENVIRONMENTAL AID POLICY
Government pronouncements about environmental protection and Japan's efforts to achieve it have become regular fare at G-7 summits and ministerial overseas trips at least since the Arche Summit in 1989. At that summit, Prime Minister Kaifu announced that the Japanese government would increase its ODA target for environmental support to $300 million from 1989-91.(2) Subsequent summit meetings have elicited expressions of Japan's support for environmental protection, although those announcements have been of secondary importance...