Japan and the environment : industrial pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change

This chapter outlines Japan’s experience with the three principal environmental challenges of industrial pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change. All three intersect with Japan’s passage through development and post-development and its economic and political globalization. Hence, the chapter shows how Japan’s economic and population transitions have produced environmental change, and it outlines the state’s responses. In conclusion, the chapter will briefly introduce the potential for a depopulating Japan in the 21st century to contribute to global efforts in mitigating environmental damage, and will ask how Japan might lead Asia in establishing an environmentally sustainable pathway into the future.