Technical Aspects of Environmental Impact Assessment

Major Issues in Japan

Abstract

The Japanese Government stepped up its efforts in spring 1980 to prepare Draft Environmental Impact Assessment Bill to be submitted to the National Diet for its deliberation. The Draft Bill sets out, among other things, types of projects and programmes subject to impact assessment procedure, technical guidelines based on which environmental analysis should be made, procedure to be followed, and the relationship with local ordinances. From technical point of view, however, there are a number of issues which need further study in order to ensure the effective implementation of the legislation.
These issues include precise definition of the range of actions subject to impact study, methods to predict and evaluate impacts of these actions both in terms of pollution and natural ecosystem, and principles to decide areas in and around the site for these actions where the public concerned are involved in the procedure. The range of actions subject to impact study should basically be interpreted as widely as practicable to include not only those for land development, construction work and use of facilities established, but also those to establish relating facilities such as access road and its use, with a view to enabling the result of the study to identify full range of significant impacts arising from this cluster of actions.
Issues with respect to the methods to predict and evaluate impacts on wildlife and its habitat are particularly interesting. The National Government has been conducting every five years the “Green census” on the state of the wildlife and its habitat all over the country, but further detailed information should be collected by the prefectural or municipal governments to locally supplement it. Local governments are expected to play extremely important role in the implementation of impact assessment by not only providing these detailed information on the state of the local environment but also making the project proponents known that there are strategies to conserve and manage the environment which are to be taken into account. Thus, it is expected that the environmental impact assessment can be a new and effective instrument to promote the management of the environment.