Economic approach to valuing the environment entails estimation of individual willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept using the observation of actual behaviors or stated choices to hypothetical questions. This paper reviews research topics on the economic valuation of environment and its policy use.

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Environmental assessment has a long history, for example, Fengshui Geographic Theory has been practiced in East Asia. This theory is well known for its effective utilization in the pattern of farming land use as well as in urban planning. The location of the capitals like Beijing, Seoul and Kyoto was chosen based upon the Fengshui theory. It explains that the urban infrastructure was assessed before selecting the capital cities. In modern societies environmental assessment is carried out on the basis of diversified scientific research outcomes including the physical, chemical and biological methods. Each method is exclusively or inclusively applied depending on the occasions. Ecological assessment is relatively new, it is the ecosystem assessment which is conducted in accordance with the Law of Environmental Impact Assessment. This paper presents one proposal of ecological assessment, and demonstrates how the ecosystem assessment can be applied to various significant environmental issues.

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Environmental assessment has an aspect of ex-ante evaluation of project, as it conducts survey, prediction, assessment and feedback in the stage of project preparation. This article discusses the relation of project evaluation and environmental assessment by analyzing the issues on environmental assessment in developing countries.
First, I overview environmental & social considerations in Japanese ODA through principles and procedures of JICA Guidelines on Environmental & Social Considerations, and also environmental & social considerations by other donors.
Secondly, concerning the issues on environmental assessment in developing countries, I analyze legal basis, strategic environmental assessment, procedures, alternatives of project, social impact and public participation.
Finally, as future development, I discuss response to the issues above and capacity development of concerned organization in developing countries.

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At present, environmental consideration and objective project evaluation on development assistance projects have been strongly desired from the viewpoints of sustainable development and economic efficiency.
The present paper aims at introduction of “environmental economic evaluation” integrating conventional environmental impact assessment with usual economic evaluation to cope with the necessary internalization of quantitative environmental value into the evaluation system for the development projects, mainly referring to the results of JICA research “Methodology and Case Studies on Environmental Economic Evaluation for Agricultural & Forestry Projects in Developing Countries”(2005). It has been clarified from the research on the covered past project cases that there exist social or systematical problems at the both assisting and recipient countries in implementing the environmental economic evaluation, although various kinds of evaluation methods are applied. For the realistic and effective application in the future, this paper presents confront issuesand practical importance on the environmental economic evaluation, concerning with inter-sectoral cooperation, information/data collection, relation with the study levels of development projects, evaluation techniques and so on.

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This study proposes a methodology for assessing social capacity for environmental management (SCEM) which contributes to urban air quality improvement by identifying the actors and factors constituting the social capacity explicitly. To do so, a confirmatory factor analysis and a structural equation model are applied to estimate the effects of social actors (i. e., government, firms, and citizens) and factors (i. e., policies & measures, resource management, and knowledge & technology) on urban air quality management in 2 major cities (i. e., Osaka, Kitakyushu) in Japan. Using a panel data set for years between 1971 and 2000, a new evaluation method for capacity development is proposed called as “Actor-Factor Matrix evaluation” by using the results obtained in the analyses. Our results also show the difference of structure in SCEM and contribution to urban air quality by each city.

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While the number of local governments that introduce the evaluation system has been increasing, there are few studies to investigate whether the administrative services will be improved by introducingor trying the evaluation system, to my best knowledge. In this paper, I verified the relationship between the evaluation system in local government and the administrative services by quantitative method. Using the cross sectional data at the city level, I estimated this relationship by the ordinary least squares. The dependent variable is “administrative service point (Gyousei Service-do)”, and the independent variables are the dummy variables concerning the introduction and the trial of the evaluation system. My results show that the introduction and the long duration of evaluation system would improve the administrative services.

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In order to provide useful information for discussion of revising a law, an evaluation based on raised claims and issues was proposed. The framework of the evaluation was established by discussing the role of the evaluation, clarifying the reasons that raised claims and issues were paid attention, and categorizing the types of such evaluation methodology. The proposed verification evaluation was applied for the Recycling Lawfor Electrical Home Appliances. Verification propositions set from raised claims and issues on literature were whether the target for recycling was achieved, whether the recycling system was costly, whether waste prevention was promoted, whether illegal dumping was increased, which item should be included in the target item of the law, etc. Finally, this paper discussed problems to be solved regarding the proposed evaluation methods and evaluation of recycling laws.

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This paper proposes a framework for impact evaluation of donors' assistance projects at the sub-sector level, using the case of PSE in Indonesia. It presents: 1) methodological procedures in four stages, using a program theory model and an interrupted time series model in impact evaluation; 2) types of necessary data for analysis; and 3) analysis results based on collected data, focusing on higher outcome levels in the target sub-sector. It also identifies threats to the validity and adequacy of evaluation designs and results, and proposes some solutions for them. Finally, it reconsiders key issues observed in this study, such as: 1) the issue of contribution and attribution; and 2) donors' roles and responsibilities.

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