Mick Corliss - The Japan Times

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Mick Corliss

For Mick Corliss's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

JAPAN

Aug 30, 2000

Talks to hold up Kitakyushu as environmental success story

Asia, with more than half the world's population and economies that continue to grow, poses one of the biggest environmental challenges of the coming century. The United Nations predicts that by 2025 more than half the region's population will have moved to the already packed metropolises.

JAPAN

Aug 27, 2000

Cancer-causing chemicals found at Yokohama site

YOKOHAMA -- Just above the junction of the Tsurumi and Toriyama rivers lies a fenced-off area that looks like a simple abandoned lot.

JAPAN

Aug 25, 2000

Updated environment plan to add new economic options

The Basic Environment Plan -- Japan's 5-year-old master plan for a more environmentally sustainable society -- is in the middle of a seismic revision.

JAPAN

Aug 10, 2000

Critics slam government 'sinks' proposal

What is a forest?

JAPAN

Aug 4, 2000

Drink machines called handy polluters

They never sleep, gripe about overtime or quibble over paychecks. And -- with more than 5 million of them scattered around the nation -- they are ubiquitous.

JAPAN

Jul 21, 2000

Groups hit G8 inaction on illegal logging

As the Group of Eight major nations kick off three days of summit meetings in Okinawa today, environmentalists are mounting an effort to steal a slice of the limelight.

ENVIRONMENT

Jul 20, 2000

Fears for Okinawa's unique ecosystem

Okinawa Prefecture punctuates the Japanese archipelago as the period on its southern border. Stretching westward like an island path leading to Taiwan, the island group, though small, is teeming with a diverse abundance of plant and animal life.

JAPAN

Jul 16, 2000

The unrivaled madness of Shinjuku

When it comes to congestion, JR Shinjuku Station is king. This station is the Yamanote Line's undisputed champion of traffic, rowdy customers and sheer bedlam and confusion.

JAPAN

Jul 13, 2000

Kawaguchi to look to private-sector past

Newly appointed Environment Agency chief Yoriko Kawaguchi will use her private-sector experience to strengthen the agency as it prepares to become a ministry, but says her background has taught her to be wary of government regulation.

JAPAN

Jun 9, 2000

Ainu law fails to address grievances

ASAHIKAWA, Hokkaido — For thousands of years, Kenichi Kawamura's ancestors owned nothing but had access to everything.

JAPAN

Jun 7, 2000

Volcano leaves Lake Toya in limbo

ABUTA, Hokkaido — Lake Toya is silent. The smell of sulfur is heavy in the air.

JAPAN

Jun 7, 2000

Windswept town realizes gusts can be a clean money-spinner

TOMAMAE, Hokkaido — They tower above the ocean on bluffs and farmland, spinning like otherworldly contraptions misplaced on Hokkaido's bucolic coast. But the livestock don't seem to mind.

JAPAN

Jun 7, 2000

Drag racing finds new meaning with plow horses

ASAHIKAWA, Hokkaido — Skirting a fresh pile of manure, I settle in behind the well-muscled, veiny flanks of a Banei racehorse.

JAPAN

May 3, 2000

Look to past to build in tune with nature, landscaper says

Japan has a brilliant landscaping tradition and would do well to revive it in the pursuit of ecologically sound development, according to the man recognized as the founder of ecological planning.

COMMUNITY

Apr 23, 2000

JR East's No. 20 'just your average station'

Like many Yamanote Loop stations, Gotanda's name speaks of the area's past. Gotanda literally means 5,000 sq. meters of rice paddies, "tan" formerly being a measure for land area equivalent to 1,000 sq. meters.

JAPAN

Mar 23, 2000

Tobacco-curbing target up in smoke

Up in smoke -- that is the simplest way to describe the fate of an ambitious Health and Welfare Ministry plan to drastically cut the number of smokers as well as overall tobacco consumption in Japan by 2010.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 29, 2000

Japanese politics are gray, not green

GREEN POLITICS IN JAPAN, by Lam Peng Er. Routledge, March 1999, 232 pp., $90. The next 100 years have been dubbed the century of the environment. While this pronouncement may be a bit premature, even inflated, it reflects the swelling interest in environmental issues. From global warming and dioxins, recycling and waste disposal, environmental problems are making more headlines.

JAPAN

Feb 2, 2000

Nago airport plan seen as dugong threat

Less playful than dolphins and not as awesomely powerful as whales, dugongs have somehow failed to capture the popular imagination like their more dynamic cetacean brethren.

JAPAN

Feb 1, 2000

Nago base plan threatens dugong habitat

Less playful than dolphins and not as awesomely powerful as whales, dugongs have somehow failed to capture the popular imagination like their more dynamic cetacean brethren. But this endangered creature, found off the east coast of Okinawa's main island, may soon steal the limelight.

JAPAN

Jan 19, 2000

Washington not ready to swallow Kyoto Protocol

Staff writer The United States is determined to realize a workable international agreement to fight global warming, but serious sticking points remain before Washington can ratify the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. Climate Change negotiator Mark Hambley said on Wednesday. Hambley, who has headed climate change delegations since 1995, is in Tokyo for four days of Umbrella Group meetings to see if group members -- nine developed countries that do not belong to the European Union -- can forge a common stance on issues before COP6, the Sixth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in The Hague in November. For the first time, sinks -- carbon absorbing areas such as forests -- will be formally discussed at the longer-than-usual Umbrella Group gathering, Hambley said. Both the length of this Umbrella Group meeting, which runs until Thursday, as well as plans to meet three times this year instead of the traditional two, reflect the need to pick up the pace before COP6, he added. Under the protocol approved at COP3 in Kyoto in 1997, industrialized countries agreed to legally binding emission reduction targets for carbon dioxide and five other types of greenhouse gases. The total volume of their greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. But the "meaningful participation" of developing countries, manageable climate change program costs, limitless carbon trading and a strict compliance mechanism are key issues if the U.S. is to ratify the protocol, Hambley said. "We do not want to damage the U.S. economy," he added, explaining that cost considerations will be very important. The U.S. feels there should be no ceiling on carbon emissions trading -- a scheme that allows countries to buy, gain or trade carbon emission rights to offset reduction costs, Hambley said. A ceiling, as advocated by other developed countries, would "introduce artificial costs," Hambley said. The U.S. is also intent on creating a strict compliance system. Without one, the integrity of the protocol is at risk, he maintained. "We want a system that would penalize countries if they do not meet their (reduction) targets." Exactly what "meaningful participation" by developing countries will entail, Hambley said, will vary by country, but some would be expected to commit to reductions soon. Asked about the possibility that other countries might push ahead independent of the U.S. if it drags its feet, Hambley said that would be a mistake. "For countries to go alone on this I think would be an error," he said. "We view the Kyoto Protocol as the first of several steps to address global warming. It is a global problem that requires a global solution." The U.S. is not sitting on its laurels, he added. More than two-thirds of the 50 states have complete emission inventories and half of them are working on action plans to cut emissions, he said. "We are not waiting for it (the climate change convention) to be ratified before taking action." "For the U.S. this is an exciting period," he added. "I am confident that the international community is moving in a common direction and we will have a positive outcome."

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Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

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