Japan's global commitment to environment protection will drop 0.9 percent from this year in fiscal 2001, which begins April 1, to a combined 639.9 billion yen, the Environment Agency said Tuesday.
It will be the first year-on-year decline since the agency started calculating budget appropriations under this category in fiscal 1989, the agency said.
The decline is chiefly attributed to an 11 billion yen cut in the budget for nuclear power development, which is said to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the agency.
Major items in the global ecology budget include 530.6 billion yen for measures against greenhouse gases, 7.9 billion yen for measures against acid rain and 4.9 billion yen to assist environment conservation efforts in developing economies.