The new Basic Environment Plan, which sets a basic direction for the nation's environmental policies, reflects the ideas behind major developments in international efforts on environmental issues since it was last updated six years ago, including the 2015 Paris agreement to combat climate change and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It says that environmental policy must be designed so that innovation from all perspectives — including socio-economic systems, lifestyles and technology — will not only maximize the effects to protect the environment but simultaneously help solve the nation's economic and social challenges, enabling "new growth" that will ensure a high quality of life into the future.
The Basic Plan, approved by the Cabinet in mid-April, needs to be quickly fleshed out with concrete policy measures, whose implementation and effects should be regularly checked and assessed. Its ways of thinking must be embedded in actual government policy.
Japan's policy on environmental problems has often been constrained by deep-rooted thinking that stringent environment regulations and measures to fight climate change can slow economic growth. Bureaucratic divisions between different government organizations due to their seemingly conflicting interests, such as the gap between the Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry over renewable energy and the introduction of a carbon tax or an emissions-trading system, slow efforts to address climate change.