Problem overview:

     Meeting information requirements: The State of Environment Report in Japan is being conducted a the local level to present data on environmental condition along with countermeasures towards abatement that local governments have taken. In addition to that, the Report has made adjustments to include considerations of environment and economic integratively so that there will be useful background information for decision-making.

Background:

      The Global understanding of the state of the environment is built from local assessments.

      Under Agenda 21, all nations are to prepare a national state of the environment report every 5 years. This has turned out to be very difficult and expensive an undertaking because most countries did not have a reasonable, integrated database covering all aspects of the environment. Japan was the pioneer in reporting the state of the environment both at the national and local levels. At the national level, Japan produced its SOE report entitled, "White paper on Environmental Pollution" in 1969. The paper was prepared by the Environmental Pollution Control Headquarters. This leadership in the field derived from a very sensible programme for local state of the environment reports that began in 1962.

      Japan was the first country to issue the State of Environment Report at the local level in the Asian and Pacific region. Osaka city was the pioneer. It published the first report in Japan at local level in 1962, nine years before the Environment Agency was established. Other areas in Japan soon followed Osaka and today almost all prefectural governments (45 out of 47 prefectures) and all large city governments (12 cities) issue their own state of the environment reports every year.

      A typical style of those reports initially was to introduce firstly the state of pollution in local environment showing monitored data by items for which the ambient environmental quality standards were set and then to describe the countermeasures taken by the local government. However, the contents of the report have undergone considerable change over time (see accompanying table). Recently, these reports have started describing incentive and comprehensive policies reflecting the changed focus from conventional environmental pollution at local level to all embracing socially and economically implicated environmental policies at local, national as well as global levels.