About

In 1971, Environment Agency of Japan was established with its main mission of improving and strengthening pollution control and natural conservation management. The mission has been expanded and establishing a low-carbon society is our goal today. To respond that, the Environment Agency became the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) in 2001, which plays the central role in the Government’s environmental policy.

MOE has full responsibility for planning overall government environment policy and is promoting and implementing policy measures in various fields such as climate change, waste management and recycling, environmental health, pollution control, and nature conservation in close collaboration and coordination among relevant ministries.

In Japan, twenty-nine National Parks are designated with the aim of preserving of the finest natural spectacles and biodiversity. They cover a total of approximately 2.08 million hectares of land and account for approximately 5.5 per cent of the total land of the country. MOE is responsible for the management of National Parks.

MOE has more than 1 200 staff and operates seven Regional Environment Offices throughout the country, in addition to its headquarters in Tokyo.

Strategy

At the UN summit on climate change that took place on September 22, 2009, Prime Minister Hatoyama announced Japan’s mid-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 compared to the 1990 level, based on scientific requirement. This commitment is premised on establishment of a fair and effective international framework by all major economies and agreement on their ambitious targets on agreement on ambitious targets by all the major countries. By this announcement of the high reduction target, we believe that Japan has encouraged other developed countries to take initiative and set ambitious targets themselves.

“Challenge 25” is the actions aimed at achieving the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2020, in order to protect Japan’s and global environment and to hand sound environment down to the children of the future. The government has decided to mobilize all available policy tools in order to promote these actions.

With the aim of achieving the ambitious goals and actions, “Challenge 25 Campaign”, national movement for the prevention of global warming was launched at the beginning of 2010 to shift to a new sustainable society –a low carbon society–.

The “Challenge 25 Campaign” proposes six practical challenges that each and everyone of us can take actions to reduce CO₂ at home, at offices and in communities.

Six Challenges

• Choose an environment-friendly lifestyle
• Choose energy-saving products
• Choose natural energies
• Choose environment-friendly buildings and houses
• Support activities and products that lead to the reduction of CO₂ emissions
• Participate in community activities to prevent global warming

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