Overview of Long-Term Trends of the Economy-Environment Nexus in Japan
This chapter, as a first step of this book’s analysis on Japanese history of economy-environment relationship, overviews its long-term trends. First, we look at the trends of economic growth, environmental burdens, and environmental legislation. Then, to
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Overview of Long-Term Trends of the Economy-Environment Nexus in Japan
In Part III, we will conduct a historical analysis on the relationship between economy and the environment in Japan from the postwar era to today, using the theoretical framework discussed in Part II. As we saw in Chap. 2, the world economy has been rapidly growing and environmental burdens have also been rapidly increasing since the nineteenth century, under the capitalist and market economy. During this period, the structure generating the growth (the growth regime) has changed over time, as has the relationship between economy and the environment (the economy-environment nexus). This book analyzes the long-term transformation of this relationship by taking Japanese history as an example and focusing on the period from the 1960s to around 2010. Japan has come through contrasting experiences of severe pollution damages in the postwar era of high growth, as well as rapid improvements in resource productivity through pollution abatements and energy savings in the 1970s. It should, therefore, provide us with one of the best examples to analyze transformation in the economy-environment nexus. As the starting point of this analysis, this chapter takes an overview of how the economy-environment nexus in Japan has changed over time. First, we review the long-term trends of economic growth, environmental burdens, and environmental measures. Second, to analyze the relationship among them, we conduct long-term estimates of environmental costs as quantitative indices reflecting the status of the economy-environment nexus. Third, by using this information, we provide an overview of the development of institutional coordination within the economyenvironment nexus.
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 K. Okuma, The Evolving Relationship between Economy and Environment, Evolutionary Economics and Social Complexity Science 8, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4100-6_7
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7 Overview of Long-Term Trends of the Economy-Environment Nexus in Japan
Economic Growth, Environmental Burdens, and Environmental Measures
As we saw in Chap. 3, economy and the environment evolve as interacting with one another through a feedback loop that goes through society. To analyze their evolving relationship, the first step should be to trace each phase of this loop: economy, the environment, and society. Let us overview the trends of economic growth (representing the state of the economy), environmental burdens (representing the pressures on the environment), and institutions for countermeasures (representing the reactions from society). The trend of economic growth is shown in Fig. 7.1. This book analyzes economic growth by focusing on the capital accumulation rate, following the tradition of re´gulation and post-Keynesian theories (sources of data and methods of estimation are shown in the appendix). The accumulation rate changes in a similar trend with the profit rate. Japan’s accumulation rate was high in the 1960s but fell around 1970, indicating that the mechanism of
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