Japanese Environmental Politics Today

Japan’s environmental politics today frequently follows a “sanpo-yoshi” (3-way-good) ideal, sometimes framed in international contexts as “People-Planet-Profit.”  In this model environmental action and policymaking works to find win-win-win outcomes that serve social, environmental, and economic goals simultaneously.  At the national and international levels, policies are often framed using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and many of Japan’s most innovative and exciting environment-related international collaborations are happening at the sub-national levels with city-level and province-level initiatives.

 

Mary Alice Haddad is the John E. Andrus Professor of Government at Wesleyan University.   She studies city diplomacy, environmental politics, and civil society with a focus on East Asia. She is the author of Environmental Politics in East Asia (Cambridge, 2023), Effective Advocacy (MIT, 2021), Building Democracy in Japan (Cambridge, 2012), Politics and Volunteering in Japan (Cambridge, 2007).  Her current research explores the role and impact of city diplomacy, the ways that cities are working with each other across national boundaries to solve common problems.

 

This event is part of The Japan Seminar Series, presented by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan and the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.