A Forest Environment Tax Scheme in Japan: Toward Water Source Cultivation

This book is a work that focuses on the forest environmental tax.  Forest resources have played a major role in preventing global warming  by absorbing carbon dioxide and supplying oxygen. However, global  economic growth has adversely affected the global environment and has  exacerbated global warming due to excessive consumption of forest  resources. The functions or “services” of forests are diverse, but the  interest of the citizenry in forest cultivation is scarce since forests  are public goods. Concurrently, Japanese forestry, which has played an  important role in forest conservation, is steadily declining, and it is  no longer possible for private forest operators to maintain the forest  environment. Therefore, in order to realize sustainable economic growth,  it is necessary to formulate policies for the conservation of  appropriate forest environments.

Forest conservation is an  especially important policy issue for Japan, where two-thirds of the  country is forested. In Japan, a forest environmental tax is being  introduced as a forest conservation policy. As of 2021, the forest  environmental tax has already been introduced in about two-thirds of the  prefectures and soon will be introduced as a national tax. In this  book, the significance and issues of the forest environmental tax will  be sorted out, and the status of the introduction of the forest  environmental tax in Japan will be compared with that of other  countries. In addition, there is additional material regarding the water  source conservation fund in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, a system  similar to the forest environmental tax.