Appeal to Tokyo to comply with its "Satoyama Initiative" & stop biodiversity destruction at the Kaminoseki Nuclear Power & Henoko, Okinawa

An appeal from the Japan Environmental Lawyers' Federation (JELF) and JUCON (Japan-US Citizens' for Okinawa Network):

At the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in Nagoya, Aichi, from October 18 to 29, host nation Japan announced its “Satoyama Initiative,” expressing Tokyo's intention to lead global projects related to the Convention.

At the same time — even as the COP10 is underway — Tokyo is pushing government projects that will destroy biodiversity in Japan: the construction of Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant in a biodiversity hotspot in Yamaguchi Prefecture and the plan to to reclaim land at Oura Bay in Henoko, Okinawa (the habitat of the critically endangered dugong and many other unique species) to build a U.S. Marine Corps air base. These are a couple of examples among many of the Japanese government’s policies that contradicts its official position and strategic objectives on preservation of the nation’s biodiversity. Tokyo's Official Development Assistance (ODA) policies also include those that contradict these biodiversity principles.

We, international NGOs, hereby issue a joint statement, to raise awareness about these realities, and to call for the Japanese government to review its policies.

Please read the appeal below and send the endorsement of your organization by 24:00 (in Japan) of 23th to jelf@green-justice.com.

Joint NGO statement to Japan, host nation of CBD-COP10, to call for reviewing environmental policies of Japan

On the following site, Japanese Government, the presidency of the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of Convention on Biological Diversity, has pulished "Original draft of the post-2010 target (new strategy plan)" pamphlet: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/kankyo/seibutsu_tayosei/pdfs/post2010.pdf

Five strategic targets are in this original daraft as of September 26, 2010.

Strategic target A: Deal with the primary cause for the loss of biodiversity.

Strategic target B: Decrease direct pressure to biodiversity.

Strategic target C: Improve the situation of biodiversity.

Strategic target D: Strengthen the benefit from biodiversity.

Strategic target E: Strengthen the execution of the agreement through the capacity building.

Moreover, it advocates the target of 20 items such as" All people recognize the value of biodiversity, the value of biodiversity is built into the plan of the government, and harmful measures to biodiversity is abolished."

The following two plans are proposed as "Mission (short-run target to 2020)".

Plan 1: Take effective and urgent actions to stop the loss of biodiversity.

Plan 2: Through the effective and urgent actions, stop the loss of biodiversity by 2020.

In addition, "Vision (mid/long-term target to 2050)"says that the vision of this strategy plan is "The world where people live in good harmony with nature" and "The biodiversity as natural capital is evaluated, maintained, recovered, used wisely, and thereby healthy earth is maintained and an indispensable benefit to all people is given."

Japan has named this approach "Satoyama Initiative", and tries to take related activities of the agreement globally from now.
However, Japanese Government is doing a lot of policies contradicting its standpoint and strategic target domestically. They are destroying biodiversity one after another. For example, they are reclaiming Oura bay in the east coast of northern Okinawa, a hot spot of biodiversity, to build the U.S. military Marine Corps airport. Moreover, various businesses in contradiction to this strategic target are done by official development assistance (ODA) in the foreign countries.

It is a problem for Japan to leave the ecocide go and not to stop the biodiversity destruction businesses only doing "Satoyama Initiative".

We enumerate the data of biodiversity destruction businesses from the next page to let COP10 attending countries and NGOs refer to them. And we request that the Japanese Government review businesses concerned at once and achieve the strategic target proposed in COP10. In addition, the signatures of the NGO groups that agrees to the request of stopping of businesses concerned are appended.