Budgetary Coniderations of Environmental Law

LAW IN JAPAN, KOREA, AND THE UNITED STATES

Budgetary considerations related to environmental protection in Japan, Korea, and the United States are compared in this chapter. Budgetary considerations are typically addressed within one of two contexts. The first typical context involves the consideration of factors that lead to fiscal constraint in the funding of governmental activities generally. Such factors, in turn, require governments to prioritize programs and activities in the distribution of scarce financial resources. The second typical context involves situations in which governments charge a department or agency with specific responsibilities, but fail to adequately fund the required programs and activities. Constraints of this type require departments and agencies to prioritize responsibilities in the allocation of scarce financial resources. In the comparison of budgetary considerations presented in this chapter, neither of the typical contexts of analysis are observed. Rather, the comparisons in this chapter are based on the absolute levels of environmental protection funding in Japan, Korea, and the United States, and on the proportionality of such funding to the total national budgets.

The Japanese economy is one of the strongest in the world (some observers say the strongest). Further, Japan has the lowest national debt among the larger de

. . .
vity gains, high real interest rates employed the Nixon and Reagan Administrations to attract foreign funds to finance American deficits, and a misguided belief that the country could rely on the services sector to maintain its status as an economic superpower) priced itself out of one industry after another, American jobs moved to foreign countries. Japan was the first major beneficiary of this phenomenon. Over the past decade, however, Korea has been acquiring many of these jobs from the Japanese, as Japan begins to price itself out of some industries. Korea has also tended to follow Japan in its approach to environmental protection. Korea's booming economy produced sufficient revenues to fund governmental activities. The Korean government, however, allocates approximately onethird of the central government budget to defense spending, while simultaneously starving the country's environmental protection effort (Paxton, 1992, pp. 785790). As is true in Japan, the environmental protection policies of Korea are, for the most part, both minimal and ambiguous (Priorities, 1992, pp. 78101). The funding for the Korean Environmental Administration remains minimal. This low level of funding is not, however, a constraint on the
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Protection Agency, Environmental Administration, Korea United, Africa Bateman, Japanese Japan, United StatesThe, Japanese Korea's, Japan Japanese, United States, environmental protection, Neff Nakarmi, central government, central government budget, government budget, represented approximately, national product, gross national, gross national product, protection effort, budget environmental, environmental protection effort, government budget 1992, national product 1992, 1992 represented, budget 1992,
Approximate Word count = 1743
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)