Environmental Protection Law

LAW IN JAPAN, KOREA, AND THE UNITED STATES

Environmental protection successes and failures in Japan, Korea, and the United States are considered in this chapter. Countryspecific information is followed by country comparisons.

A major environmental pollution problem existed (and the potential continues to exist) with respect to sewerage. Landrelated constraints in Japan severely curtail the country's capacity to deal effectively with sewer waste. In the late1980s and early1990s, however, Japanese scientists developed a sewer sludgemelting process that is rapidly solving the problem in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka, and the Osaka region (Tebbutt, 1991, pp. 628632). This process represents a major environmental protection success for Japan.

A recent environmental failure in Japan involved the detection of organic compounds in Dokai Bay (Terashi, 1993, pp. 348355). Dokai Bay experiences only slight water exchange with the sea, and the body of water is nearly surrounded by industrial facilities that manufacture chemical, steel, and iron products. Compounds found to be present in Dokai Bay included "50 PAHs, 16 azaarenes, 10 alphatic hydrocarbons, and four chlorobenzenes" (Terashi, 1993, pp. 348355).

A more longterm Japanese success with respect to environmental protection involves forestry. The relatively warm

Japanese climate, together with hea

. . .
er cost the Korean economy as much as five won or if such action would divert as much as one wan from the country's national defense budget. Quite simply, there have been no authentic environmental protection successes in Korea. Neither, it must be added, have there been any unmitigated environmental protection disasters. What has occurred, however, is the continual depletion of the country's natural resources, and the continued degradation of the country's natural environment. Examples of each of these phenomena are considered in the discussion that follow in relation to the forest resources and the urban environments. An environmental failure case in Korea is found in a reforestation project (YoungKyoon, 1992, pp. 177182). Officially, Korea has had a reforestation program since the eleventh century. In actual practice, however, reforestation has not been pushed by successive Korean governments, and no largescale reforestation program was initiated until 1973. That reforestation plan was a part of the country's First 10Year Development Plan. The plan called for the reforestation of one million acres with rapidly growing and useful tree species. The reforestation plan soon failed, and a second plan was implemented in
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Approximate Word count = 2964
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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