Climate Change Policy-Making Process and Reasons of Its Stagnation: Activities and Preferences of Stakeholders in Japan

Institutional processes of making political decisions determine the range of their outcomes. The international comparative research project, the COMPON project (Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks), explores characteristics of the decision making processes in each society, based on common methods. The purpose of this presentation is to show results of the Japanese face-to-face questionnaire survey to national stakeholders and to discuss its interesting findings, especially on activities and preferences of major stakeholders.

The COMPON-Japan conducted this survey based on the Japanese translated version of the common COMPON questionnaire sheets to 125 organizations in 2012 and 2013 which can exert political leverage in the field of climate change policies. 72 organizations responded and the collection rate is 57.6%.

As results of our survey, we find that almost all stakeholders share the view that the climate change really occurs and is caused by human activities, though a few stakeholders conduct natural or social science research by themselves. They can, therefore, concentrate their political resources to bring their opinions to governmental officials by attending at committees and making press releases. On preferences of domestic climate change policies, there is a cleavage over policy orientations, especially between industries and NGOs. Industries prefer a bottom-up voluntary goal setting, while NGOs prefer more institutionalized and legally goal-binding measures.

Our respondents replied the progress of climate change policies are seriously impeded by the lack of political leadership. This result can be interpreted in two ways. For one thing, they expect the government's coordinating of the crush of interests between stakeholders. And for another, they expect stronger political leadership and media campaigns to introduce more effective climate change policies. Climate change policy-making processes in Japan are stagnated, then we need stronger international stimuli and pressures to change the situation.