The 3rd Workshop for Local Management Project

Date: 18th January 2005 (Tuesday) 19:00-21:00
Place: Meeting Room B, 25th F, Boissonade Tower, Ichigaya Campus, Hosei University, Tokyo

“Environmental Preservation Activities by an NPO Focused on the Tama River Basin”
Shozo Yamamichi, Assistant Director, Tama River Center, NPO
Riding the wave of the high economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, river projects spread throughout Japan through the building of dams and “improvement” work that encased rivers in concrete on three sides (sanmenbari). In addition, effluent from factories and households increasingly polluted rivers. In response, since the first half of the 1970s, a grassroots citizens’ movements emerged with the goal of protecting the environment of river basins nationwide. In the forty years since, these citizens’ movements changed into NPOs, which has also led to changes in their relationship with the government. With its location in and along the border of Tokyo Prefecture, the national government for a number of reasons has used the Tama River as an model experiment. For this presentation, by focusing on NPO projects for the Tama River and other examples from rivers both inside and outside Japan, I will discuss the ideas and direction of present and future river restoration plans.
The relationship between water and river administration and NGOs and NPOs has transferred to a mutually cooperative partnership of river management beginning with public access to government administration and the establishment of non-governmental organizations to the reform of the regulatory system. The problems at this point are the overwhelming lack of communication and the shared failure of vision on information. Citizens groups and government agencies are also dealing with the problem of expressing how we want the Tama river to be in the future and a vision of how to get there.
In addition, the NPO side has pushed for incorporation. In the National Association for Local Water Environment Groups, the goal is plan activities that bring people together by sharing the perspectives on the idea of a “Good River.” By having ordinary people participate directly in river planning, the importance of public environmental science has also been mentioned. What this necessarily entails is not volunteerism as such, but rather scientific base that includes safety, environmental, and future land use issues. Specifically, local and regional activities include the following: “Map of the Mogami River Garbage,” “Chronicle of activities on the Tama River for the year 2000), “The Misogi River Incorporated,” and “For Coexistence of People and Nature.”
Furthermore, from changing government thinking, NPOs are moving beyond the issue of riparian environments to also take up the building of bases for the regional disaster prevention and the development of regional management. The rivers in the Tama river and the making of a water network is not the Tama river alone. It is also the building of mutual relationships involve the adoption of ideas and practices from other places in the nation and the sending information about what we do in the Tama river area. Considerations for the future of NPOs are how to include thinking about disaster prevention to older concerns for environmental protection, overcoming the economic issue of budgeting for labor costs and projects, the support of comprehensive and higher education for people of ability, and integrating our work with the school system.