Between the Global Environmental Regime and Local Sustainability: A Local Review on the Inclusion, Failure and Reinventing Process of the Environmental Governance

Japan has undergone drastic changes in ecological policy and practice over the past 40 years. Although this short history began with significant levels of pollution, notoriously termed “kogai”, the country seems to have achieved great ecological improvements, both technologically and institutionally, and now is one of the most highly ecologically modernized countries. But can this process really be posited as a simple, linear one of ecological modernization, a sort of natural, historical progress toward ideal environmental governance? This paper proposes some questions that cast doubt over this view. It focuses on local struggles for environmental governance, particularly in the city of Kamakura, which proclaimed itself an “environmental municipality” in 1993, a designation that seemingly fell by the wayside in 2001. Investigating this 8‐year case we can extract some lessons concerning the contradictions between global and local, and consequently about the inherent difficulties of top‐down environmental ordinances and insufficiently decentralized environmental governance. At the same time, through this case readers may also discover a new type of civic activity: cities with agriculture. After a short sketch of agri‐environmental movements, I will suggest that such movements are converging with more conventional ones and prevailing throughout the country. Therefore, the ecological modernization process can be seen to include a sort of restoration process: an updated return to perma‐cultural sustainability. Consequently, this essay contributes to international environmental discussion, not only by uncovering the cleavages between global and local, but also by suggesting the possibility of environmental governance alternative to technologically and institutionally driven ones.