Climate Change Adaptation Act
Japan promulgated the Climate Change Adaptation Act in June 2018 with the aim of promoting adaptation to climate change.
This section explains the positioning, content, and most recent revisions of the Climate Change Adaptation Act.
Positioning of the Climate Change Adaptation Act
Background to the enactment of the Climate Change Adaptation Act
All regions of Japan are already experiencing climate change and its impacts, including rising temperatures, more frequent heavy rains, declining agricultural product quality, changes in the distribution of animals and plants, and increased risk of heat illness. These impacts are predicted to increase over the long term.
Following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol at the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP3) held in Kyoto, Japan enacted the Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures, establishing a framework for addressing global warming, with priority primarily on climate change mitigation.
Under this law, steady progress has been made on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigate the effects of climate change. However, policies for climate change adaptation aimed at averting or reducing damage caused by climate change impacts lacked a legislative framework.
Adaptation initiatives were already being implemented under the Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures, but growing concerns about the increasing severity of climate change impacts provoked a stronger focus on adaptation that led to the promulgation of the Climate Change Adaptation Act in June 2018 and its enactment in December of the same year.
Benefits of the Climate Change Adaptation Act
With the enactment of the Climate Change Adaptation Act, the government was required to draw up a Climate Change Adaptation Plan, the Minister of the Environment to conduct climate change impact assessments, the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) to take actions to promote climate change adaptation, and Local Climate Change Adaptation Centers to collect and provide information on climate change adaptation.
This Act given climate change adaptation a legislative basis, establishing a framework for central government, local governments, businesses, and individual citizens to work together on promoting adaptation measures, and making it easier to implement initiatives.
Overview of the Climate Change Adaptation Act
Comprehensive promotion of adaptation
The Climate Change Adaptation Act clearly defines the roles expected of central government, local governments, businesses, and members of the general public in promoting climate change adaptation.
It requires the government to draw up a Climate Change Adaptation Plan, monitor and evaluate its progress, conduct climate change impact assessments approximately every five years, and revise the plan in the light of these results and other relevant factors (Articles 3, 7-10).
It also requires the government, when promoting adaptation measures, to incorporate an adaptation perspective into policies in various sectors including disaster prevention; promotion of agriculture, forestry and fisheries; and conservation of biodiversity, and to cooperation with local governments in planning and implementing these measures (Article 15).
The government is also required to share information with other countries and promote international cooperation, including providing technical assistance to developing countries (Article 18).
Development of information infrastructure
Making information on climate change impacts and adaptation widely available is a vital prerequisite to promoting adaptation measures.
As such, NIES was tapped to serve as the core of the information infrastructure for adaptation and tasked with collecting, organizing, analyzing, and providing information on climate change impacts and adaptation. It is also required to provide technical advice and assistance to local governments and other relevant stakeholders (Article 11).
Furthermore, the Climate Change Adaptation Act considers the insights and wisdom acquired by members of the general public in their daily lives to comprise an important source of useful information, and NIES is accordingly also tasked with collecting this information (Article 11).
Strengthening adaptation at the local level
Local governments are also required to promote climate change adaptation (Article 4).
As one of the initiatives to achieve this end, local governments are required to endeavor to formulate climate change adaptation plans at the local level. Given that the impacts of climate change vary depending on the climate, geography, and other aspects of the natural environment of each locality, as well as its industrial and socioeconomic status, local climate change adaptation plans need to be tailored to each locality's unique circumstances (Article 12).
To implement their plans, local governments are required to endeavor to establish Local Climate Change Adaptation Centers as hubs for collecting and providing information on climate change adaptation, and to develop systems for promoting adaptation measures (Article 13).
Local governments are also required to encourage business activities that contribute to adaptation by providing information on adaptation to businesses in their local area (Article 4).
Promoting adaptation by businesses
Given that climate change could have significant impacts on business activities, businesses are required to endeavor to implement adaptation measures tailored to their business operations and to cooperate with adaptation measures implemented by central and local governments from the perspective of risk management.
Depending on their business field, businesses are also expected to proactively pursue adaptation business initiatives such as developing technologies that contribute to disaster mitigation and prevention, and developing crop varieties that are resilient to high temperatures (Article 5).
Expectations for the general public regarding adaptation
Members of the general public are expected to deepen their understanding of the importance of adaptation and to cooperate with nationwide and local adaptation initiatives (Article 6). Because all of us are affected by the impacts of climate change, we are all expected to view climate change risks as a personal concern and to take an active interest in adaptation.
Recent amendments to the Act
The Climate Change Adaptation Act was amended by a Cabinet decision in February 2023. The amendment was promulgated in May 2023 and went into force in April 2024. The amendment was drawn up to enhance heat illness countermeasures in the face of more frequent anticipated extreme heat events in the future, given that climate change is driving up the number of heat illness deaths in Japan, with such deaths regularly exceeding 1000 annually in recent years.
Key initiatives being implemented under the amendment are as follows: formulation of a Heat Illness Prevention Action Plan by the government; issue and dissemination of special heatstroke alerts; establishment of designated cooling shelters; and designation of heat illness prevention promotion organizations.