Who Will Save the Forests?
By Kunimatsu Yoshitsugu [The plight of Japan’s forests is just one of many ignored in the September election campaign. As mountains of debt soar over Japan’s national and local governments, Koizumi managed to focus attention on a single area that was in the black – the Post Office – and persuade sufficient numbers of voters that it constituted a crisis and needed to be privatized to win the election. Neo-liberal leave-everything-to-the-market policies would be Japan’s salvation, the Prime Minister declared, presenting himself as the apostle of reform after four and a half years in office without a single reform in place. Here, Shiga prefecture Governor Kunimatsu looks at the impact of market-opening policies on the environment and economy of a major Honshu prefecture –adjacent to Kyoto and Lake Biwa. Under timber “liberalization” policies adopted a quarter century ago, the price of cedar logs plummeted from 23,000 yen per cubic meter (in 1980) to 4,400 yen per cubic meter (in 2004) as
