Forest environmental tax as a scheme of sustainable forest management: potential and challenges in Japan
The Forest Environment Transfer Tax (FETT) was introduced in Japan in 2019 to support forest management at municipality level. Forest policy at prefectural level is influenced by the scheme as well. For example, 37 prefectures having prefectural forest environment tax cannot use their prefectural taxes for the measures which can be implemented using the FETT. They need to consider and explain the differences between FETT and their prefectural taxes. Furthermore, FETT is allocated not only to municipalities but to prefectures to support municipalities. Another major topic of FETT scheme is facilitation of urban and rural collaboration. Urban municipalities receive FETT as well as rural municipalities, and they can use it to facilitate the use of wood products to indirectly support national and regional forest management, and to conduct forest management in rural municipalities based on urban-rural collaboration. In this study, 37 prefectures were analyzed to identify the status of use of FETT. It reveals that most of the prefectures implement support of municipal surveys of forest owners. In addition, ordinance of a prefecture has been revised to avoid duplication of policies based on FETT and its prefectural tax. Furthermore, to analyze the urban-rural collaboration using FETT, collaboration of Toshima District in Tokyo and Chichibu City in Saitama were surveyed and analyzed. As results, the contexts, potentials, and challenges of their collaboration were identified. As a background of the collaboration, an officer of forest policy section in Saitama Prefecture was working on the FETT related measures as an officer of Chichibu City, which is an example of human resource sharing between prefectures and municipalities. The contexts of the urban-rural collaboration are; two of them have long-term collaboration as sister municipalities, and Chichibu is conducting regional forest management collaborating with surrounding municipalities. Keywords: Forest Environment Transfer Tax; Forest environmental tax; prefecture; municipality ID: 3486768
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| Format: | Article biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
FAO ;
2022
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| Online Access: | https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/CC1290EN http://www.fao.org/3/cc1290en/cc1290en.pdf |
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| Summary: | The Forest Environment Transfer Tax (FETT) was introduced in Japan in 2019 to support forest management at municipality level. Forest policy at prefectural level is influenced by the scheme as well. For example, 37 prefectures having prefectural forest environment tax cannot use their prefectural taxes for the measures which can be implemented using the FETT. They need to consider and explain the differences between FETT and their prefectural taxes. Furthermore, FETT is allocated not only to municipalities but to prefectures to support municipalities.
Another major topic of FETT scheme is facilitation of urban and rural collaboration. Urban municipalities receive FETT as well as rural municipalities, and they can use it to facilitate the use of wood products to indirectly support national and regional forest management, and to conduct forest management in rural municipalities based on urban-rural collaboration. In this study, 37 prefectures were analyzed to identify the status of use of FETT. It reveals that most of the prefectures implement support of municipal surveys of forest owners. In addition, ordinance of a prefecture has been revised to avoid duplication of policies based on FETT and its prefectural tax. Furthermore, to analyze the urban-rural collaboration using FETT, collaboration of Toshima District in Tokyo and Chichibu City in Saitama were surveyed and analyzed. As results, the contexts, potentials, and challenges of their collaboration were identified. As a background of the collaboration, an officer of forest policy section in Saitama Prefecture was working on the FETT related measures as an officer of Chichibu City, which is an example of human resource sharing between prefectures and municipalities. The contexts of the urban-rural collaboration are; two of them have long-term collaboration as sister municipalities, and Chichibu is conducting regional forest management collaborating with surrounding municipalities.
Keywords: Forest Environment Transfer Tax; Forest environmental tax; prefecture; municipality
ID: 3486768 |
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