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Preface
Japan and the other
industrialized countries harvest massive quantities of natural resources from
the environment, and process them into correspondingly massive quantities of
different products. Consuming these products makes lives more convenient and
richer. Meanwhile, the pollutants produced during the production and
consumption phases, as well as the products after they are consumed, are
returned to the environment as waste. The scale of this material cycle between
humankind and the natural environment greatly exceeds the environment’s natural
capacity to regenerate its resources and cleanse itself of waste. In short, the
majority of today’s environmental issues are linked to the socio-economic
pattern of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal.
The recognition that the environment
has a finite amount of available resources, and a finite capacity to cleanse
itself of waste, is fundamental for debating sustainable development. Chapter 4
of Agenda 21 points out that the current pattern of production and consumption
of the industrialized nations is not sustainable, and “sustainable consumption”
was a key concept at the Rio+10 summit held in Johannesburg.
Today’s economy is
characterized by this massive consumption of materials. A systematic grasp of
the flows of energy and materials between the environment and economic
activities, and between the various economic entities, is essential for
analyzing the relationship between such an economy and environmental issues.
Material flow accounting/material flow analysis is a powerful method for
achieving this goal. At the National Institute for Environmental Studies, a
study on environmental and natural resource accounting has been carried out since
1991 by the Global Environment Research Fund. For Japan, which relies on massive
imports of resources, it is particularly vital to make global issues be
reflected in environmental resource accounting. This data book uses data on the
trade of natural resources prepared during this process.
Meanwhile, the United
States, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and other countries have also been
developing material flow accounting studies, and there has been international
cooperation on research in this area. The first results of joint research with
these countries were published in 1997 as Resource Flows, and the second
in 2000 as The Weight of Nations.
（http://www.wri.org/wri/data/matflows/,http://www.wri.org/materials/weightofnations.html）
The greatest feature of
this international joint research is its focus on so-called “hidden flows”
(originally dubbed “ecological rucksacks” by German researchers), or the fact
that more materials are taken from the environment than are actually input into
economic activities. These flows are called “hidden” because they are missed by
conventional material-flow tracking. The massive size of Japan’s imports in
absolute terms shows how large Japan’s role in these hidden flows is.
Based on this background,
this data book aims to be used as a reference for thinking about
resource-related environmental issues, recognizing Japan’s role in world
resource trade. The data book presents data on the trade of major natural
resources, extracted and tabulated from UN trade statistics, in map and matrix
format. This second edition adds data from 1998, and is provided in both
Japanese and English. It additionally includes a CD-ROM containing maps and
matrices.
This data book is intended
as a first step toward learning about global issues from the perspective of
international trade. It can also serve as a reference for evaluating products
and corporate activities from an environmental perspective from “cradle to
grave” (i.e. over their entire life cycle), as well as a source of basic data
for research on environmental economic models and other topics.
Yuichi Moriguchi
Author
Social and Environmental Systems Division
National Institute for Environmental Studies
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