Information You Can Use: A Bi-monthly Service for the UN and Civil Society
Volume 2, Issue 2, March - April 2005
NGO influence low despite huge growth in ranks: conference
Source: The
Japan Times
By: NAO SHIMOYACHI
February, 05, 2005
Despite a growing number of civic groups, these organizations are not powerful enough to affect national policy, researchers and nongovernmental organization leaders told a conference this week on NGOs and civil society.
In January, the number of nonprofit groups accredited by the government reached 20,000 -- up more than tenfold from just five years ago, according to the Cabinet Office.
Wilhelm Vosse, an assistant professor of social science at International Christian University, said Thursday at the conference -- organized by United Nations University and the Delegation of the European Commission in Japan -- that Japanese environmental groups may have been quite successful in raising public awareness, but were ineffective in carrying out their policies at the national level.
Vosse said that although several opinion polls have shown that public concern in Japan about environmental destruction is much higher than in Europe, it has not resulted in an effective ecological political party.
This is because Japan's environmental movement is severely "fragmented and underfunded," he said.
According to the Cabinet Office, there were 336 state-accredited environmental groups as of last September.
Vosse said Japan has a large number of environmental groups but most have few members and are operating with an annual budget of less than $5,000. He also pointed to the lack of independent research institutes that could help civic groups gather scientific data.
In reaction to the growing publicity of nonprofit work in the wake of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, Japan enacted a law in 1988 to allow nonprofit groups to get corporate status, helping make them more credible to the public.
However, the new law did not solve the groups' severe financial problems because it sets strict qualifications for tax exemptions on donations.
Hiroko Hara, a social anthropologist and president of Japan Women's Watch, claimed the women's movement in Japan has not developed due to insufficient funds.
Her group now works with a government panel to help create a more equal society, but she said this partnership only came about after learning what its counterparts were doing in other parts of Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, India and China.
"We are still having a huge problem with how to have our
voices heard in the Japanese political decision-making process," she
said.