First Local Climate Change Adaptation Center opens in Tokyo Metropolis.

Date of interview	June 25, 2021
Establishing organization	Climate Change Adaptation Section, Environmental Department, Edogawa City
Targets	Yoshihiko Niimura, Deputy Mayor, Edogawa City Environment Department, Edogawa City Nobuhumi Takahara, Director Yasaka Satou Manager, Climate Change Adaptation Section Satoshi Kubo, Chief , Climate Change Adaptation Officer , Climate Change Adaptation Section

Please tell us about Edogawa City’s unique local features and characteristics.

Mr. Niimura: Edogawa City is a municipality situated by the estuaries of the Arakawa River and the Edo River with fairly flat topography. Because groundwater was widely extracted in the area from the Taisho period through the early Showa period, the ground has sunk two to three meters from the original level, creating the issue of its land surface lower than sea level. So about 30 to 40 years ago, even small rainfalls would result in inundations.
As the area became progressively urbanized in the post-war era, Edogawa City – which only had a population of about 100,000 at its inception – would grow to become this large municipality that currently has nearly 700,000 residents. In the early Heisei period, almost 100% of the municipality’s sewer system was completed. This development would prevent rising waters after small rainfalls, but we must bear in mind that the reference precipitation level currently applied in sewerage development is 50 mm/hour. However, the recent extreme weather that is likely caused by global warming has increased precipitation at unprecedentedly high levels resulting in major riverine flooding, which has become a serious issue that needs to be addressed. The area had precipitation of as much as 90 mm a few years ago. Although the municipality has reinforced the levees and built quite many reservoirs, they are still not enough, and we are constantly playing catch-up.
To drastically address global warming, which is the root cause of all these issues, the municipal government instituted its Eco-Town Edogawa Facilitation Plan in 2008. Edogawa City has since been conducting activities to reduce carbon emissions based on specified annual goals for over a decade while sharing information on the adverse effects of global warming with its residents.
While Edogawa City has been able to meet the numerical goals specified in its first- and second-phase plans for the most part, efforts are also being made to assess the magnitude of positive impact its activities have made on the environment. It was in this vein that the municipality created an organization exclusively dedicated to the cause, which would become the Climate Change Adaptation Headquarters that exists today. While this is in line with the major global trends, Edogawa City has been particularly motivated to tackle global warming on its own initiative, given the area’s low elevation.

Why did Edogawa City decide to set up its own Local Climate Change Adaptation Center at this point?

Mr. Takahara: While measures for addressing climate change can be either mitigative or adaptive, Edogawa City has been systematically implementing its mitigative measures so far. As for adaptive measures, the municipality has been mainly working on flood control with emphasis on disaster prevention, etc. While these activities have been led by our designated departments, we have decided to step up our efforts and have been formulating additional initiatives since last fiscal year that integrate SDGs.
Since the enactment of the Climate Change Adaptation Act, an increasing number of prefectures have been opening their Local Climate Change Adaptation Centers, but only a few cases exist at the municipal level so far. Because Edogawa City is located in this geographical area that is susceptible to flooding, storm surges, and other adverse effects of climate change, we are so willing to take a more proactive approach, and that is why we decided to open our own Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in April 2021.
However, a special ward such as ours does not possess the same level of know-how that research institutes specializing in the field might. So our stance is to actively seek expert advice from the National Institute for Environmental Studies and the Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Protection as we analyze information and formulate action plans ourselves, so that the people and the businesses that are based in Edogawa City can all join forces to overcome climate change and achieve carbon neutrality.

Mr. Niimura: The Edogawa City Climate Change Adaptation Center was established on April 1 this year, and the first Climate Change Adaptation Headquarters Meeting was held on June 19. We have been talking to staff members from the health and welfare departments about climate change adaptation and mitigation measures since. Although one might assume those departments would not usually get involved in the topic of climate change much, I feel like they have shown a good understanding of what we are talking about, realizing that this would affect them also along with everyone else. So there is this team spirit getting built up among us, each one asking what it could do to play its part in helping the cause, for which I am quite thankful.

Mr. Takahara: There are indeed many angles we should be working to achieve our goals. For example, as Edogawa City is home to a number of small-scale factories, we must actively lead our local industries toward a more carbon neutral structure. We are just starting to scratch the surface at this point, plus each department within the municipal government has its own set of activities that have been going on from before. I believe they know the directions in which they should be headed, and they apparently share a strong sense of mission as well. As such, we have been able to communicate with them easily across various departmental boundaries within the Edogawa City Office.

Your feasibility study on the potential launch of the organization started in December 2020. What made it possible for you to set up your local Adaptation Center with such speed?

Mr. Takahara: I think an alternative approach would have been to create our local climate change adaptation plan first and then establish the Local Climate Change Adaptation Center. But in the case of Edogawa City, the backcasting approach was used instead to set up the Adaptation Center first, and we are in the middle of our plan formulation involving all departments within the municipal government. We thought this would allow us to facilitate the progress more aggressively.

Mr. Niimura: Indeed, Edogawa City established its environmental department in 1970, which was one of the first among the 23 special wards that comprise central Tokyo. Although the main duties of the environmental department at the time involved chores such as clearing of mud from ditches and extermination of flies and mosquitos, the gradual disappearance of those ditches also reduced the fly and mosquito populations, and then the environmental department would shift its focus to air, noise, and other pollutions. In the ensuing years, stringent exhaust gas regulations would be introduced to rein in emissions, etc. Edogawa City also started its long-running forestation campaign around the time that aims to have each resident plant 10 trees in the municipality. The main environmental concerns apparently changed from one period to the next. And here we are today, committing ourselves to addressing global warming.
Another major factor might have been the Eco-Town Edogawa Facilitation Plan. The Edogawa Eco Center –an accredited NPO – was incorporated and brought on stream in 2004, and this is a cooperative enterprise also comprised of Edogawa City employees and volunteers that are interested in environmental activities. Some are bird aficionados while others are content to grow bitter gourds to create shades, create natural ponds in the river banks, or engage in other myriad projects. The Eco-Town Edogawa activities have been a collaborative undertaking between the municipality and its people.
Because Edogawa City has been cooperating with its residents on such environmentally-themed initiatives as I’ve just explained, it has not been created on a whim. Our new SDGs Promotion Headquarters, which was created just last year, is planning on setting our 2030 goals by the end of FY 2021. As this environmental initiative is but one of our three key components of the environment, economy, and society, we are keen on taking this opportunity to also upgrade the Eco-Town Edogawa Facilitation Plan at this juncture.

While your previous main focus has been the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and other mitigation measures, adaptation is now being brought into the picture. While both are apparently important, how do you all manage to strike the right balance between the two in your operation?

Mr. Takahara: While we have been mainly talking about climate change mitigation, adaptive measures have also been implemented along the same timeline. For example, civil engineering and disaster countermeasures as well as hygiene and health initiatives such as infectious disease and hyperthermia control and prevention are a few of the key areas where Edogawa City has been devoting its resources. Along these lines, the recent establishment of the Adaptation Center is turning out to be such an opportune milestone for all those involved to reinspect and reassess the adaptive measures that have been implemented thus far with a view toward building a better municipal community.

Mr. Niimura: In terms of our measures to prevent damage from storm surges and floods, and from earthquakes by reducing densely populated residential blocks, the municipality has been continuously taking action on these fronts, long before global warming would become such a major public concern. As both the current and previous Mayors of Edogawa City confidently stated that municipal development would entail sound disaster prevention measures, we have been focusing on these initiatives for a long time. As precipitation has been on the rise, we need to check the levees, etc. to make sure they have sufficient heights, of course. But I feel like we have been at this for many years, and it’s just that the new label “adaptation measures” has been slapped onto the same jobs that we are accustomed to doing well, so it doesn’t feel different to us.

Please tell us about your resident communication and engagement plan.

Mr. Sato: On Edogawa City’s official website, there is a news section for residents entitled Edogawa City News, where video programming and other content on the topic of climate change are made available. We are going to continuously improve the content, so they’ll cover all the basics such as explanation of what climate change is, as well as wide-ranging nuggets of relevant information from Japan and the rest of the world. While this is still a fledgling project, we want to curate its content so that any residents of the municipality can access it to learn about climate change with ease and come to the realization that it affects us all, and each one of us should take action.

Please tell us how you will be cooperating with the Tokyo Metropolitan government.

Mr. Takahara: As delegates of Edogawa City, we have been in contact with their Research Institute for Environmental Protection and also the Bureau of Environment at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to inform them that we have established the Climate Change Adaptation Center and will be facilitating our adaptation measures through it. As they all offered to give us advice on any matters where we lack the expertise, we are thankful for that.
We recently held a conference that was attended by their experts, where we explained our directions and progresses made thus far on the formulation of Edogawa City’s climate change adaptation plans and other related matters, based on which they gave us guidance and recommendations. We are also keen on establishing a good rapport with the National Institute for Environmental Studies to closely exchange information and cooperate with them in our future endeavors.

Please tell us about Edogawa City’s PR and other plans for the future.

Mr. Sato: So we are currently working on the second-phase Eco-Town Edogawa Facilitation Plan which will cover 2018 through 2030. As far as the national government is concerned, they have set a numerical target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030. While Edogawa City’s current goal is to cut emissions by 40% – which is a lofty target in its own right – we might need to raise the bar higher still, given the circumstances. At any rate, we want to create such a plan that has the optimal mixture of adaptive and mitigative components and would nudge each municipal resident to take on climate change as their own issue.

Last but not least, could you share with us what motivates you to do your work and also your outlook on the future?

Mr. Kubo: While there is still much to learn about climate change, temperatures are apparently climbing higher each summer, and when winter comes around, it certainly feels warmer than the last. So I feel like my being assigned to this current position is some kind of fate. Because what we are dealing with on the job are the kinds of issues that will remain with us and affect us well into the future, I hope to work on them with a long-term perspective from this point onward.

Mr. Sato: Climate change is a global problem. As I have offspring of my own, I fear the horrendous prospect of us not taking any action in our lifetime that will pass the catastrophic impact of climate change onto the next generation. So I would like to do my job well from such perspective also.

Mr. Takahara: I have this great privilege of being appointed to my current position as environmental department manager. It’s been only several months in preparation since the Mayor of Edogawa City first approached me at the end of last year with his idea to set up a new organizational structure that would be fully dedicated to addressing the various adverse effects of climate change. While it might take time for our new organization to deliver tangible results, I believe we must join forces with all concerned parties to tackle climate change with a sense of mission.
So I will do my part to have people from the local community learn about the threat that climate change poses, while steadfastly laying the groundwork that will later allow all stakeholders to act together and actualize our vision.

Mr. Niimura: As climate change is a major global issue, each country is setting its own goals and scrambling to achieve carbon neutrality through its own unique methods. Japan is no exception, as it will soon find its own ways to do the same. As a municipality of Japan, Edogawa City must determine during the current planning phase what our municipality’s capabilities are as well as what would be the most effective ways to achieve carbon neutrality.
As there are wide-ranging departments within the Edogawa City Office that must work together, it is my professional duty to carefully coordinate with them and unite us as a team. It must all start with the plan formulation, in scrum, involving all departments. As we must simultaneously raise awareness of climate change among the municipality’s 700,000 population as well as business operators that are based here, and change their attitude on the topic for the better, I am prepared to go through continuous trials and tribulations until we reach our goal.

Related website/article

• Edogawa City Climate Change Adaptation Center