The staff of Friends of the Earth-Japan (FOE-Japan) spends time in two very different worlds. One is an office in the high-tech, fast-paced city of Tokyo. The other is in out-of-the-way places such as the Noglikskii district of Sakhalin Island in Far Eastern Russia, where men -- like generations before them -- still herd reindeer. While the two sites vary greatly, FOE-Japan staff members say they couldn’t do their work effectively if they neglected either the office or communities in far off places.
“When we’re monitoring large projects funded by the Japanese taxpayers, it’s important for us to get out and meet the local people who are affected by them. We become their voice,” said Naomi Kanzaki, project coordinator for the Development, Finance and Environment Program of FOE-Japan.
But simply playing the watchdog role for international development projects, such as dams, pipelines and major road construction, isn’t enough, she said. NGOs also must interact with top-level decisionmakers to create policy and procedural changes. “We attend meetings with government officials in Tokyo and educate them because they don’t usually have any information about the negative impact these projects are having on the local people, their livelihoods and their environments.”
For example, FOE-Japan’s Shoko Murakami visited Sakhalin Island to hear firsthand how community members have been affected by the world’s largest oil and gas project, which includes two 500-mile (800-kilometer) pipelines that cross over many rivers and streams, and run through the island.
After returning, Murakami briefed officials at the Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC) about the economic, environmental, social and cultural problems created by the $20-billion project, which is being developed by Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company and two for-profit Japanese companies, with additional funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and JBIC.
“We have to bring the issues back to the bank staff, government officials, the media, and the Japanese people,” Murakami said. “Sometimes the Japanese people are more interested in issues here at home than international issues, but we should know -- and care about -- how our tax money is affecting people in other countries.”
Russia is one of seven countries with Japanese publicly-financed development projects that are being monitored by FOE-Japan. The others are in China, Malaysia, New Caledonia (a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean), the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Since its creation in 1980, FOE-Japan has addressed developments funded by international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and JBIC -- the two largest.
The Mott Foundation has provided five grants totaling $965,000 to FOE-Japan since 1999 in support of its efforts to reform Japan’s IFIs. That includes working hand-in-hand with two other Tokyo-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are also Mott grantees -- the Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES), and Mekong Watch.
The three have had several successes. But FOE-Japan is realistic about the work that remains.
“All development issues are actually social issues, because they affect how the local people can sustain their lives and their natural resources,” FOE-Japan board member Ikuko Matsumoto said.
“The financial mechanism is one of the tools we can use to regulate the development process. It’s a good strategy for us to take.”