Such improvements as to control of exhaust gas and fuel economy have not only contributed to environmental conservation, such as air-pollution mitigation and $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction, but also produced added product value and improvement of international competitiveness. Today, there is a worldwide tendency for government-imposed restrictions over vehicle exhaust gas to be stricter and stricter in response to people’s increasing interest in environmental issues. This trend is an advantage for the Japanese auto industry, which has been making great efforts to create more sophisticated environmental technologies that will lower exhaust-gas emissions and improve fuel economy. Actually, after the second oil crisis (1979), Japanese cars, which are small and energy-efficient, increased in sales substantially in the U.S. market.

### d. Soil contamination in those lands previously occupied by plants

Since the early 1990s, facts of serious soil contamination have been revealed one after another in lands planned to be used for town redevelopment, and drew much public attention. Since Japan is a small country, the issue of land use in urban areas is treated carefully especially when land use for a particular purpose is changed or redevelopment is planned. In response to the situation, various RD&D projects for the disposal of underground pollutants have been promoted according to purposes of land use and types of contaminant, where techniques to confine pollutants as well as technologies to isolate and dispose of contaminated soils are being studied.

Technologies to decontaminate soils contribute to the protection of human health in neighboring areas and also to the removal of negative factors in land-utilization efforts. In addition, soil purification of a contaminated idle land helps prevent deforestation of other land that would otherwise be developed as an alternative, and also helps create business opportunities and promote regional vitalization. According to a survey conducted by the Geo-Environmental Protection Center, the total amount of money paid during fiscal year 2005 to contracts for soil-contamination surveys or soil-decontamination projects registered at 162.4 billion yen, and such expenditures are expected to continue to increase in the future (Figure 3-3-3).

Thus, technologies helped Japan to overcome various environmental problems in the past. The significant contributions of technologies are not limited to the effects of environmental conservation but extend over various benefits, including improved international competitiveness and new business opportunities. In our efforts to global warming countermeasures, the significance of technologies is enormous, as mentioned above, and is expected to further increase as global warming accelerates in the future.

Figure 3-3-2: Trend of car sales in the U.S. market for new American cars and imported Japanese cars

Source: Compiled from the data of the U.S. Department of Commerce by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment

Figure 3-3-3: Expanding geo-environmental businesses

Source: Geo-Environmental Protection Center Results of the fact-finding survey on soil-contamination researches and countermeasures (during FY2005).