management activities offers excellent opportunities for exchanges between the two communities and learning about the relationship between the sea and mountain.

There is also an instance where communities saddled with the same problems can collaborate in information exchange and joint research to broaden the scope of their initiatives.

Still another example is the community effort that embraces a broader perspective of improving not just the local but also the global environment and provides developing nations with environmental cooperation, chiefly in the realm of the pollution control measures, drawing on the area’s pollution experience.

Positioning of Community Businesses

Source: Ministry of the Environment

The City of Kitakyushu has systematically organized its local resources (i.e., past experience in overcoming pollution, successes in international cooperation, and pollution prevention technologies) and developed an extensive range of human resource use programs and training materials. The city currently offers support programs to cities including Dalian, China, that consist primarily of joint projects and human resources development.

Food Exchange Program (Kita Ward, Tokyo, and Kanra-machi Town, Gunma Prefecture)

### 4. Propagation of Local Initiatives to Outside the Community

Initiatives based on local environmen-

Source: Ministry of the Environment

tal capacity that have proven effective within the area can become significant to society in general by reinvigorating various areas as they propagate to other communities both inside and outside Japan.

For example, civic movements, such as the promotion of laundry soap in the Lake Biwa area, coupled with local government’s energetic efforts to conserve the environment of the lake culminated in the International Conference on the Conservation and Management of Lakes held in response to the appeal of Shiga Prefecture. The conference established a precedent where the initiative of a local government produced a setting conducive to international exchange and the propagation of the theme of conservation of the environment of lakes and marshes.

### 5. Working toward the Creation of a Sustainable Society through Local Environmental Capacity

As we have seen so far, local environmental capacity aids in the creation of a sustainable local community on two fronts: environmental conservation and community reinvigoration. Promoting programs based on local environmental capacity is not easy, but each of the initiatives has the potential to spread as an effective model for balancing the development of the local community with environmental conservation. They also can serve as significant forces for change toward a sustainable society. Today, it has become vital for individual communities to nurture and increase their local environmental capacity.

## —— Conclusion

Given the fact that environmental constraints have begun to loom over our daily life, it is essential that each of us take swift action to tackle this tough issue, bearing in mind that each of us is cast in a leading role in environmental efforts. As “Making It Happen!” was the theme of the Johannesburg Summit, taking actions on our own initiative and from our own backyard, i.e., in our daily life and in our local communities, can become a positive step forward that will carry us closer to a change leading to a sustainable society.