Asian Journal of Environment and Disaster Management 2010 2 3

doi: 10.3850/S1793924011000502

Japan's Activities on Supporting Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Water-related Disaster Management

Kenichi Tsukahara Japan International Cooperation Agency, 5-25 Niban-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8012, Japan. Tsukahara.Kenichi@jica.go.jp

ABSTRACT

Global climate change is likely to cause rising sea level and enlarged fluctuations of precipitation. This paper reviews a new Japanese policy on climate change adaptation in water-related disasters reported by the Panel on Infrastructure Development in 2008, and introduces Japan's activities to support developing countries on climate change adaptation strategies in water-related disaster management. The policy report indicates that a flood occurrence probability of once in 200 years in Japan may rise to once in 90 to 145 years, which means frequency of flood damages is likely to increase. There are two substantive features in the policy report, one is that the policy report introduces regional downscaling models to precisely simulate local phenomena of climate change, and another is that the policy report advocates that a target of water-related disaster management be changed from "zero damages" to "zero victims", implicating to protect human lives at least. The new strategies of the report is based on multilayered way flood management consisting of structural measure, non-structural measure, step with local community development, and emphasizing crisis management. The paper argues if the two features of the policy report can be applied to Asia-Pacific developing countries as they share similar climatic and geological conditions to those in Japan with introduction of Japan's activities to support developing countries on climate change adaptation strategies in water-related disaster management.

Keywords: Climate change, Adaptation, Water-related disaster, Downscaling, Nonstructural measures.

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