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JAPAN : Summary analysis of material flows and materials intensity indicators for Japan

4.5 Japan 13(a) 13(b) Domestic Material Consumption / Capita DMC I GDP (kg / SUS Year 2000 exchange based) 18.0 4.0 +Japan Asia-Pacific World 16.0 3.5 + 14.0 3.0 1 -Rest of World 12.0 2.5 eeee 10.0 * 2.0 8.0 1.5 6.0 1.0 4.0 2.0 - 0.5 0.0 0.0 1970 1980 1990 2000 1970 1980 1990 2000 13(c) 13(d) Physical Trade Balance / Capita Domestic Material Consumption / Capita 6.0 20.0 Biomass IFossil fuels Metal ores and industrial minerals Construction minerals 18.0 5.0 16.0 4.0 14.0 12.0 3.0 10.0 2.0 8.0 1.0 - 6.0 4.0 0.0 20 -1.0 0.0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Figure 13 Summary analysis of material flows and materials intensity indicators for Japan Tonnes / Capita Tonnes/Capita Tonnes/Capita

JAPAN : Summary analysis of material flows and materials intensity indicators for Japan

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Japan is an HDI country. The overall picture in Figure 13 is that of a country which had basically completed the agrarian to industrial transition at the beginning of the 1970s, and has entered a rela... tively stable state as a mature industrialized economy, based on manufacturing and services. Japan’s DMC per capita decreased slowly over the period 1970 to 2008, at a time when the corresponding values for the region, and the World overall, were increasing strongly (Figure 13 (a)). As a result, it has gone from consuming around twice the World average and four times the regional average, to being roughly average in both contexts. The main factor contributing to Japan’s reduction of DMC has been an ongoing decline in consumption of construction minerals, while consumption of metal ores and biomass has also declined slightly, while fossil fuels increased (Figure 13 (d). The PTB panel shows that Japan is dependent on imports for virtually all of its metal ores and fossil fuels, and for a significant proportion of its biomass DMC (Figure 13 (c)). Japan’s MI has decreased by an average of 2.7% p.a. compounding since 1970. Remarkably, this rate of improvement has actually accelerated, with MI decreasing at 3.7% p.a. from 2005 to 2008. These ongoing improvements mean that Japan is now over 12 times more efficient at generating GDP per unit DMC than the regional average, and 6.7 times more efficient than the ROW average. The extent to which this is a result of ongoing Japanese policy initiatives to decrease waste and raise efficiency, rather than an outcome of progressively off-shoring the most material and energy intensive stages of production processes, remains an open question.