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A Better World for Everyone

JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 3Boosting

Afghanistan’s rice production

The world’s most vulnerable people

Protecting Malawi’s farmlands

Praying for rain

Preserving sea life

Protecting the world’s mangroves

Providing safe water

Fish stocks under threat

Rebuilding Juba Port, South Sudan

Helping disaster victims

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The Impossible Dream?

2 JICA’S WORLD JUNE 2012


It is an extraordinarylandscape. Giraffe andzebra roam a series ofhills which are criss-crossed by a network oflarge beige pipelines.Clouds of white-hotsteam erupt from theground near rows ofgreenhouses growingroses and other flowerswhich will be on sale inEurope within days.

Engineer Cyrus W. Karingithifrom the Kenya Electricity Genera-tion Company calls this bizarrescene “Kenya’s wonderful gold-mine.” It is not exactly a goldminebut the 300 square kilometer areain Africa’s great Rift Valley may beequally valuable.

The so-called Olkaria field isAfrica’s first and currently largestgeo-thermal site which providesKenya with 12% of its energyneeds. But, aided by a US$ 323 mil-lion loan from JICA, it is quickly ex-

JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 5

It was hailed at the time as “one of

the great achievements of agricultural sciencein the 20th century”—a decades long project toturn what early Portuguese settlers called thecampos cerrados or the closed quarter into a

vast agricultural breadbasket. Today that stretch of Brazil’s tropical savannah

more than five times larger than mainland Japanyields vast harvests of soybeans, corn, coffee, rice, cas-sava, sugar and other crops. The late Norman E. Bor-laug, the so-called father of the green revolution whichis credited with saving hundreds of millions of poorpeople in the last century, called the 1970s projectone which “transformed a wasteland into one of themost productive agricultural areas in the world.”

Japan provided vital technical and financial as-sistance to help the Brazilians and those two countrieshave now teamed up to try to perform another ‘agri-cultural miracle’ – this time in the southern Africannation of Mozambique. That country ranks as one ofthe world’s poorest but it has the potential to emulateBrazil to become another agricultural cornucopia ina region where millions of people still go to bed eachnight hungry.

Both the earlier and current projects are majorexamples of what the international community callsin official parlance ‘sustainable development’—aglobal movement to help not only poor nations buteven rich countries to improve the economic and so-cial lives of their peoples in a manner which can also

A Clea

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Rio : Twenty Years Later

panding and within six years willprovide this resource-starved na-tion with 49% of its energy.

The geo-thermal program, JICA’slargest project in Kenya, is an al-most perfect ‘sustainable’ devel-opment scheme.

Some 160 wells pump steaminghot water from depths of 3,000meters to the surface. The steam is

channeled into power plants,turned into electricity and fed intothe national grid. Surplus water isthen channeled back into theearth, topping up the bubbling un-derground lakes and providing avirtually inexhaustible futurepower supply.

Geo-thermal energy is cheaperto produce than most other energy

sources and is climatefriendly. Once the field’sdevelopment began thesurrounding countrysidewas gazetted as a nationalpark, protecting the envi-ronment, encouraging

tourism and even feeding thenearby flower plantations whichhave become major exporters forKenya.

More sites are being explored,not only in Kenya but in other re-source-light countries up anddown the Rift Valley whichstretches from southern Africa intoArabia.

The use of clean and cheapenergy sources is key to globalefforts to achieve sustainabledevelopment and JICA is activeacross the globe in promoting

projects. It has been heavily involved for

years in helping Indonesia developand exploit some of the world’slargest geo-thermal reserves.

Wind power is being exploited inEgypt where JICA and other inter-national organizations establishedAfrica’s largest wind farm.

If those are multi-million dollarmega projects, they are compli-mented by small-scale, communityfriendly initiatives such as estab-lishing solar systems to bringpower and light to isolated villagesand helping build more efficientwood-burning village stoves whichare environmentally friendly andhelp preserve endangered forests.

preserve and protect the world’s natural resources—its lands, rivers, environment and eco-systems.

This particular collaboration ticks other key boxesin what is considered by scientists and experts as thebest way forward in saving the earth and its resources.

In the immediate aftermath of World War IIJapan itself was a recipient of international assistance.By the 1990s it had become the world’s biggest singledevelopment donor.

Brazil and other nations such as China and India,are now emerging as new donors on the internationalscene and Akihiko Tanaka, the recently appointedpresident of the Japan International CooperationAgency (JICA) said in an interview (see page 8-9)that their role and closer ties to them by his own

agency were “key… (because) without them the worldwill not be able to achieve sustained economic andsocial growth.”

The project in Mozambique falls into the cate-gories of both south-south cooperation directly between emerging nations and triangular coopera-tion between a traditional donor such as Japan, anemerging donor country and a developing nation.

In the Beginning Twenty years ago as the world began to

realize planet earth might be in crisis and that inter-national rather than individual national initiativeswere needed to meet the challenge the U.N. convened

(Continued on page 6)

Clean andcheap energy is

key to globalefforts

to achievesustainable

development.

Africa’s largest windfarm

Exploiting Indonesia’s geo-thermal resources

Kenya’s inexhaustible ‘goldmine’


Impossible Dream? The

project of its kind ever undertakenin the Amazon employing both thelatest technology including satel-lites, radar, aircraft instrumenta-tion and laser imaging and alsosimple ‘leg power’ to plot forestlife.

Human monitors on foot haveestablished more than 1,500 spotsthroughout the Amazon wherethey tally tree numbers, theirmeasurements and the amount ofcarbon each contains.

The combined information willprovide a comprehensive pictureof how much carbon the entirebasin contains and how much CO2is not being released into the at-mosphere where it could fuel evenfurther climate change and envi-ronmental degradation.

From the accumulated data sci-entists and governments will beable to more effectively tackle cli-mate change and the preservationof global biodiversity.

In another scientific project theJapanese satellite ALOS Daichi hashelped Brazilian authorities re-duce the destruction of the Ama-zon, where one million hectaresare being lost each year mainly tohuman encroachment, by beamingimages back to earth of threatenedregions, even during the rainy sea-son when heavy clouds blanket theforests.

Such satellite monitoring canalso help track climate change,agricultural production, the spreadof disease and even infrastructure

development such as the construc-tion of new roads.

In the Andes and Himalayanmountain ranges JICA is cooperat-ing with local experts to track themovements of the earth’s glacierswhich have serious implications forclimate change and the future oflocal communities.

And at the very tip of LatinAmerica Japanese and local ex-perts for several years havetracked the so-called ozone hole, atear in the earth’s protective ozonelayer. The ozone hole allows dam-aging high-energy radiation tofreely bombard the earth beneathand can cause skin cancer, injureeyes, harm the human immunesystem and upset the balance ofentire eco-systems.

JICA’s recently installed presi-dent Akihiko Tanaka said he willencourage further scientific coop-eration between Japanese and de-veloping country scientists to seeksolutions to today’s challenges.

JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 7

(Continued from page 5)its first Earth summit in the Brazilian city of Rio deJaneiro with the aim of ‘putting sustainable devel-opment as a top priority on the agenda of the U.N.and the international community.”

In the intervening two decades innumerable meet-ings at all levels were held, resolutions passed, indi-vidual and collective agreements and projectslaunched.

In June virtually all of the world’s nations andanyone interested in development—thousands ofdiplomats, government officials, experts, non-gov-ernmental organizations, donors, civic societies, sup-porters and hecklers—gathered again in the seasidecity for what was labeled the Rio + 20 conference.

The meeting had several aims: to secure renewedpolitical commitment to sustainable global develop-ment, assess progress or spotlight failures during thepreceding two decades and address new and emerg-ing challenges.

Practical aims were to promote a so-called global‘green economy’ within the framework of sustainabledevelopment, continue to work toward widespreadpoverty eradication and the construction of a stronginternational framework to ensure a vigorous andsuccessful global response.

“I have no illusions about international confer-ences,” JICA President Tanaka said in his recent in-terview. “The world remains full of mutually jealoussovereign states, but these meetings are still very im-portant stepping stones. Rio gives JICA (Japan’s ma-jor development agency) a chance to assess our earliercontributions to global sustainability and then to helpformulate measures and approaches which the lead-ers of the world can then utilize going forward.”

The world faces a dizzying array of formidablechallenges—a burgeoning global population, food,water, and energy crises, dozens of ongoing conflicts,widespread poverty in some areas of the world, social,economic and gender inequality, environmentaldegradation and climate change.

Exploding PopulationAt the first Rio summit in 1992 the world popula-

tion was an estimated 5.48 billion, according to theUnited Nations. By 2030 it will reach 8.2 billion.

Even though the poor already spend 70% of theiravailable income on food, around one billion peoplestill go to bed each evening hungry. Malnutritionhelps cause the death of five million children underthe age of five each year, the majority of them insouthern Africa.

Developing countries receive the brunt of climaterelated disasters such as flooding, drought and earth-quake, 98% of an estimated 262 million annual vic-tims living in poorer nations.

The environment and biodiversity is under threateverywhere. More than 50% of the world’s marinefishery resources are already fully exploited. Forestsare being lost at the rate of 5.2 million hectares an-

nually and 75% of the genetic diversity of crops hasbeen lost since 1900.

The lack of education and gender inequality aremajor drawbacks to sustainable progress. Women,for instance, produce about half the world’s food butown only 2% of the land. The empowerment ofwomen could raise their farm productivity by 20-30% and ultimately lift some 100-150 million peopleout of hunger, according to the U.N.

Japan and JICA, its major development imple-menting agency, have modified their policies andprojects over the years to meet these challenges. In1989 the government announced a new Environ-mental Official Development Assistance (ODA) Pol-icy for the first time and JICA opened an environ-mental section at its Tokyo headquarters.

The ODA charter was revised in 2003 to empha-size ‘sustainable growth’ as a priority issue. The gov-ernment further announced a Cool Earth Partnershipto address global warming in 2008 and JICA estab-lished an office for climate change.

Japanese BlueprintGoing forward, Japan has proposed the

development of a new international strategy basedon the overall aim of establishing a global green econ-omy and has highlighted nine areas for particularattention:

Protecting global biodiversity; reducing disasterrisk in developing countries, including applying manyof the lessons learned following the March 2011earthquake which devastated northern Japan; pro-moting renewable and clean energy sources; enhanc-ing food and water security; developing a model ‘cityof the future’; strengthening education; more fullyutilizing technological and green innovations andimproving a global earth observation network(GEOSS).

JICA is already active in all of those fields and themajority of its projects underline ‘sustainable’ devel-opment.

To boost food security for the world’s most en-dangered peoples, in addition to the triangularMozambique-Brazil-JICA project, the agency’s mostambitious food program in Africa is to help countriesdouble their overall rice production by 2018 to 28million tons annually (see page 10).

The ancient territory of Mesopotamia, current dayIraq, was the birthplace of modern agriculture andJICA is helping revive that sector in addition to thecountry’s oil industry. Experts and financial supportare assisting countries as far apart as Afghanistanand Timor L’este to Palestine and the Americas tostrengthen their agriculture.

Many developing countries rely on fish as a majorfood staple and along the coasts of Africa, deep inthe African hinterland, in Latin America and AsiaJICA sustains and strengthens local fishing industriesand communities.

In Kenya the expansion of a geo-thermal field un-derwritten by a US$323 million yen loan will providethat country with nearly half its energy needs within

(Continued on page 14)


The Amazon River basin is theworld’s most important eco-system. Spread across 2.5 mil-lion square miles and nine nations, it contains around 50%of the world’s rainforests, floraand fauna and two-thirds of theworld’s fresh water.

More importantly the Amazonacts as a giant external lung for theentire world, absorbing vastamounts of carbon dioxide, storingand recycling it to produce 20% ofthe world’s oxygen needs. Withoutthe Amazon, the world would ef-fectively choke to death.

But scientists still do not knowhow this system truly functions.

A four-year, US$4 million projectbetween JICA and Brazil’s NationalInstitute for Amazon Research(INPA) is trying to answer ques-tions such as how much carbon theentire eco-system holds.

It is the most comprehensive

Scien

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the Re

scueF R O M T H E A M A Z O N T O T H E H I M A L A Y A S

Argentina : measuringthe ozone hole

Brazil : Amazon forest fires

JICA’s presidentwill encourage

closercooperation

betweenJapanese and

developingcountries’scientists.

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Amazon : trackingcarbon levels

JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 98 JICA’S WORLD JUNE 2012

Has it been difficult to make the transition fromacademia to the presidency of Japan’s developmentagency? For me personally it has been quite smooth. I have workedfor many years in international affairs and following the endof the cold war, I wrote several books dealing with overalltrends towards globalization, the relative decline of sovereignstates and the increasing power of other stakeholders;problems facing some ‘middle income’ countries includingthe rise of nationalism; and the status of so-called fragilestates facing or undergoing conflict. These are all problemswhich JICA confronts daily in its development work. Comingup with solutions will be the difficult part.

Give a couple of practical examples of translatingtheory into practical solutions. Countries such as Afghanistan and South Sudan are amongthe ‘fragile states’ I mentioned. JICA is helping to create thefoundations of stronger institutions to help them escape thetraps of civil war, poverty and unstable governance. Middleincome countries also face various ‘traps’ includingcontinuing pockets of poverty and growing economic andsocial disparities between various segments of society. JICA’srole here is to help build sustainable institutions not only intraditional areas such as health and education but alsoecologically and environmentally.

JICA is already involved in many of these countries .How do you propose to push the agenda forward? I would like to encourage my staff to develop new innovativeapproaches based on the broad outlines established by mypredecessor, Madame Ogata, including the concept of‘inclusive and dynamic development’ and an emphasis on‘human security’. That means not only ensuring statesecurity, which is very important, but also strengthening thecapacity and increased participation of communities andindividuals in shaping their own future.

What are your immediate priorities?As an academic perhaps I became too bookish. I need torectify that, to expose myself to the real fields of developmentassistance and see whether my hypothetical assumptions fitwith reality. I need to make a reality check.

Do your foresee any major changes in direction oremphasis for JICA?Our current vision of ‘inclusive and dynamic development’ isthe right one so we don't need to change that. Probably whatI would like to establish on top of that foundation is a sort of

In his first formal interview, JICA’s new president, Akihiko Tanaka, discusses the challenges facing the organization including the need for a more rigorous intellectual and scientific approach to development issues.

higher architecture ofinnovative ideas,expanding the use ofscience and our cumulativeexperience.

What has been theimpact of JICA’s major2008 reorganizationwhen it integrated withpart of the Japan Bankfor InternationalCooperation (JBIC)?For the first time JICA cannow offer technicalcooperation, grant aid andODA (OfficialDevelopment Assistance)/concessional loans.Previously, looking at itfrom the outside, there were tendencies for these threedifferent schemes to function separately without muchconcern for overall effectiveness. The challenge now is tointegrate these different approaches creating innovativeschemes to achieve the best mix of assistance.

You have said publicly the need to establish newintellectual frameworks. What do you mean by that? JICA has accumulated decades of field, administrative andintellectual experience. We should exploit this vast‘knowledge bank’ in helping to shape ‘intellectualframeworks’ at various levels, to guide JICA staff in theirwork and to influence the development debate at the globallevel. JICA cannot do everything under the sun and we willnot dominate these discussions but we must be very activeparticipants with traditional partners such as the WorldBank. What JICA has already done can also be very useful toemerging donor nations such as China, South Korea,Thailand, India and Brazil.

Do you worry that the role of Japan and JICA has beenundervalued or misunderstood?Perhaps we Japanese are too accustomed to understatement.But in recent years there has been little academic study ofJapan’s ODA. I would like to encourage both Japanese andinternational researchers to analyze our work morethoroughly and we can then create new theories based on ourpast experiences and what has worked and what has notworked.

You are interested in the expanded application ofscience in development issues?This is a very exciting and fascinating area for me, theengagement of academics in various scientific disciplines.The basic working assumption has always been that thedeveloped world has the scientific knowledge and then it is asimple process of scientific transfer. I would like to seescientists from Japan and developing countries workingclosely together, exchanging ideas and developingappropriate programs based on mutual knowledge. Thescience and technology research partnership for sustainabledevelopment (SATREPS) launched by JICA in 2008 is oneof the most promising approaches in this field.

The budget for Japan’s Official DevelopmentAssistance has been falling for several years. What isthe situation at the beginning of your presidency?I hope that the annual reductions have bottomed out. Myunderstanding is that the public’s view about foreignassistance expressed in opinion polls has gone up slightly,particularly after the March 11, 2011 earthquake when quite anumber of Japanese realized you cannot live in isolation. Wemust take into consideration Japan’s current difficultfinancial situation but the ‘bottoming out’ process is verysignificant and I hope the government will now ‘positively’increase the budget.

Ultimately the Japanese taxpayer will decide thefuture direction of ODA. How do you propose toconvince them that foreign assistance is important? Our regional centers throughout the country will increasetheir contacts with local communities. Each year we invitesome 10,000 trainees from the developing world to Japanand this provides an excellent opportunity for both sides toget to know each other. We have sent more than 40,000people overseas as JICA volunteers and when they returnhome they should interact with schools and localcommunities. Importantly, the over 65s will soon compriseone quarter of the country’s population and they are the mostactive voters. Unless we can maintain their understandingand support, it will be difficult to persuade our MPs toincrease the ODA budget.

What is the significance of the Rio + 20 conference onsustainable development? Will concrete resultsfollow or will it prove simply to be a talking shop?As a specialist in international politics I have no illusionsabout international conferences. The world remains full ofmutually jealous sovereign states but these meetings are stillvery important. Rio gives JICA a chance to assess our earliercontributions to global sustainability and then to helpformulate measures and approaches which the leaders of theworld can then utilize going forward. JICA has already donea lot of good things, but frankly we have also been slow in

rationalizing our efforts in a globally relevant way andhelping to create those necessary intellectual frameworks forthe future.

Africa remains the world’s poorest continent but JICAhas significantly increased its assistance in recentyears. Will this trend continue? I think so though globally our increased help has not beenfully recognized. There are ongoing resource limitations butwe need to give more importance to grant aid and technicalcooperation, particularly in fragile states. At the same timethere has been dynamic development in some regions,particularly southern Africa, and we could use more ODAloans for infrastructure development. We should alsoencourage regional rather than single country approacheswhere applicable.

China very publicly has increased its activities inAfrica. Do you see this as an opportunity or achallenge for JICA’s own role?. Bluntly speaking, it is an opportunity. China is still in theprocess of learning. Africa has more needs than a singlecountry or even groups of countries can satisfy. And so themore donors the better.

Can you foresee JICA working directly with China inAfrica or other areas of the world? I hope that will happen. Under Madame Ogata our staff havealready established some contacts with the Chinese in Africa.I would like to increase communications there and on otheroccasions. Chinese aid agencies have already undergonevarious episodes which may or may not be good for China’sreputation. And frankly Japan has also undergone somegood and bad experiences. These are things we can discussfrankly not only with them but also with other emergingpartners.

What will be the future role of not only China butother emerging donor countries such as Brazil, India,Thailand?They will not only be key, but without them the world will notbe able to achieve sustained economic and social growth.There may be some challenges of coordination, but definitelywe need to work very closely with these countries.

Are you an optimist and what would you consider a‘success’ at the end of your 3 ½-year tenure?I am always cautiously optimistic. Success or failure will bewhether I can motivate JICA’s staff to a level of performanceat least as high as now, or even to a much higher level. On theground it will be a great achievement to help thedevelopment of the less developed countries in the Mekongregion; create more joint collaborative efforts with Africancountries; and contribute to the development debate byshaping intellectual frameworks.

Searching for New, Innovative Ideas

JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 1110 JICA’S WORLD JUNE 2012 JUNE 2012 JICA’S WORLD 1110 JICA’S WORLD JUNE 2012

Why Do Millions of People Still Go Hungry?

Wate

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28 million tons a year by 2018.This target will be achieved by in-

troducing new strains of rice in-cluding Nerica or new rice forAfrica, renovating irrigation sys-tems, introducing new technolo-gies and extension services andongoing research.

In another major project JICA hasteamed up with Brazil and thesouthern African nation of Mozam-

the nearly 150 countries in whichJICA operates.

The ancient land of Mesopotamiawas the cradle of modern farming.Japanese expertise is helping to re-habilitate the agricultural sector ofwhat is today known as Iraq, whichwas massively damaged duringyears of recent conflict.

In Egypt JICA experts havehelped form local farmers organi-

Water is the most basic and pre-cious natural resource of all.

Yet, though there is more thanenough water available worldwideto meet global needs, the lives ofhundreds of millions of people areblighted by the lack of access to theprecious liquid.

The U.N. estimates that 1.1 billionpeople do not have access to safedrinking water, 2.5 billion live with-out basic sanitation and every 20seconds a child dies because of thisproblem, a total of 1.6 million peryear.

The situation is expected to getworse and within the next fewyears two-thirds of the world’s pop-ulation will be living ‘under stressconditions’ caused by water short-

ages, likely prompting so-cial degradation, politicalturmoil and conflict as intoday’s Darfur region ofSudan.

Why people in NorthAmerica and Japan use 350litres of water a day andnearly half the world’s pop-ulation survive on as littleas 10 litres is caused by avariety of reasons: a bur-geoning global population,the uneven geographical distribu-tion of water supplies, poverty, in-creasing demands of agricultureand industry and climate change.

Tackling the problem is a majorpriority for Japan. CumulativelyTokyo has allocated $31.46 billionin soft loans, $4.56 billion in grantaid and $2.17 billion in technical as-sistance for water projects in fourmain areas: providing safe and sta-ble water supplies, enhancing flood

cially known as a ‘post-conflict’country and key to that nation’slong-term recovery is the rehabili-tation of its rice and overall agricul-tural sectors.

In the arid lands of Myanmar andin Palestinian refugee camps thepoor, particularly women, havebeen introduced to micro-foodprojects such as growing mush-rooms in their own homes as a way

it helped establish a salmon indus-try from scratch in Chile and bothlocal consumption and exports arenow booming.

Growing more food, however, isonly one answer to the food secu-rity dilemma. Related JICA projectshave been designed to improvefood storage in rural areas,strengthening extension services,providing better management, ad-ministration and marketing skillsand improving infrastructure andaccess to markets.

control to protect lives,conserving the water en-vironment and promotingintegrated water re-source management.

In the arid regions ofMyanmar, in the desertwastes of northernSudan, in Bolivia’s Andesmountains and otherareas around the world,JICA has helped drillboreholes, shallow wells,

storage facilities and water re-search centers to help bring safewater to some of the world’s mostisolated and vulnerable communi-ties.

Perhaps more than any othercountry, Egypt has famously reliedon only one source for its very sur-vival since the earliest recordedhistory: the River Nile.

JICA has worked for many yearson both large and small projects in



figures the world will need to raisefood production by 60%-70% tomeet this growing demand.

Many people in developing coun-tries do not have what aid officials call‘food security’ and disasters such asdrought and ongoing conflict in theHorn of Africa can doom hundreds ofthousands of people to death.

As a member of the Coalition forAfrican Rice Development (CARD),JICA’s single most ambitious foodproject in Africa is to help doublethe continent’s rice production to

bique to try to replicate Brazil’s own‘agricultural miracle’ which beganin the 1970s and helped transform ahuge swath of savannah into one ofthe world’s largest breadbaskets. Ifsimilar results are realized, Mozam-bique could become another agri-cultural cornucopia.

Back in Brazil itself, with Japan-ese assistance, agro-forestry isbooming in parts of the AmazonRiver basin.

There are a myriad of food proj-ects of all descriptions in many of

zations and provided them with theexpertise to significantly raise cropproduction.

Afghanistan is also what is offi-

of enhancing family income. In the Jordan Valley JICA is helping

to construct an agro-industrial parkwhich is expected not only to helplocal farmers export their producebut even play a role in improving relations between neighboring Is-raelis, Palestinians and Jordanians.

Millions of people rely on fish asa staple and along large areas ofthe African coast and deep in theAfrican heartland JICA has helpedimprove local fishing production.On the West Coast of Latin America

Around one billion people goto bed each night hungry. Asmany as five million childrenunder the age of five die eachyear, partly as a result of mal-nutrition.

The world’s poor people alreadyspend 70% of their income on foodand the situation is likely to getworse as the global population con-tinues to explode. According to U.N.

the Middle Eastern country, helpingto rehabilitate major dams but alsoestablishing local farmers associa-tions to oversee the use of water insome of the most intensively culti-vated land on earth.

Agriculture accounts for 70% ofall fresh water consumption and inEgypt and other places such asTimor L’Este, Sri Lanka, Palestineand Africa a major priority hasbeen to rehabilitate or build moreefficient irrigation systems whichtypically can double the crop yieldwith less water.

And as the world’s populationmoves rapidly to urban areas JICAhas provided funding and technicalassistance to upgrade Cambodia’swater system, including the capital,Phnom Penh, helped double thesupply of water to the Jordaniancapital, Amman, and providedcommunity water facilities inLusaka, Zambia.

Africa : the ravages of hunger

Sudan : drilling for water

Africa : doubling rice production

Jordan : providing fresh water

Palestine : a new agro-industrial park

There are foodprojects in

many of thenearly 150

countries inwhich JICAoperates.

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Mali : protecting the inner Niger delta


Cities are beingoverwhelmed

worldwide. Kabul,Afghanistan’s capital

Nairobi’sgarbage dump

It is one of the most unsavory aspects of progress—garbage, rubbish or, in officialparlance, solid waste.

Beyond the palm-fringedbeaches of many Pacific islandswhich tourists routinely describe as‘paradise’ lie increasing mountainsof moldering garbage.

In the world’s newest capital city,Juba in South Sudan, it is virtuallyimpossible to reach the city’s onlygarbage dump, because the routeis blocked by garbage.

When a devastating earthquakestruck northern Japan in 2011 en-tire homes, ships, bicycles, refrig-erators and other flotsam wereswept to sea, swirled into what isnow commonly referred to as the‘biggest garbage dump in theworld’ in the northern PacificOcean and now beginning to driftashore in north America.

It is estimated that there are onebillion vehicles worldwide and 30million are junked annually.

It is impossible to accuratelyquantify the amount of garbagegenerated annually, but the Organ-ization for Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD) in 2001estimated its member countriesalone were responsible for four bil-lion tonnes.

Waste carries enormous environ-mental, economic and social costs.It can breed disease, poison watersupplies and entire eco-systems,cause widespread pollution andstunt social and industrialprogress.

The most affected are often themost vulnerable groups in society,the populations of developingcountries, minorities and women.

And though there has beengrowing awareness that solving the‘garbage crisis’ goes hand in handwith overall sustainable progress,it is the developing countries whichhave the fewest financial and per-sonnel resources to tackle theproblem which is often ignored orgiven low priority.

The problem for the Pacific is-lands is that many are so small theysimply have no place or method toget rid of increasing amounts ofgarbage. JICA has introduced train-

ing courses and a conceptknown as the three Rs—reduce, re-use and recycle.The latter is often impracti-cal in such surroundingsand the agency has concen-trated on ‘reduce and re-use.’

The same three Rs princi-ple has been introduced inseveral districts of Vietnam’scapital, Hanoi, with impres-sive results in waste reduc-tion.

In Juba and other Africancities such as Kenya’s capital,Nairobi, JICA and Japanese expertswork with government and local

agencies to introduce more effi-cient ‘solid waste’ managementsystems and improved facilitiessuch as new dump sites.

JICA annually invites some12,000 participants from develop-ing countries to attend a variety oftraining courses as part of a pro-gram which has been described asthe biggest of its kind in the world.

Some deal with the problem ofwaste management. In the eco-model city of Kitakyushu partici-pants are shown ways of turningorganic waste into compost andfertilizer.

And in another program,trainees are familiarized with thelatest vehicle recycling technologywith which Japan has achieved oneof the world’s most efficient recy-cling programs with a rate of 95%.

Fifty years ago 85% of Africa’spopulation lived in rural communities. Recently the conti-nent passed one historic landmarkwhen, for the first time in history,the population reached one billion,and in the next few years it willreach another milestone whenmore Africans will live in towns andcities than on farms.

By the middle of this centuryEast Asian countries will accountfor around 50% of all global green-house gas emissions, reflecting this‘rush to the cities.’

The United Nations estimatesthat within the next 20 years, 60%of the world’s entire population,which is headed towards eight bil-lion people, will live in an urbansetting.

The biggest migration in historywill affect every aspect of everydaylife: how we grow our food and whatwe eat; harnessing diminishingwater supplies; education, health-care, job creation, shelter, climatechange and the environment.

Japan has outlined nine propos-als to achieve sustainable develop-ment and one of them is trying tocreate a model for the ‘future city—a place everyone wants to live in.’

Cities in developing countries,old ones such as the Vietnamesecapital of Hanoi which celebratedits 1,000-anniversary in 2010,Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan,and new ones such as Juba, thecapital of the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, lack the infra-structure or other facilities andpersonnel to adequately meet thischallenge.

In Hanoi and Vietnam’s commer-cial capital, Ho Chi Minh City, JICAhelped build or rehabilitate majorhospitals, constructed a road tun-

nel under the Saigon river and fi-nanced construction of roads,bridges, airport facilities, power,water and sanitation plants.

Japanese experts worked forseveral years on a comprehensiveblueprint for the Kabul Metropoli-tan Area, drawing up a master planto create satellite townships andbusiness areas which will morethan double the size of the capitalto around 1,000 square kilometers.

To help ease nightmare urbancongestion and pollution scenariosthe agency helped finance rapidtransit and underground rail sys-tems in cities ranging fromBangkok to Cairo and including themega Indian cities of Delhi, Banga-lore, Kolkata and Chennai.

Juba was virtually a ghost townonly a few years ago during a seem-ingly unending civil war but today itis one of Africa’s fastest growingcities and JICA has built a vital RiverNile port, hospitals and basic infra-structure.

Following another prolongedwar on the western coast of Africa,it helped rebuild the major powerplant for Freetown, the capital ofSierra Leone.

Less eye-catching projects haveincluded improving garbage collec-tion systems, building schools, vo-cational centers, local clinics andeven public toilets as well as train-

ing thousands of administrativeand expert personnel.

There is some good news, how-ever. Though cities face dauntingchallenges, U.N. Habitat, the UNagency which monitors the world’sbuilt environment, reported that“Urbanization has (also) been asso-

ciated with improved human devel-opment, rising resources and bet-ter living standards.” But progresswill require “well devised publicpolicies that steer demographicgrowth, create urban economiesand ensure equitable distributionof wealth.”

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Developingcountrieshave thefewest

financial andpersonnel

resources totackle theproblem.

TO THECITIES

Rebuilding Hanoi’sinfrastructure

RUSHA GLOBAL

against rising waters, developedtremor-resistant homes, hospitalsand schools and educated groupsranging from school children to keyadministrators, rescue officials andmedical staff.

Its work is equally important inthe aftermath of catastrophe.

When massive flooding sweptparts of Thailand in 2011 JICA sentemergency supplies. It then dis-patched survey teams and expertsto help drain the floods waters andto protect or restore basic infra-structure such as water utilities,the Bangkok airport and the under-ground railway, sections of whichthe agency originally helped build.

After Pakistan’s 2005 earth-quake killed an estimated 75,000

people JICA provided emergencyassistance, helped draw up a planfor the rebuilding of the destroyedcity of Muzaffarabad, strengthenedthe National Disaster ManagementAuthority and helped rebuildschools, hospitals and other build-ings able to resist future tremors.

In Central America and theCaribbean, another region prone tonatural disasters, the agency un-dertook a 5-year plan in the earlyyears of the millennium to developseismic- resistant buildings for lowincome families after 12% of El Sal-vador’s homes were destroyed bynatural disaster.

In the last 10 years alone JICA im-plemented soft loan, grant aid andtechnical assistance projects total-

ing around 74 billion yen in some132 countries.

Masato Watanabe, vice presidentof JICA’s general affairs depart-ment, described Japan’s own earth-quake experience as part of acircular transfer of knowledgewhich will help both developingcountries and advanced nations tocope with future disaster.

“The lessons we learned duringour own (World War II) postwarconstruction we passed on to de-veloping countries,” he said re-cently. “Now we have to use theknowledge and experience we havegained by working in those coun-tries for reconstruction of the To-hoku (northeastern Japan) region.And then we will use that experi-ence as further examples to be ap-plied in developing countries again.We are all becoming mutually de-pendent across the world.”

to help countries around the worldin their most dire moment of need.

The U.N. estimates 200 millionpeople annually suffer throughearthquakes, tsunamis, volcaniceruptions and severe drought.

When disaster strikes JICA im-mediately sends emergency assis-tance such as food, tents, blanketsand generators across the globe.

As part of the Japan Disaster Re-lief system the agency and otherorganizations also dispatch doc-tors, nurses and rescuers to someof the world’s chaotic hot spots.

But JICA’s work in disaster man-agement often begins before catas-trophe strikes. It has developedearly warning systems in disaster-prone countries, built sea walls

In the interveningdecades helping coun-tries to anticipatecrises, providingemergency relief inthe immediate after-math of disaster andthen rebuilding bothcommunities and in-frastructure have become a major com-ponent of Japan’s for-eign assistance.

In the wake of thecountry’s own natural catastrophewhen around 20,000 people werekilled or remain missing followingthe 2011 earthquake and tsunamiJICA said it will apply the ‘lessonslearned’ there to reinforce efforts

In the last 10 years it implemented a series of disasterprevention projects costing 41.57 billion yen in 132countries. Grant aid projects totaling a further 33.3 bil-lion yen were implemented in 23 countries includingprocurement of weather reader systems, constructionof emergency evacuation centers and rehabilitation ofbasic infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and watersupply facilities. In a particularly poignant footnote toits own earthquake-tsunami disaster in 2011, the agencysaid it will strengthen its efforts by applying ‘lessonslearned’ in its aftermath (see article below).

Education and gender equality figure prominentlyin promoting sustainability in any society. When theTaliban government fell in Afghanistan at the start ofthe millennium, Japan and JICA rebuilt hundred ofschools and helped untold numbers of young children,particularly girls and the disadvantaged to return tothe classroom. In Africa, one project which was born inKenya has spread to 33 countries, its aim being to im-prove the levels of science and mathematics in juniorschool. At the other end of the learning curve JICA andEgypt established the Egypt-Japan University of Scienceand Technology, which officials hope will eventually be-come one of the world’s best seats of higher education.

Rush to the CitiesA growing crisis is the world’s rush to the

cities and attendant problems—food, shelter, clean wa-ter supplies, energy, transport and the problem of whatto do with literal mountains of garbage.

A half century ago 85% of Africa’s population livedin rural communities. With its population now more


The JapanInternationalCooperation Agency (JICA) is the world’slargest bilateraldevelopment organ-ization, operating insome 150 countries tohelp some of theglobe’s mostvulnerable people.

Publisher: Noriko SuzukiOffice of Media andPublic Relations

Editor: Raymond Wilkinson

Art Director: Vincent WinterAssociates

JICA’S WORLDis published by JICANibancho Center Bldg 5-25, Niban-choChiyoda-ku Tokyo 102-8012 JAPAN

TELEPHONE: +81-3-5226-6660-3FAX: +81-3-5226-6396INTERNET:http://www.jica.go.jp

Comments: [email protected]

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than one billion, within the next few years moreAfricans will live in towns and cities than on farms.By the year 2050 burgeoning East Asian cities alonewill account for 50% of global greenhouse gas emis-sions.

In India JICA has provided financial assistanceto help construct rapid transit systems in the capital,Delhi, in Bangalore and Chennai as well as otherglobal centers such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City andBangkok. It has helped improve safe water suppliesto places as far apart as Amman, Jordan, Cambodiaand Papua New Guinea.

In Africa’s newest nation, South Sudan, in Kenya,in the Vietnam capital of Hanoi and on the palmfringed ‘paradise’ islands of the Pacific a variety ofprograms were introduced to tackle what officialsterm ‘solid waste’ –building new dump sites, estab-lishing citywide garbage collection systems, turningrubbish into valuable compost and the introductionof the three Rs—reduce, re-use, recycle.

Japan annually invites some 20,000 participantsfrom developing countries to participate in around1,300 training courses including helping to preservethe world’s dwindling forests, mangroves and coral.One innovative program teaches how best to recyclethe estimated 30 million vehicles which are junkedworldwide each year.

Incoming JICA President Tanaka said he is ‘ex-cited and fascinated’ by the further use of scienceand expanding collaboration between Japanese anddeveloping world scientists to solve some of thesechallenges.

Brazil and Japan are already involved in a four-year US$4 million project to probe the secrets of theAmazon River basin to answer such outstandingquestion as how much carbon the forest cycles. TheAmazon is the world’s most important single eco-system and the data will allow governments to tackleclimate change and protect biodiversity. At the verytip of South America Japanese and local scientistshave worked for years to track the effects of the no-torious ‘ozone hole’ in the earth’s protective ozonelayer. And from the Andes to the Himalayas otherscientists continue to plot the future of the world’sglaciers.

The Rio summit was the latest in a series of in-ternational efforts to better understand and coordi-nate a global response to old and new challenges.Another U.N. initiative, the so-called MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs) covers similar groundwith eight defined targets including: eradicatingpoverty and hunger, universal primary education,gender equality, child mortality, maternal health,HIV/AIDS diseases, the environment and globalpartnership.

The end of the MDG project is 2015, but JICAand Japan have already begun work to incorporatethe results of the Rio process in new, post-2015 ini-tiatives to achieve the aim of U.N. Secretary GeneralBan Ki-moon to “eradicate poverty and reduce in-equality, to make growth inclusive and productionand consumption more sustainable, while combatingclimate change and respecting a range of other plan-etary boundaries.”

(Continued from page 6) six years. The agency has also helped Indonesia,which has the world’s second-largest geo-thermalpotential (see page 4).

On Egypt’s Red Sea coast JICA has participatedin the construction of Africa’s largest wind farm buton an individual level has also helped install solarpanels in isolated African villages.

Perhaps more than any other country, Egypt fa-mously relies on just one water supply, the River Nile,for its very survival. For years JICA has been helpingto more effectively harness this precious but ex-haustible supply by rehabilitating vast dams or help-ing individual farmer organizations to more effi-ciently water their fields.

In the arid regions of Myanmar and the desertwastes of Sudan boreholes and wells have been sunk.Hundreds of millions of people, particularly in rapidlyexpanding urban areas, have no access to regular andsafe water and from Cambodia and Vietnam to Jor-dan and Bolivia pipelines, boreholes and water sys-tems have been established to meet their needs.

Coping with DisasterJICA independently and through the Japan

Disaster Relief (JDR) system for years has helpednations and victims of natural disasters, offering firstemergency supplies and then follow-up assistance.

Japan’s involvement in globalhumanitarian assistancebegan modestly when a smallmedical team was sent to helpCambodian refugees in thelate 1970s.

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