Good practice

Japan Forest Environment Transfer Tax (Rinshin Kankyō Jōyo Zei)

Since 2019, Japan distributes ¥40–62 billion/year to municipalities and prefectures for managing private plantation forests; from April 2024 funded by a ¥1,000/capita national levy covering all citizens, with 35 watershed funds channelling payments to private forest owners.

¥40–62bn /yr

Annual distribution to local governments (since 2019)

¥1,000

National per-capita levy (from April 2024)

Watershed funds

Japan Forest Environment Transfer Tax (Rinshin Kankyō Jōyo Zei)

Details

Maturity: Established
Promoter: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) / Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Period: 2019-present
Keywords: Forest, watershed, carbon, national transfer tax, plantation management

Context

Since 2019 Japan's Forest Environment Transfer Tax has distributed funds to municipalities and prefectures for managing private plantation forests; from April 2024 it is funded by a national levy of ¥1,000 per capita, with watershed funds channelling payments to private forest owners.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-06-21
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) / Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications — accessed 2026-06-21
IntechOpen – Japanese Forest Conservation System: The Forest Environment Tax — accessed 2026-06-21
MDPI Sustainability – Status and Trends in Forest Environment Transfer Tax across 47 Prefectures — accessed 2026-06-21
CBD – Introducing an Environmental Tax for Forests in Japan — accessed 2026-06-21

Attachments

Source image

Quality score: 80/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported

Top 2% in this catalogue (335 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Carbon — sequestration / storage, evidenced2/3

Plantation thinning funded by the transfer tax restores carbon function in overcrowded stands, and Japan's forests sequester ~50–67 Mt CO2e/year nationally; but no project-level verified carbon accounting is tied to individual transfer payments.

Biodiversity — conservation / improvement, evidenced2/3

Thinning of monoculture plantations documented to improve understory habitat diversity; some watershed funds include riparian forest protection; but no national biodiversity monitoring metric is tied to the payment scheme.

Water & soil — retention, infiltration, erosion control3/3

Watershed regulation is the primary founding rationale of the scheme; approximately 35 water-source conservation funds have been established; academic literature across all 47 prefectures confirms the water-yield objective as the leading allocation priority.

Fire resilience — risk reduction, evidenced2/3

Thinning of overcrowded plantation forests demonstrably reduces accumulated fuel loads; several prefectural plans explicitly cite fire-risk reduction as an allocation objective, especially in western Japan.

Governance, certification & transferability3/3

Enacted under national law (Act No. 3, 2019); mandatory annual municipal reporting to MAFF and MIC; multi-level governance: national → prefectural → municipal; academic assessment published for all 47 prefectures.

Cite this

Evidoria. Japan Forest Environment Transfer Tax (Rinshin Kankyō Jōyo Zei). Persistent ID: 428a1af7-3ecd-4b92-a865-4545f243b2f1.

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