Good practice

Impuesto de Transferencia para el Ambiente Forestal de Japón (Rinshin Kankyō Jōyo Zei)

Desde 2019, Japón distribuye ¥40–62 mil millones/año a municipios y prefecturas para la gestión de bosques privados; desde abril de 2024 financiado por una tasa nacional de ¥1.000/cápita, con 35 fondos de cuencas que canalizan pagos a propietarios forestales privados.

¥40–62bn /yr

Distribución anual a los gobiernos locales (since 2019)

¥1,000

Tasa nacional por habitante (from April 2024)

Fondos de cuencas hidrográficas

Impuesto de Transferencia para el Ambiente Forestal de Japón (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

Desde 2019, el Impuesto de Transferencia para el Medio Ambiente Forestal de Japón distribuye fondos a municipios y prefecturas para la gestión de bosques de plantación privados; a partir de abril de 2024 se financia mediante una tasa nacional de 1.000 yenes por habitante, con fondos de cuencas hidrográficas que canalizan pagos a propietarios forestales privados.

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. Impuesto de Transferencia para el Ambiente Forestal de Japón (Rinshin Kankyō Jōyo Zei). Persistent ID: 428a1af7-3ecd-4b92-a865-4545f243b2f1.

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