How Japan is building with nature, and what the world can learn

As Japan hosted the second Global Nature Positive Summit, organised by the Nature Positive Initiative and IUCN in Kumamoto last week, it demonstrated a deep understanding of our dependence on nature and the necessity of living within planetary boundaries. A year on from endorsement of the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction, both the public and private sector are showing leadership that many others can learn from, determinedly translating intention into action.

Kumamoto, in southern Japan, is a city that knows all too well how important living in harmony with nature is. Its 730,000 people are completely dependent on the natural supply of groundwater – something which is now threatened by the huge spike in consumption that has resulted from the thirsty semiconductor industry that has taken root here. The city is well aware that urgent action is needed to ensure more sustainable management of ecological and economic needs going forward. As Her Imperial Highness, Princess Takamado said in her opening address to the Global Nature Positive Summit, “human beings are a part of nature. Not apart from nature. And certainly not above nature.”

Sumitomo Forestry learned this lesson a long time ago. The company, which dates back to the 1690s, initially built success mining copper. But by the 1890s, the company’s leaders recognised the scale of the air pollution and wider ecological damage the mining activity had caused through its demands for timber, they embarked on ‘The Great Reforestation Plan’ to repair the landscape it had scarred. The resulting restoration demonstrated the potential of combining environmental stewardship and successful business and transformed the company into one of Japan’s biggest forest owners and one of the world’s leading champions of timber construction today.

Sumitomo’s President, Mr Toshiro Mitsuyoshi, describes the sustainable ‘wood cycle’ as the foundation of a business strategy that has seen the company become one of the biggest builders of timber homes not just in Japan, but in both the US and Australia, as well as a joint venture partner of Built by Nature frontrunner Bywater Properties, to develop timber homes and buildings in the UK.

Japan was among the first governments to endorse the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction, and is keen to translate that endorsement into action. What’s particularly striking is the level of collaboration between the separate government ministries responsible for forests and construction. Both are committed to incentivising the use of responsibly sourced wood, to raising awareness and upskilling the construction sector to use wood well, to regulating whole-life carbon assessment with mandatory reporting for larger buildings by 2028, and to rewarding carbon storage in timber buildings, by allowing companies to declare and deduct it from their annual carbon footprint with a standardised protocol for doing so.

About the Principles

Mr Eiji Tanimura, Deputy Director-General of Japan’s Forestry Agency emphasised the Government’s commitment to going further to promote responsible timber construction in his comments following a screening of the film Our Future: Built by Nature during the Global Summit, where he was joined by Jennifer Conje from the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and Thorsten Arndt from PEFC in front of a packed audience. 66% of Japan is forested, an area that has grown from 1.9 to 5.6 billion cubic metres over the last 60 years, and roughly half of the planted forest is now over 50 years old and mature enough for sustainable harvesting.

For the private sector, Sumitomo Forestry has led the way. It has championed the use of internationally aligned LCA tools and promoted the take up of EPDs – for which the Government subsidises the upfront cost to manufacturers – and is now looking to advance the certification of construction stored carbon. Based on work that Built by Nature has co-funded in the Netherlands and the UK, and our input into the forthcoming EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) regulation, this affords the opportunity to connect Japan into rapidly growing international recognition of construction timber as a natural carbon capture and storage technology.

More about Construction Stored Carbon

The leadership from both the public and private sectors in Japan, and a mutual commitment to accelerate the responsible use of timber in construction, is something we are seeing accelerate around the world as endorsers of the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction share insights and learn from one another. In Costa Rica the development of the new National Code for Construction with Wood, part of the country’s vision for ‘climate-smart construction’, was also directly informed by the Principles and has resulted from close collaboration between government and industry. The same public/private collaboration is what has driven success in the Municipal Region of Amsterdam which has seen more than a tenfold increase in the construction of timber homes in just five years.

As we look ahead to COP31 in Istanbul, and next steps in the UNFCCC Acceleration Plan, Buildings for Forests, we expect to see these examples of leadership multiply as, for the first time, the international movement for responsible timber and biobased construction takes shape as a globally competitive industry that can be net positive for both nature and people.