Volunteers lead Japan's bid to maintain global reach

from AFP via Google

TOKYO (AFP) — When Kiyoshi Baba stopped a top police officer for running a red light in Nepal, he was not only pushing a safety message far from his native Japan, he was also projecting Japanese influence abroad.

In leaving for Nepal, Baba was contributing to one of Japan's most visible efforts to retain its global influence despite a soaring public debt that has choked the country's funds for "pocketbook diplomacy."

Tokyo has slashed aid to developing countries by 40 percent since 1997, and will reduce it by four percent a year until 2011, according to a plan created by former premier Junichiro Koizumi.

Japan was the world's top aid donor until 2000. By 2006, it had slipped to third behind the United States and Britain, and in four more years could fall to sixth, says the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Still, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda wants Japan to retain its clout.

"It is indispensable to enhance our country's diplomatic power," he said at the opening of parliament earlier this month, citing global warming, poverty, and security issues including the fight against terrorism.

Amid a public debt fallout, analysts say the government must develop other approaches to maintain its global reach.

"Japan could increase its foreign investments, technology transfers and its participation in maintaining peace in the world to compensate for its drop in public development aid," said Katsuhiko Mori, international relations professor at International Christian University.

Fukuda has already taken some steps. He is pressing for Japan to take the lead on climate change and intends to put the issue at the top of discussions at the Group of Eight summit he will host in July.

At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Fukuda called for a new global target of a 30 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020 and vowed a 10-billion-dollar fund to help developing countries reduce emissions and cope with the impact of climate change.

He said Japan will also invest 50 billion dollars over the next five years in researching and developing new technologies to fight global warming and to shift Japan to a "low carbon society."

Back home, he is pushing for a law that would authorise sending soldiers on overseas peace missions without having to get parliament's approval each time.

Naoki Ito, political aid director at the foreign ministry, said engagement in peace missions did not run counter to Japan's pacifist tradition, but was a part of the country's diplomacy "expanding its paths of action."

The main conduit for Japanese development aid is the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which funds a corps of volunteers.

With over 40 years of experience in Africa, South Asia and South America, JICA could withstand the drop in the public budget and still send out the same number of volunteers, said Sumiko Nakamura from the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, a JICA programme which today employs around 3,000 workers in 84 countries.

"The goal is to aid developing countries grow by themselves while allowing the volunteers to get an experience that will be useful in Japan upon their return," Nakamura said.

"The idea from the beginning was to compensate Asian countries after World War II," said Ruri Ito, a trans-national sociology professor at Hitotsubashi University.

"In retrospect, that became a tool for Japanese diplomacy void of means of action" after Japan was occupied following the war.

Baba, a former policeman in his 60s, came across a JICA ad in 2003 seeking an expert to help improve road safety in Nepal.

He soon found himself immersed in a road system that lacked regulations and traffic lights -- which JICA eventually financed.

"It was new. We had to teach the population how to follow them," Baba told AFP of the stoplight initiative.

Baba made headlines after stopping a top police official who had run a red light, an incident caught on video and broadcast on television.

"The incident took a political turn," he recalled. "Me, I just wanted people to respect the red light!"

Baba was later awarded a medal by Nepal's King Gyanendra and has now begun another two-year mission to the country, with the goal of making a DVD about road safety.