12."Scan globally, reinvent locally": Grassroots international cooperation

Overview

Kitakyushu has been active in international cooperation in a way that takes advantage of local experience. The success factors include (1) the planning assets articulated in the city's master plan, (2) the institutional assets such as the implementation bodies of Kitakyushu International Techno-cooperative Association (KITA) and the JICA Kitakyushu International Centre and human resources bank, (3) the social assets of the networking activities, built from direct contact with people in the Asian region. Kitakyushu's international environmental cooperation offers a good model of what is possible with international cooperation.

Planning Assets for International Cooperation in Kitakyushu

The Kitakyushu Renaissance Plan, Phase 3 Implementation Plan, issued in 2000, includes a chapter entitled "Toward creation of a transportation/logistics center" as one of six pillars of international cooperation. It describes "hard" infrastructure improvements to promote the city as a transportation/logistics center, transportation logistics network, and urban space to attract passengers; and "soft" improvements such as promoting international exchanges and tourism conventions.
Through international urban exchanges, Kitakyushu promotes active exchanges in a variety of fields with many cities overseas, including sister cities and friendship cities, and aims to improve and enhance information collection from overseas, particularly the East Asian region, and to disseminate information. As a city that seeks an positive role in international environmental cooperation, Kitakyushu actively promotes international cooperation in order to play a part in global environmental conservation. Also, to promote technical cooperation with cities overseas, Kitakyushu has is committed itself to send technical instructors and receive trainees. The city is also engaged in exchanges at the citizen level.
Regarding the promotion of tourism and conventions, the Renaissance Plan includes a framework to promote Kitakyushu as a tourist city to actively attract visitors from overseas. It features plans to attract and sponsor international events and conferences; to improve the basic infrastructure to promote conventions; to improve the institutional framework to promote private-public collaboration; and to improve tourist spots such as the Moji port area, Sarakura and Kawachi areas.

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International Environmental Cooperation Began in the Private Sector

The main feature of Kitakyushu's international cooperation is its environmental technical cooperation. The city's international cooperation started with technology transfer in the steel industry, which is one symbol of Japan's processing industries, and the main feature here is technologies connected with the environment. Kitakyushu City before the Second World War was the home of a cluster of heavy manufacturing and chemical industries like Nippon Steel Corporation and Mitsubishi-related companies. After the war ended, a remarkable time of the technological innovation ensued. During the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, production in the steel industry doubled roughly every five years. Equipment and factory layouts were changed frequently in order to boost efficiency of production. As the cycle of technological innovation and investment in plant and equipment was repeated, cleaner production (CP) technologies emerged naturally in the steel making and chemical industries.
The Kitakyushu International Techno-cooperative Association (KITA) originated in the late 1970s when the steel industry in Kitakyushu was in the throes of a continued slump caused by an oil shock, a structural economic downturn, and appreciation of the yen. People were saying the "the steel had cooled." But then an idea from the Kitakyushu Junior Chamber, called the Steelmaking University Plan, led eventually to the establishment of KITA. The idea was born from the desire to somehow make use of the technology and talent that had accumulated in the city for almost a century. The Steelmaking University Plan was born in 1980, in the form of the non-governmental organization KITA, to transfer industrial technology to developing countries. In cooperation with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), trainees were accepted from developing countries. At the time, it started with a course about steel materials, but today, a variety of courses are offered, from cleaner-production technologies to emissions countermeasures and atmospheric monitoring technologies.
KITA's achievements in technical cooperation played a big role in the city's success in attracting JICA Kyushu International Centre to locate here in 1989. Thanks to the new center, the number of trainees accepted and courses offered grew rapidly. And it would not be an exaggeration to say that KITA's activities were a wellspring for the development of the city's international environmental cooperation activities, leading eventually to Kitakyushu receiving the UNEP Global 500 award in 1999, and recognition from the UN "Local Government Honors" programme in 1992.
Mayor Koichi Sueyoshi (in office since 1987) had a strong will to succeed, and wanted to put more energy into international environmental cooperation. With the cooperation of the city's Environment Bureau, he raised the status of KITA in the area of international cooperation. The courses today are being offered in three main areas-increasing productivity, maintenance, and environmental technologies-and there are 60,000 pages of practical textbook materials available.
The table below shows the framework for Kitakyushu's international environmental cooperation. EARTH (Earth Environmental Association for Research, Technology and Harmony) is a talent bank for international environmental cooperation, and it is managed by KITA. It maintains a good balance in the collaboration among industry, academia and government, and the utilization of talent of each sector is going smoothly. It could be described as an ideal implementation structure to institutionalize international cooperation.

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International Environmental Cooperation, Exchanges and Internationalization

Kitakyushu's commitment to international environmental cooperation has been growing steadily over the years. In 1989, officers at the Pollution Countermeasures Bureau were given the responsibility for international environmental cooperation. After the Bureau was restructured into the Environment Bureau, a full-time position was created in 1996 for international environmental cooperation. In 2000, the Office of International Environmental Cooperation was established. The staff for these activities grew from the original one person to ten today. In its first year, the Office released the Kitakyushu International Environmental Cooperation Promotion Plan: For People, the Planet and the Next Generation. The number of requests coming to Kitakyushu for environmental cooperation had been rising dramatically. This plan presented a path for Kitakyushu's international environmental cooperation, in terms of both the medium- and long-term measures needed. It discuss such topics as city-to-city networking, environmental cooperation businesses, stronger linkages with international organizations, information dissemination, and capacity building of human resources. At the local government level, matters relating to international cooperation and exchanges are typically assigned to the economic or planning bureaus. But the plan for Kitakyushu proposed to link the environmentally-focused character of the city to international cooperation activities, and to create a city government not often seen elsewhere.
Of course, the city still also has the conventional type of international cooperation department.
The figure below shows the history of the city's organizational structure for international exchanges and internationalization.
It was in 1987 that the word "international" was included in a section name, in the "International Exchange Section of the Planning Bureau," and after that time, the organizational structure to promote international exchange and "internationalization" was steadily strengthened. The functions of the International Exchange Section of the Planning Bureau were later strengthened, and taken on by the Planning and Policy Office, and the International Exchange Section of the General and Citizen Affairs Bureau. Another special feature is that besides the Economic Bureau and Planning Bureau, departments within the Ports and Harbours Bureau are also doing work related to international trade and international ports.

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Internationalization and Citizen Activities

The Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women (KFAW) is one organization that has been able to effectively harness the power of citizens. KFAW was formed in October 1990 as a winning proposal in response to the national government's "Hometown Revitalization Project." In 1993 it became an registered foundation recognized by the then Ministry of Labour (now the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare). With the aim of raising the social status of women in Asia through solidarity and development, it features citizen participation, integrated approaches to women's issues, creation of a new urban character, and a global perspective. KFAW has been actively expanding its activities beyond the local area where it began. In 1999, KFAW moved with the Kitakyushu Municipal Center for Gender Equality (known as "MOVE") into a building in Kokura Kita Ward.
As we saw in story 1, citizen participation played a very important role in addressing the pollution problem in the history of Kitakyushu. KFAW is now running a volunteer programme in which people from the Tobata Women's Association and other persons who experienced those early citizens' activities speak to audiences about the conditions those days and damage from pollution. One of KFAW's strengths is that it takes the experiences of local people, re-frames them from an international perspective, and then articulates them for others to hear. It is realizing international cooperation both globally and locally (sometimes referred to as "glocal"), by incorporating the knowledge that researchers or staff have picked up, such as through conferences overseas, and applying it. KFAW is active in many ways, for example, by acting as Secretariat for the North East Asian Women's Conference on Environment.

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International Networking Activities

The City of Kitakyushu has four sister cities-Tacoma and Norfolk (USA), Dalian (China) and Incheon (Korea). But as in the case of Dalian, for cities with which Kitakyushu has had technical and environmental cooperation, things do not simply stop with having a cultural or personal exchange, but also include social and economic dimensions.
The Kitakyushu Initiative for a Clean Environment, adopted at the ESCAP MCED meeting in 2000, is a network that creates a cooperative framework to improve environmental cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. It was designated a Type 1 project at the WSSD. As of 2004, 56 cities in 17 countries were participating. Examples of activities include theme-based seminars to discuss specific environmental issues, and pilot studies that get involved in the process of solving problems in specific regions. The Environmental Cooperation Network of Asian Cities is a network of cities located particularly in Southeast Asia. It was formed by agreement of the Kitakyushu Asia Region International Cooperation Conference in 1997, and it proposes solutions to problems, through cooperation between developing countries.

■ References

• Kitakyushu Renaissance Plan Evaluation Research Committee. (2003). Report of the Kitakyushu Renaissance Plan Evaluation Research Committee (in Japanese).
• Shindo, Reiko. 2001. International cooperation by local bodies: the beginnings and evolution of Kitakyushu's environmental cooperation (in Japanese).
• International Environmental Cooperation Office. (2000). Kitakyushu International environmental cooperation promotion plan: for people and the planet and the next generation (in Japanese). City of Kitakyushu.
• Kitakyushu International Techno-cooperative Association. (2000). A twenty-year history of KITA (in Japanese).
• Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women (KFAW) <www.kfaw.or.jp>.
• Kitakyushu International Techno-cooperative Association <www.kita.or.jp>.
  

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