Kimiko Hirata's Theories of Change - Part 1. Against coal with Kiko Network
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“Theory of change” was the recurring concept when I spoke with Kimiko Hirata.
A recipient of the Goldman Prize for environmental activism, named one of the 100 most influential women by the BBC, and highly sought-after by the international media for her comments on Japan’s climate policies, Hirata nevertheless always felt that she didn’t have the expertise in climate policymaking or activism.
”But that meant that I could do anything.”
And she did. She tested many “theories of change” to push Japan to be more proactive on decarbonization. That involved policy advocacy, grassroots anti-coal campaigns, proposing shareholder resolutions, advising municipal governments, founding a think tank, and fostering a wider and deeper network of climate advocacy inside and outside of Japan.
Through trial and error, Hirata pulled on virtually every lever of change in Japan. Throughout it all — or because of it all — her faith in people to press for a better future is unwavering.
What motivates her? What did she learn through her varied experiences? How does she see climate action unfolding in Japan and in the world? I put these questions to Kimiko Hirata last September.
This story took me too long to write, both because of my personal circumstances and because of the length and complexity of the conversation. But here it is. The interview was conducted in Japanese. Any errors in translation or differences in nuance are my responsibility.
Joining Kiko Network
As a university student, Hirata realized that climate change was a profound problem that she wanted to help solve. It was the early 1990s. The UN conference on climate change started just a few years before, and most governments - including Japan’s - weren’t taking the threat of climate change seriously.
When I realized that I wanted to do something about global warming, I’m not a politician and I won’t necessarily be able to work on it in a private company. I thought that the only way to seriously approach this issue was in an NGO.
But at the time, NGOs in Japan were few and small. The handful of international NGOs that did have a presence only had single staff members in their Japan offices. “Climate NGOs were there, but not really,” Hirata said with a wry smile.
(My interview with Teruyuki Oho of REI below briefly explains why Japanese NGOs struggle to obtain funding and influence.)
In contrast, the NGO and think tank landscape in the US was bustling. So she decided to intern at a Washington, DC-based non-profit Climate Institute, as a way of monitoring climate change negotiations and learning how NGOs operate.
It was during her time in the US that the Kyoto Protocol was signed at the third UN Conference of the Parties (COP3) in 1997. Over in Japan, the Kyoto Protocol galvanized the formation of what has now become one of the most reputable climate NGOs in the country, Kiko Network.
After the Kyoto Protocol, there was an excitement that Kiko Network might be established. I definitely wanted to be involved in that. I appealed to them, “I want to join! I want to join!”
So she joined. Kiko Network’s predecessor, Kiko Forum, had been active in ensuring that the Kyoto Protocol was a success. Once the Protocol was signed, the organization re-branded itself to Kiko Network in April 1998. Hirata joined the Network’s Tokyo office two months later.
Policy advocacy with Kiko Network
Debates on the best approach to solving climate change often boil down to a (frankly crude) dichotomy between individual action and systemic change. Kiko Network’s (and Hirata’s) approach was squarely in the latter.
More concretely, this meant that Kiko Network’s work in its early years focused heavily on policy advocacy. There was a sound logic to this. Because climate change is a global issue, climate solutions should be rooted in a global rule-making framework involving civil societies from around the world. Once international agreements were made (like the Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement), they should then be implemented at the country level through domestic legislation.
Clearly, the focal framework was the UN, so Kiko Network participated in every COP. And after Kyoto passed, it advocated for laws to align Japan with the agreement.
“We thought it would be most impactful if rules came down from COP, or from countries outside of Japan. We just wanted to create good rules here,” Hirata recalled their thinking at the time.
When it comes to bringing [the Kyoto Protocol] to Japan, how do we shift Japan? We thought it would be through legislation, so we ran legislative campaigns, proposed and commented on rules and regulations, talked to the media to influence public opinion.
Hirata felt that the need for this kind of policy advocacy was clear. The Japanese government was eager to host the conference that eventually culminated in the Kyoto Protocol. But according to Hirata, Japanese leaders lacked the willingness to commit to the hard work of deeply cutting CO2 emissions.
When Japan stepped forward to host COP3, LDP (Japan’s ruling political party) was saying things like Japan will lead the world in environmental policies. So I think the government was willing to take leadership in this issue. But were they really willing to to transition the energy system? Not so much. So I always thought they lacked substance. I think they wanted to look good diplomatically.
Shift to grassroots activism
Trying to push a reluctant government on climate was an uphill battle. That hill became even steeper after 2011. The Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing nuclear accident at Fukushima forced the government to shut down the country’s sizable fleet of nuclear power plants. New policies to increase solar energy were relatively successful, but it was the increased use of fossil fuels — including coal — that truly filled the void left by the nuclear plants in post-Fukushima Japan.
To make up for the lost base load power from nuclear, the government shortened the Environmental Impact Assessments for new coal plants. With the government’s green light, spending on coal and coal imports quickly rose in the years after 2011, and energy companies quickly proceeded with plans to build new coal plants. Kiko Network estimated that, as of July 2016, plans for new coal plants totaled over 22.8GW
In that pro-coal political and business environment, Hirata felt that a tactic pushing for legislative change was now dead in the water. “It was the Abe administration at the time and the government wasn’t interested at all. It wasn’t the time to try to stop coal with legislation, since plans were already being made.” The horse was out of the barn.
In one sense, the Fukushima disaster was a blessing. Until then, energy was a niche policy issue. The accident turned it into a red-hot topic under intense public scrutiny. But all of that attention was directed to the dangers of nuclear power, not on the environmental consequences of fossil fuels. “Looking around, you saw a lot of anti-nuclear movements. Of course that was inevitable at the time. But most people didn’t even know about coal and there weren’t any protests against it. Not since the old pollution problems [of the 1950s and 60s].”
Hirata and Kiko Network was forced to shift tactics. Policy advocacy no longer worked. They had to go directly to the people in communities where coal plants would be built.
When the government and companies are all behind coal plants, there is no way to stop them. We realized that we had the get the local areas to understand, to create their voice, to shift public opinion. Being in a situation where we couldn’t stop dozens of coal plants being built, we had to prioritize going into the local communities.
Until then, Hirata had no grassroots experience. “I never thought of myself as a grassroots campaigner, or someone who gives speeches or talks,” Hirata admits. With the help of the Sierra Club, a US environmental non-profit, Kiko Network began taking baby steps. It mapped data on coal plants throughout Japan, translated coal-related pages on its website into English to grab international audiences. It also sent its small staff to a handful of areas where coal plants were being planned. Then, they began talking.
One of the places Kiko Network focused its efforts on was Sendai. The capital of Miyagi Prefecture, it was reported in 2014 that a subsidiary of a large regional utility was planning to build a coal-fired power plant — “Sendai Power Station” — on the city’s coast. Based on the amount of coal it would need, it was possible to calculate that it would emit around 600,000 tons of CO2 per year and other air pollutants once it started operation. But because its generation capacity was just under the 110.25MW threshold, it was classified as a “small scale” power plant, exempting it from the environmental assessment process. That meant local residents were kept in the dark about how the plant owners would address those pollutants.
Working with a handful of concerned residents, Kiko Network staff sent letters to the developer to request full transparency. When the developer finally disclosed key project details, it became clear that the plant would be equipped with outdated and dirty technology. To alert the community of the looming environmental and public health consequences of the plant, Kiko Network also began speaking with university professors, local politicians, and consumer cooperatives (seikyō), and held seminars that, at first, attracted only handfuls of people.
At first, not many residents were receptive. After all, coal wasn’t what exploded in March 2011. Compared to nuclear’s tarnished reputation, coal was safer and a good source of tax revenues for the municipality.
But the campaigners were persistent. Over three years, Kiko Network patiently explained to people the effects of coal plants on air quality and how it could harm their family’s health and the local ecosystem. They explained how the CO2 emissions, although generally not considered “pollution,” is the main cause of the global environmental crisis that we now face.
Through repeated conversations and workshops, more and more people showed up to anti-coal demonstrations. A petition to cancel the plant gathered over 47,000 signatures from residents in Sendai and surrounding cities.
Five hundred Sendai residents showed up in throngs at the plant developers’ explanatory meeting in March 2017 to inundate them with questions and concerns. The media covered the event, leading local politicians and even the Minister of Environment to criticize the project developers.
In the end, a group of residents and the campaigners entered into a lengthy lawsuit with the plant operators. In the end, the Sendai District Court dismissed the plantifs’ case against the power plant in October 2020.
But there were some victories along the way. This anti-coal campaign pushed the City of Sendai to issue an ordinance to future power plant developers to conduct thorough environmental assessments and to engage with the local community before starting construction. Perhaps being sensitive to these sentiments, the Japanese government also announced that it will be phasing out existing “inefficient” coal plants and reduced the share of coal in Japan’s 2030 energy mix (although since the Sendai Power Station was a new build, this phase-out decision didn’t apply). Lastly, Sendai was one of the campaigns that catalyzed Kiko Network and other environmental NGOs in Japan to create “Japan Beyond Coal,” a website to map and track domestic coal plants.
Sendai was just one example of Kiko Network’s anti-coal campaign. Kiko staff worked on campaigns in other parts of Japan. All told, 20 of the 50 planned new coal plants were either officially canceled or simply did not move forward. Hirata is confident that these cancelations can be attributed to their grassroots efforts.
It wasn’t that the government changed policies, but the company announced that it was canceling the plans. In the [company’s] reasons for canceling, they never say that it was because residents resisted. They usually say something like it was because of changes in the business environment. Of course they don’t say it, but if you look at the places where power plants have been stopped across the country, they really overlap with areas where movements were growing. So I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced that this many plants wouldn’t have stopped if we didn’t take steps.
She told me these campaigns taught her that a small campaign can ripple into much bigger movement.
It’s hard to describe, but when people move, it creates wind. Even with 20 people or some small scale like that, I’ve seen that it’s possible to create change when you resonate with people. When I started this, I didn’t know if we could stop even one (coal plant). But once we realized we can stop them, that was a lesson for me, and it showed how important it is not to give up and to keep raising your voice.
Wielding the power of shareholders
Toward the end of these anti-coal campaigns, Hirata was also keeping an eye on how the financial world abroad was grappling with the issue of climate change. “ESG” was becoming a buzzword, the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures was formed in 2015 to develop a set of voluntary standards for companies to inform investors about their climate-related risks, and the divestment movement and climate-related shareholder resolutions were on the rise.
But there was no sign of these movements reaching the shores of Japanese finance. This prompted Kiko Network to file the first climate-related shareholder resolution in Japan in 2020.
To do this, several members of the Kiko Network staff purchased enough shares of Mizuho Financial Group’s stock. They then filed a proposal for the shareholders’ meeting in June 2020. Mizuho is one of the three largest banks in Japan, and at the time had the weakest climate policy among them. In particular, Kiko Network pointed to Mizuho’s continued massive lending and investments into fossil fuel projects — especially coal — as directly opposing its professed support for the Paris Agreement.
The proposal was succinct:
It is proposed that the following provision be added to [Mizuho’s] Articles of Incorporation:
Noting the company’s support for the Paris Agreement and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the company shall disclose in its annual reporting a plan outlining the company’s business strategy, including metrics and targets, to align its investments with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
They predicated their proposal on the argument that continued financing of fossil fuels contradicts the bank’s alleged commitment to manage climate-related risks, which were becoming real enough to hurt returns to shareholders.
Kiko Network wrote the proposal in English because their intended audience wasn’t Japanese investors. “Our aim from the beginning,” Hirata explains, “was to borrow the power of foreign institutional investors to bring the wave of decarbonization wave to domestic companies.”
The resolution was roundly voted down. But the results were far better than the campaigners expected. It garnered 34.5% of the votes — far more than the 2 or 3% they had feared. Sure enough, several large global investors supported the resolution — Nordea Asset Management and Allianz Global Investors among them.
The proposal may have been defeated, but it created several intangible yet significant results. One outcome was the attention that this campaign received from the financial media abroad. “They were saying that this is a ‘significant departure’ for Japan, and this is the first shareholder resolution to direct Japanese companies in a better direction.”
Kiko Network’s proposal was also phrased in broad terms (as you can see above), which deprived Mizuho managers and Japanese shareholders of the opportunity to oppose the resolution on the basis of technical minutiae. This, in turn, created a knock-on effect, whereby they felt pressured to explain to other shareholders why they should oppose climate-related resolutions and what types of climate measures they’ve taken. “Many of the shareholders are also companies that support the Paris Agreement,” Hirata explained, “so managers had to explain why they should oppose a resolution that’s requesting a Paris-aligned business strategy. That created more opportunities for engagement.”
The March 2020 proposal also set a precedent for Kiko Network to file shareholder resolutions to other Japanese megabanks, major utilities and energy companies, all of which invest in or own coal plants domestically or abroad.
Her role in the anti-coal campaigns and the 2020 shareholder resolution earned Hirata the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded to grassroots environmental leaders around the world. In her acceptance speech, Hirata expressed her gratitude for the Goldman Environmental Foundation and her friends and colleagues, especially at Kiko Network. But then she turned somber. “What we’ve done so far has been only a small step. Rather than feeling proud, I feel we haven’t achieved enough.”
She told me that what Kiko Network accomplished to that point was only to stop the construction of a handful of new coal plants. Their work hadn’t affected coal plants that were already generating electricity and providing jobs to local people. Phasing those out in favor of renewables, she said, was a much harder task and would need closer collaboration with many different stakeholders.
Part 2 of my interview with Kimiko Hirata explores what she sees as the “three gaps” in Japan’s climate action and how she’s trying to fill these gaps by founding her own think tank.