Coastal Ecosystems In Japan

Coastal Ecosystems

Many of the coastal ecosystems were affected by the tsunami. Even before the tsunami, Japan’s coastal ecosystems had been declining due to the urbanisation of many areas and the coasts being filled up roads and buildings. Due to this, when the tsunami came, not only did the natural coastal ecosystems get destroyed, but all the urban areas around the coat also got destroyed polluting the area and almost removing any possible chances of recovery. This is mostly because the Japanese government has put priority on the safety of residents over the preservation of ecosystems.

De-Silting of coastal canals

Majority of the coastal waterways were silted fully by the tsunami and thus will need to be drained to be fully functional

Due to this risk of natural disasters, there is potential damage done to the attractiveness of japan as a country for a tourist destination. This causes the Japanese to have a limited growth in terms of their tourism sectors.

The devastating earthquake and tsunami were a wakeup call for the travel industry that revealed holes in the tourism safety and security net. The tsunami couldn’t have come at a worse time for the tourism industry. Just before the tsunami in 2011, japan was finally starting to see the results of an aggressive tourism campaign that was launched in 2003. This campaign was launched to boost revenue from foreign tourists as a way of offsetting the economic problems brought on by aging and shrinking population. In 2010, foreign visitors reached 8.6 million, a 26% increase over the previous year. Optimism was so high, the government set an ambitious goal of attracting 25 million foreign visitors by 2020. Now that figure seems to be impossibly out of reach.

The Strong

Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa warned on Monday that a surging yen and the European Union’s sovereign-debt crisis were slowing Japan’s post tsunami economic recovery.

The strong yen and the European financial crisis are related because as investors dump the euro, they look for what they feel are safe haven currencies like the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. The Japanese are growing weary of the safe haven label because it has caused the Japanese currency to reach post-war highs compared to other currencies. The strong yen makes Japanese exports more expensive at a time when consumers in the United States and Europe are increasingly looking for bargains.

Toyota has said that for every yen the currency rises against the dollar it loses 34bn yen ($442m; £271m) in operating profit. The problem is so worrying that the government and central bank intervened in the currency markets on 4 August in an attempt to weaken the currency. It worked, but only for a short time, and the yen has again approached its highest level since the end of World War II, 76.25 to the