A group of civil-society campaigners and residents from the Oi River basin in Shizuoka, central Japan, will report on the construction of the Chuo Shinkansen — the country’s new magnetic-levitation (maglev) line — which, they say, threatens the natural environment of the Southern Alps and the water and human rights of downstream communities. The group is in Bangkok to speak at the UN Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum (for the Asia-Pacific).
The line, a government-backed project by Central Japan Railway (JR Central), is designed to run about 87 per cent underground. The cost of its Tokyo–Nagoya section alone is estimated at 11 trillion yen (US$71.35 billion). Its most difficult stretch passes beneath the Southern Alps, a UNESCO Eco Park and the headwaters of the Oi River, on which some 620,000 people depend for domestic, agricultural and industrial water. The speakers argue that tunnelling will drain groundwater — the company’s own assessment projects say the river’s flow could fall by up to two tonnes per second — and note that tunnelling has already dried up wells in other prefectures. They say residents’ concerns have been set aside, and that construction was approved in July.
The campaigners frame the case as a test of whether technological progress is matched by the legal and institutional safeguards needed to protect human rights, and hope it will inform debate on development across Asia. They call for a proper human-rights assessment, a review of the route where serious impacts cannot be avoided, and a legal duty on companies to respect human rights. JR Central maintains that the project’s environmental impact will be limited.
Speaker: Kiyoshi Matsuya, co-representative of the Shizuoka citizens' network on the Southern Alps and the Linear Shinkansen, and a Shizuoka city councillor.
He will be joined by residents of the Oi River basin.
The briefing will be in Japanese with English interpretation.
