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APEC focuses on promoting a common basis in key sectors, including in investment, services, trade facilitation, standards/technical barriers to trade, rules of origin, intellectual property rights (IPR) and environmental goods and services (EGS)

Japan has been financing the African Development Bank in order to boost Africa’s sustainable development

The Subcommittee on Regulatory and Institutional Reform has three working groups including inter alia the green innovation working group (dealing with environment and energy), also re-examining relevant regulations to promote recycling rare metals

Under the "Regulatory Reform 100 to Revitalize Japan" program, the Government will strenuously implement regulatory and institutional reforms in five strategic fields of activity including, inter alia, promotion of investment and utilisation of the environment and energy technology

On 18 June 2010, the Government issued a new regulatory reform programme 149, whose main objectives are to review regulations concerning environment and energy, medical and elderly care services, and agriculture, including the Law Concerning the Measures by Large-Scale Retail Stores for Preservation of Living Environment, the Law Concerning Standardization and Proper Labelling of Agricultural and Forestry Products and the Act concerning the Rational Use of Energy

In the WTO, Japan has recently sought to curtail unilateral export restrictions by its trading partners, especially those concerning chemical fertilizers and natural resources

Some FTAs stipulate the inappropriateness of encouraging investment through a relaxation of environmental measures or by weakening or reducing protection afforded in domestic labour laws

Japan maintains certain export controls to, inter alia, preserve natural resources in accordance with international agreements (such as CITES)

Imports of, inter alia, animals or plants listed in the appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), certain marine products, animals and plants, substances that deplete the ozone layer, specified hazardous wastes, and waste chemical weapons goods, may be prohibited or subject to import licensing, import approval or quantitative restrictions in order to preserve domestic plant and animal life and the environment

Organic Japan Agricultural Standards (JAS) standards were established in accordance with the Codex "Guidelines for Production, Processing, Labelling and Marketing of Organically Produced Foods, while on 27 August 2009, mandatory technical regulations for organic plants were revised with some substances were added to or deleted from the list of substances permitted for the production of organic plants