Reconstructing Areas Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Progress and Challenges

Abstract

The Great East Japan Earthquake devastated the Pacific coast of Tohoku and Kanto, inundating approximately 561 km² of coastal areas across six prefectures with 142 billion USD of economic damage as well as 18,682 deaths and 2674 missing. The damages caused by the disaster vary between Sanriku and Sendai-Fukushima, according to their geographical differences. In response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, the governments, both national and local, have been making great efforts to smoothly recover and reconstruct the disaster-affected areas, first by setting up the Reconstruction Design Council to formulate prefectural reconstruction plans and provide the municipalities of tsunami-affected areas with reconstruction guidance, and then by preparing institutional framework to facilitate reconstruction efforts. Among the various reconstruction measures, the Reconstruction Grant Project has been playing an important role with strong financial support from the national government to reconstruct infrastructures and recover the livelihoods of local people by designating the first five years, starting from 2011, as the intensive reconstruction period. However, the tight time frame set to facilitate reconstruction seems to have been causing various issues, such as a rise of construction cost, limited time for decision making and building consensus, and environmental impacts.