Date:September 10, 2007 (Mon.) 14:30-17:00PM
Venue:Room 101, Kyodai Kaikan,
Presentation:
Initiative 1 “Long-Term Dynamics of Environment, Technology, and Institutions” by Sugihara Kaoru
The goal of this program is to formulate a new paradigm. It identifies issues involving existing knowledge, envisages an alternative, produces outcomes from advanced research based on that alternative, and works for the formation of a public consensus through that vision, demonstration and findings. The technologies and institutions that surround us today, as seen in the private ownership system, have focused too much on the geospheric and temperate zone way of thinking. By shifting our perspective from the geosphere to humanosphere, and from the temperate zone to the tropics, we can try to capture the history and cultures of Asian and African societies as a response to the tropical humanosphere. In the tropics, because the aim was the preservation of the whole humanosphere (as seen from the perspective of human society) such as mitigating environmental risks, the development path that was adopted was different from that in the temperate zone, where interest focused on the efficient use of scarce resources by fixing the humanosphere. However, considering global environmental issues and the future population growth in the tropics, the developmental path of the tropics is crucial, and we need to focus our minds on the developmental path for a “sustainable humanosphere” which incorporates these issues. Under Initiative 1, we will aim to draft a “Local Sustainability Index” based on research findings in each field. Specifically, we will look at the natural environment, conflict management, disaster prevention, political economy, culture and health.
Initiative 2 “Toward Co-existence of Human and Nature” by Yanagisawa Masayuki
In the face of global natural environmental issues, the coexistence of humanity and nature is crucial not only at the local level, but on a global scale as well. This research looks at the natural environment from the humanosphere aspect, expands existing interdisciplinary studies to humanosphere research, and explores new mechanisms that will enable this coexistence within global circulation. In order to do so, even as we change our assumption on the natural environment to one that assumes that it is human created, it is also important to examine such questions as what are forests, and what is nature. We should not assume private ownership, but should perceive the use of natural resources as a shared heritage of humankind that continues from the past to the future. Furthermore, we need not only scientifically accurate information, but a “scientific” judgment that consolidates the yet unverified information accurately, and continuously revises it to be able to estimate the future. Based on this paradigm shift, while focusing on “fluctuation” and “diversity,” we will carry out this research with specific themes such as the linkage between the global environmental issue and community life, the use of natural resources, (living with) disaster, medicine and health.
Initiative 3 “The Forestry Model of Regional Sustainable Humanosphere” by Mizuno Kosuke
This is a joint research endeavor, based on the past accumulations of research findings by RISH (Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere) and CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies), by researchers working in the same field. The research field is the large-scale Acacia mangium plantation forests in Palembang on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. In the past, studies by RISH were directed toward the sustainable management of acacia such as raising seedlings and breeding, culturing tissues, enhancing growth, and the use of timber. They placed importance on the position of acacia within the humanosphere, considering such as its carbon fixation and circulation. On the other hand, seen from an area study perspective, the lack of social sustainability is a concern, since such massive plantation forests carry a major risk of creating rifts with local communities. Overcoming such conflicts and creating social sustainability is a critical task. Keeping the keyword “diversification” in mind, in this project we will look toward the creation of a “sustainable forest zone” by adding the aspect of governance to the established methodology of RISH, which has been “monitoring and diagnosing, development and cure, implementing, regeneration and self-sustainability.”
Initiative 4 “Studies in the Potentialities of Local Culture, Institutions and Technology” by Tanabe Akio
This study connects the new possibilities of advanced technology to the existing knowledge and system in a way that tries to identify and understand the intellectual potential of the region so that it can become a backbone for the development of a sustainable humanosphere. Previous area studies have overemphasized local endemics, based on the inclination to depict regions as harmonious. If, however, we are to consider a response to changes in climactic conditions, the relationship between humans who prioritize safety nets, as well as humans and nature, we need to understand the region not as in harmony but as a socio-ecological system that includes multilayered redundancies. Modernization should be grasped not just from the negative aspect of having destroyed the humanosphere, which carried these kinds of redundancies, but also from the perspective of positive possibilities, as it can widen the possibility of people’s behavioral choices through frontier science and technology and institutions. Furthermore, by focusing not on the ownership relationship involving a shift from subject to object as assumed by modern capitalism, but by focusing on the quality of the relationship, we should come to understand the dynamism of a relationship involving multilayered negotiations between diverse subjects on questions such as how to relate to others and nature and how to change oneself and others. By assuming these paradigm shifts, we aim to reconstruct the way of life, integrating field studies such as environmental change, war, aging and disease, and poverty, and to search for an active momentum that can lead to the construction of a sustainable humanosphere within the culture and set of values that have secured the diversity of humankind.
(Ubukata Fumikazu )