Closing Address

Ryutaro Ohtsuka, D.Sc.
President, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
Good afternoon, everyone. As the President of the National Institute for Environmental Studies,NIES, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the keynote speakers, co-chairs of thesymposium, chairs of panel discussions for report of their achievements in the preceding two-day
workshops, and all participants for actively contributing to this symposium.
The symposium began with welcome addresses of Dr. Ichiro Kamoshita, Minister of theEnvironment, Japan, and Sir Graham Fry, British Ambassador to Japan, who represented theJapanese and UK sponsors/partners, respectively. Then, Dr. Shuzo Nishioka and Dr. Jim Skea,
co-chairs of the symposium, stated the purpose of today’s symposium, followed by three keynote
presentations. Dr. Emil Salim, President’s Council of Advisors (Former Minister of theEnvironment), Indonesia, pointed out key issues which should be considered together with low
carbon society (LCS), paying special attention to the current and changing situations of developing
countries. Mr. Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Executive Vice-President, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., showed us
hardware and software approaches to LCS from the viewpoint of motorized transport system. Mr.
David Warrilow, Head of Climate, Energy and Ozone, UK Defra, outlined the up-to-date roadmap
to LCS, stressing the significance of both technological innovations and lifestyle changes.
In the afternoon panel discussion, led by the same co-chairs, the achievements of the two–day
workshop on four themes were reported by the workshop chairs, followed by questions andanswers, and the participants’ opinion poll of preferred answers to several questions prepared by thechairs. I was most impressed by the appropriate selection of the four themes, i.e. “behaviourchange”, “aligning with sustainable development”, “investment” and “barriers and opportunities”,
because all of them need our urgent attention. Both the chairs’ reviews and the participants’comments/questions were extremely meaningful and constructive. For instance, the chairs
answered a participant’s question about the reasons as to why nuclear energy was excluded fromthe source options in the workshop, and other participants suggested usefulness of cooperation withNGOs and information media to achieve LCS.
Since the contents of panel discussion were summarized very well by the co-chairs, I will briefly
explain my idea about how we should develop our study from now on. In the NIES, we carry out
four priority research programmes, and each of them targets a desired society, i.e. low carbonsociety, sound material-cycle society, nature friendly society, and safe, secure and healthy society. I
think it is crucial to consider the interrelations among these desired societies. I was very happy tolearn that the chairs of “aligning with sustainable development” workshop suggested a strong
possibility of win–win relation between LCS and sustainable development. My hope is that further
consideration will be given to this matter and this research group will take the lead in it.
Finally, I would like to again express my great appreciation to all participants and close this year’s
fruitful symposium. Thank you very much.

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