Parallel Workshop Session 1

Report on Parallel Workshop Session 1
Pasha Sohel, M2 Student, Department of Urban Engineering


Parallel Workshop Theme: Energy
Session 1: Management of Clean Energy Development in Asian Countries
Time: March 20 (Monday) 2006, 13:30-17:10
Venue: Riverside 7, Royal Orchid Sheraton, Bangkok, Thailand
Facilitator: Keisuke Hanaki (the University of Tokyo)

Foreword

The aim of the workshop is to discuss management of energy and environment especially in Asian region. Topics include mitigation of expected growth in developing region and sustainable GHG reduction in developed region. Interaction of energy technology with social and economic aspects is addressed. The final goal of this workshop is to provide valuable inputs in order to improve the interim proposal of the new flagship program that AGS is going to launch. The workshop invited 7 speakers in session 1 to provide regional information on management of clean energy development. After the lectures, there was a commentator’s speech on all the presentations of the session. However, the workshop started with the session facilitator’s introductory talk on session topic, scope of the workshop and presentation rules.

Lecture 1
Renewable Energy Development in Asia: Promoting Renewable Energy Technologies
S Kumar, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)

The Renewable Energy Technology (RET) Program, conducted during 1997-2005, in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam was presented. The program aimed to promote RETs viz. photovoltaics (PV), solar drying and biomass briquetting/ briquetting stoves. Major areas of program activities are development of RETs system components through adaptive research, capacity building on RETs and dissemination of the technology to the potential users and policy makers.

Reference

• http://www.retsasia.ait.ac.th

Q&A

• Was there any viability test, for example, resource assessment for use of RET devices? There was no such study. For instance, measurement of solar energy is not so easy. Renewable energy is assumed to be in abundant in the nature.

• Was there any quality assessment regarding the renewable energy? There was no problem concerning quality.

• Is there any supply side problem regarding silicon for photovoltaic cells? There is no problem in silicon supply. No resource restriction exists.

Lecture 2
Sustainable Bioenergy for India
N H Ravindranath, Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore (IISc)

Rural energy demand has, so far, received limited attention in developing countries. The presentation was about the potentiality of bioenergy technologies as an opportunity to meet all the rural energy needs. Feasibility of commercial scale manufacturing and dissemination, demonstration and implementation of technologies, technical and operational feasibility, acceptability to the rural community has been tried practically in India. However, economic viability is yet to be proven in the field for some of the bioenergy technologies. Research and development capability as well as manufacturing and entrepreneurship capability exist in India. Also land needed for sustainable biomass feedstock production for energy is available in India. Bioenergy technologies such as biomass gasifiers for power generation, biodiesel or liquid fuels for local transportation, biogas and high efficiency wood stoves for cooking can promote economic development in rural areas by providing employment and incomes. In addition, such programs can prevent land degradation, protect watersheds and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Policy, financial and institutional interventions are needed to promote bioenergy programs.

Q&A

• We have seen that there is a lot of energy demand. But still we haven’t seen the impact yet. What are the barriers for promoting bioenergy? Social and economic factors are not allowing to have the benefits of bioenergy. Barriers include: (a)Electricity has traditionally been subsidized in India. So, bioenergy is in competition with subsidized electricity. (b) Technological challenges still exist. (c) Policy barriers are also there.

• Is there any water pollution problem regarding cleaning gasifier engine? Gasifier engine is of complete combustion type with little tork. It does not use lot of water because of its small scale. Moreover, water is used for cooling purpose not for cleaning. That water is recycled.

• What is the price of biodiesel? It costs 25-30 baths to produce one litre of biodiesel and sold at 30-35 baths a litre. So, compared to gasoline or diesel biodiesel is cheaper.

• As for developing bioenergy in rural areas, what is the requirement? Both small fund and labour are available in rural areas. It could be promoted as employment generation program solving the rural employment problem. Thus it can promote economic development in rural areas by providing employment and incomes.

• There is a debate that large scale production of bioenergy is raising the price of fuel. How this could be defended? No good agricultural land will be used for producing bioenergy. No farmer shifts from food to energy. So, no high quality land would go. Non-arable land is still available right now. So, it wouldn’t be a serious problem in promoting bioenergy.

Lecture 3
Development of Japan Law Carbon Society (LCS) Scenarios toward 2050 and Global Challenges
Junichi Fujino, National Institute of Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan

An analysis of possible Japanese energy systems to achieve low carbon society toward 2050 was presented. We might need drastic and early reduction of GHG emissions such as 50% global emissions by 2050 to stabilize GHG concentration at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The study suggested that Japan might require to undertake greater reductions such as 60-80%. However, current study examined 70% CO2 reductions by 2050 as compared to 1990 level for Japan. It showed that renewable energies may have significant role to realize low carbon society. Therefore, it is important to design feasible roadmap to expand their share and use with long term perspectives. The speaker also emphasized the importance of quantitative verification using simulation models to find consistence and feasible pathways toward achieving low carbon society. Analysis on low carbon society scenarios of some Asian countries like China, India and Thailand has been started.
References

• Japan Low Carbon Society Scenarios toward 2050, http://2050.nies.go.jp.

• LCS Research Booklet No.1 (November 2005), Research Project on “Establishing of Methodology to Evaluate Middle to Long term Environmental Policy Options toward Low Carbon Society in Japan” (FY2004-2008), sponsored by Strategic Research Development Project, Global Environment Research Fund, Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

• Japan – UK Joint Research Project (Feb.16 2006), Developing visions for a Low Carbon Society through sustainable development, MoE Japan/ Defra UK.

• Japan (June 2005), Guidance for Self-sustained Residential, 50% reductions

• UK (February 2005), 40% House, 60% reductions

Q&A

• Existing technology and its barriers have been talked about provided that the new technologies are also in the horizon. So, if you model the long term what are the critical points to convert this low carbon society scenario into reality? We have developed back casting model. If we just hold the trend it will not be of use. How to develop fuel cell technology is also critical. Problem also exists in how to store energy. Somehow storing energy is required but the battery technology is not so well developed. So, the approach is to find the crucial point by setting different scenarios and then think which to do.

• Japanese society is aging rapidly. Does aging make difficult or easier? Aging is not only problem of Japan, especially China also has the same problem. By using population dynamic model it has been tried to understand that what things happen in Lifestyle Model. It is now trend that elder people moving from rural to city area.

• Change of oil price is very strongly affecting alternative fuel production. Is the oil price factor introduced to the model? Hiking of oil price is in a sense good for development of alternative energy. Macro economic model is used to estimate oil price.

• There is a controversy on Fuel Cell Hydrogen vehicles’ energy efficiency. How is it in Japan? At present it is not so good situation regarding FCH vehicles in Japan. How to generate hydrogen is a question.

Negotiation game on Education session

Akihiro Tamai wrote:

I feel really sorry for those who couldn't, and didn't, join this session. It was very well-organized, interesting and fun.
Procedure of the opening was as follows: Mai from UT took the chair, lecture about background by Yumiko, description of the game by Tomohiro.
Now the game started. Group 2 was consist of Stephanie, Amanda, Didac, me, Noriko, Keisuke and (I can’t remember his name).These seven represent six different countries and chairperson of international conference like COP. Each countries choose their preferences on four technological methods of CO2 reduction from accept/ (partly accept)/ deny alternatives. Chairperson offers a set of technology choices as a resolution based on opinion of nations. Each choice is differently scored to each player due to their condition. Sum of scores of four technologies becomes their point. Game will be finished when more than five countries are satisfied to the point and agree to the resolution. If they don’t reach to agreement in the round they will negotiate about their standpoint and repeat voting resolution.
I was arranged to play role of an “Environmentally developed country”, possibly like Germany, who is configured as skeptic to all technological solutions. This country believes that effectiveness of these technologies is uncertain, too easy to declare and would suppress substantial achievement, and some technologies are too risky to apply. The condition was rather difficult to cooperate with other countries since people would see this country as a cynic for measures. ...Well, I’m confessing that I was the negotiator who lost in the first session. This game taught me that clear cooperative attitude on the first step is important for creating cooperative atmosphere to win-win relationship, and difficulty in negotiation. At last of the game, scores of each country were modified by “uncertainty” on our decision by a pair of dice and a list of uncertainties. If the dices show spot as written on an uncertainty card, target countries will get some gain or loss on their point. In our case no major change happened.
What stroke me the most through the game is how the set of score tables are well regulated. This made it clear that there exist many value conflicts although it it’s a bit too clear in some aspects. Game design was well organized and organizers’ message was clearly reflected on the design. This should be a very useful method for education for sustainability to let them feel difficulties and importance of such negotiations because achieving sustainability requires it among stakeholders with different interest.
As was mentioned at the beginning, it’s a pity that many of the meeting participants didn't join this session. Most of them would say they were interested in education. But the reality is like this: they must be actually interested in education but would never be more interested in than their profession even in such a short meeting. At the same time they are too busy to do more than two things. I’m worry about this situation that even aware faculties are like this, how come university education would be promoted toward sustainability with normal faculties.


As I mentioned above, negotiation plays fundamental role to realize sustainability under uncertainty with different concerns. This framework is same as the game intended to show us. And cooperation is crucial to achieve sustainability in democratic decision making process. This is the session's point of view on sustainability.

Report of Parallel Workshop

Report of Parallel Workshop
Risk Governance
20/03/2006 Keisuke Kuroda

In this parallel session, risk governance issues are presented and discussed. The issues include nature of risks, natural disaster management, environmental regulation, infectious diseases, etc.

Firstly, the overall theme is introduced by Prof. Hideaki Shiroyama, from the Univ. of Tokyo. He stated that the main focuses as for risk governance are as follows:
-Phases (analyzing factors and responses): monitoring risk, analyzing risk, information sharing, risk management decision making, implementation
-Process: involving and coordinating with various stakeholders- corporations, NGOs, local communities, local governments, ministries, international organizations
-Corporation: industries as focal point as sources for potential risks and solutions (innovation) for example, environmental performance, environmental risk management, security trade control
He added there’s two aspect of risk: safety and security.
-Environment, emerging and reemerging diseases, tsunami, food are related to safety aspect.
-Bioterrorism, security trade control, nuclear energy, energy security are related to security.

Then, three presenters, Dr. Masaru Yarime, from NISTEP, MEXT, Japan, Prof. Lee, Hong Kong University, and Dr Jim Foster from MIT, gave presentations about Environmental Regulation and Corporate Response. They stated from the past research, that there’re two basic and closely related constraints affecting the capacity of firms to pursue. They are:
-The inflexibility of environmental regulations that may act as a constraint on innovative corporate actions to improve environmental performance
-The lack of understanding across large elements of industry about the competitive advantages and benefits of superior environmental business practices
They underlined the importance of innovation in order to address both problems. Innovation is regulatory regimes; innovation in relationship between regulators, industry and other stakeholders; and innovation in industrial processes and products that enable improved environmental performance.

Then, Prof. Aikichi Iwamoto, from the Univ. of Tokyo, and Dr. Pathom Sawanpanyalert, from National Institute of Health, Thailand, spoke about the Response to Emerging and Reemerging Diseases.
Prof. Aikichi explained emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases, using smallpox as an example of the infectious diseases.
Emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases results form various factors. Population, traffic, industrial development, wild animals, bioterrorism, and insidious but large scale infectious diseases are thought to be major causes of emergence and reemergence of large scale infectious diseases, he stated. The burden of Infectious diseases is still high in developing countries. Moreover, globalization and inadequate introduction of new technologies may trigger unexpected infectious diseases. Concentration of human or animals can provide a platform for large scale infectious diseases. Therefore, continuous effort for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infectious diseases is mandatory, he concluded.
Then Dr. Pathom spoke about urgently notified diseases by the government and introduced the surveillance and approach to contain potential pandemics being conducted in Thailand. He underlined the importance of surveillance and research in global scale with a partnership of many organizations. At the same time, he mentioned some difficulties in collaboration; for example, few good practices, hardness to achieve good collaboration, and inequality of partners.

Finally, Prof. Amrit Bart, from AIT spoke about Disaster Reponse Management and Restoration. He explained principles to guide risk governance and principles as to how to implement it.
Firstly, he presented six principles to guide risk governance as follows.
1. Respect natural forces
2. Reduce human exposure
3. Allow natural system to work
4. Improve public services
5. Avoid increase in fishing
6. Diversify livelihoods

Then he presented five principles as to how to implement Risk governance
1. Secure commitments
2. Establish clear goals
3. Decentralize decisions
4. Celebrate success
5. Promote accountability

It was a very long session, which lasted from 1pm to 7pm. The topics were very various and diverse, from political actions by governments and corporations to medical issues like bird flu. Though I had expected there must have been more issues about flood, earthquake, and drought, it was still an interesting session to pay attention to. It was a good experience for me and I was very happy to know more about actual actions and countermeasures against infectious diseases from the experts.

Opening Session AGS Annual Meeting

Reporter: K. Kuroda

The keynote speech was addressed by Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, President of the Science Council of Japan. The theme was 'Social responsibilities of scientific community: a perspective of the Science Council of Japan'. He stated why social responsibilities of scientific community are necessary, explaining 'what is Nature?', 'what is Universe?', 'what is Matter?', 'what is Life?' with a great passion. He mentioned the milestones of science with 113 names such as Newton, Einstein, and others. A remarkable opinion of his was that there should be more focus on matters of a majority of people than on specific and detailed issues about few people. He said both governments and researchers should do so in their work respectively.

It was one of the most impressive presentations I have ever had. He explained what we are doing and where we are in the history of human. He mentioned many famous greatest scientists and connect their achievements with our age. His technique of presentation was also remarkable; tones of voice, delivery, jokes, and gestures. He sometimes clicked his fingers during presentation, which attracted the attention of audience effectively. Above all, his passion was the most attracting.

After a short break, Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of IPCC, gave a speech titled 'Global Sustainability and the Asian Challenge' He cited the words of Lester Brown, 'Communism has faied because it did not tell the truth on economy. Capitalism may fail because it does not tell the truth on ecology' and cited ecological footprint. He wanted climate change to be the theme of AGS 2008. He also underlined adaptation of climate change, as well as mitigation, because rising of seawater level will continue for one thousand years.

Finally came a speech by Kentaro Ogawa, Chairman of the Board, Zensho Co. Ltd. titled 'A global standard for food safety'. ZENSHO is the 3rd largest restaurant chain company in Japan with $1.5 billion in sale. He presented 'Food safety: BSE to vCJD: Variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease' He explained the symptoms of BSE and vCJD; brain becomes sponge like and loses its function, loss of body function, abnormal behavior, change of personality....with the death rate of 100%. He explained the countermeasures of distribution of BSE, which will be a big issue so far. He underlined prohibition of MBM(Meat and Bone Meal, which contain Prions of BSE disease), implementation of BSE Test, Setting of Global Standard. as conclusions.

Every speech and presentation was very interesting and moving. We learned what the current leaders are thinking as well as their presentation techniques. After all, it was a great experience for us to hear speeches from such big names.

Student's Challenge in Sustainability Education

Reporting for Student's Challenge in Sustainability Education (Students' session)
“Communication for sustainability”
Facilitator: Takashi Hashimoto, Keisuke Kuroda, Akihito Tamai, UT

March23td 9:00 – 12:00
Reported by Mai MURAYAMA

1. Outline of this session
For this workshop, they took “communication gap”, especially for the question “how do we cope with?” as a theme of discussion. Three groups are made for discuss about this theme as a group work.
At the beginning, the speaker mentioned that the communication gap is involved by the diverse participants, such as a nationality, speciality, gender, ect. , citing the experience from IPoS( Incentive Program on Sustainability) which was held last days. There was also an introduction of the workshop that was held few days before, titled “Another COP in Bangkok” as a recent example. One of the participants spoke this experience when she feel the “communication gap”.
The goal of the workshop is explained as a recognizing the communication gaps and an analyzing the causes and the solutions. There are two parts for discussing and there is a presentation about what is discussed. The following program was shown.

1. Group discussion Part 1: 09:40-10:25
Mapping of communication gap (Arranging keywords)
2. Group discussion Part 2: 10:40-11:15
Analyzing the keywords: Think of causes & solutions
3. Presentation 11:15-11:45
Share the results by illustrating map and its essences
4. Wrap Up 11:45-12:00


2. The group discussions
Each group started the discussion talking about each experience of communication gap. The facilitator guided, but the discussion was going forward with the participants.
At first, the participants put separately the keywords related the experience of the communication gap. Once the amount of keywords are gathered, the keywords are compared each other. While comparison is done, they discussed about the keywords deeply so that the essential is extracted.
The outputs of three groups are shown as the pictures below.











3. What is sustainability for this session?
Always the communication gap exists, however when we take care about this, we have to be open and the mind would broad-en. Recognizing the various communications gap is important and when we talk about the sustainability, the communication gap exists also and the same things are needed because sustainability contains the various points of view. There is no determination of sustainability and there is no determination of communication gap also but these two things are same for being required analyzing and thinking.
Essential of the communication gap is the relation of the cause and solution for “communication”. When it is not sustain, there is the cause and the solution is needed but first of all we have to recognizing that it is not sustain. This process is similar with recognizing the communication gap.
Development of this kind of process is needed and necessary for well communicate about sustainability.

Closing Session of AGS Annual Meeting

March 22 9:00 - 11:50
Closing Session
Reporter: A. Tokuda

1. Outline
In this closing session, after the opening remarks from Prof. Clay from MIT, reports from each parallel session (Energy, Food and Water, Risk Governance, Education) were presented.


2. Report from Education sessions
Prof. Perrusquia from Chalmers summarized the Education sessions i.e. workshop session using International Negotiation on Climate Change and discussion session on Sustainability Education. In the education sessions, it was repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting people to actually work on Sustainability Education, not just saying the importance. Even in the AGS annual meeting, a “talk-the-walk” phenomenon has existed; most participants talked on the importance of education toward the global sustainability, but in fact most of them walked into other sessions which are directly related to their research fields. Although such research-oriented activity cannot be blamed, the organizing committee can help tackle such “talk-the-walk” phenomenon and bring “walk-the-talk” phenomenon, by arranging the structure of session program, e.g. making the education session non-parallel.

Also, Prof. Perrusquia introduced the projects for Sustainability Education held at Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). The IPOS (Intensive Program on Sustainability) held at AIT, for instance, is an AIT-UT joint venture, where students come from AIT, UT, ETH, MIT and Chalmers. The themes include Food Security, Safety and Energy, aiming to understand the diverse and complex nature of Sustainable Development, to improve communication skills, and to develop strong networking. At MIT, Project-based Education (PBE) for Sustainability has been conducted. This program is characterized by the keywords such as learner-centered (learning by doing), and teacher as facilitator (shared process). Projects on Energy and Climate in Cambridge, and Campus sustainability are the examples of the projects conducted at PBE at MIT. At Chalmers, Centre for Environment and Sustainability is the institutional core of its sustainability educational program. It holds international workshops on learning for sustainability development and web-based course, and continues to Goeteborg’s Conference in 2007. In conclusion, Prof. Perrusquia re-insisted the importance of researchers’ involvement and proposed creating the database on Sustainability Education. .

IPOS:http://www.asdu.ait.ac.th/NewsAndEvents/newsletterData/HTMLFormat/iss3no16/developments.htm
MIT PBE: http://lfee.mit.edu/
Chalmers CES: http://www.miljo.chalmers.se/english/

 

3. Best poster awards
After the session reports, best poster awards were given to the four posters.

  Sustainable Building Design: The MIT Design Advisor
  B. J. Urban et al. 
  http://designadvisor.mit.edu/design/

  A Broader Impact and Life Cycle Assessment of Biomass-Based Transportation Fuels
  T. Groode et al.
  http://lfee.mit.edu/metadot/index.pl?id=3584&isa=Category&op=show#Groode

  Air Pollution in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal  
  A. Panday et al.
  http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/person.asp?position=Student&who=panday

  Research on effect of improvement of Inhaled Air Quality by Personal Air-conditioning
  M. Matsuda et al. 
  http://venus.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index-e.html


4. AGS 2007 in Barcelona
After the poster awards, the introduction of the AGS 2007 meeting in Barcelona was presented. Tentative keynote speakers include former EU commissioner Walstrom, sustainable architect McDonough, Spanish Prime Minister Rodriquez-Zapatero, and Corporate CEOs. Sustainable events under consideration are carbon-emissions free event, sustainable accommodation and food, and sustainable parallel activities.

Workshop-Energy Session2

March 21 (Thuesday) 13:30-17:00
Session2: Paths Towards Sustainable Energy Management in Asia
Reporter: H. Yano

Sustainability is not simple. This phrase was the most popular one in this workshop.
You may think “Who doesn’t know?”
But this is reality even among professional scientists.

In this session, there were presenters from Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and China.

China is now on 41.8% for urbanization level. With its rapid economic growth, public environmental concern is increasing and 18% of them think air pollution is the most important issue. The government tries to improve its transportation system and one the examples is BRT (But Rapid Transit).
After the presentation, one of the audiences asked what the government thinks about bicycle and the answer was the number of bicycle in cities is too many (7 million!) and they want people to change into other public transportation though it is a very environment-friendly vehicle.
more information on BRT:
http://www.worldwatch.org/features/chinawatch/stories/20060309-1

Compared to urban area, supply of safe energy in rural area is an urgent need. In China, 30-50% of total logged forests were used for cooking and heating by rural people and it exceeded 50% of acceptable amount. As over logging leads land degradation, clean renewable energy and hydropower resources should be required and extension of biogas use is needed. Among those potential solutions, biomass is the most important energy resource. The presenter introduced development of firewood forest and integrated and efficient use of crop straw.

From Japan, Joint Parcel Delivery System (JPDS) in urban areas was introduced. This system helps sustainable transportation in terms of parcel is collectively delivered and reduce total number of trucks and distances (almost 65%) compared to usual delivery system. However, there is a big problem to popularize it. At present, “sales-drivers” carry parcel and get order directly from customers in Japan and establish each trust. Though there comes “win-win” solution if the competitive companies get together and introduce this system with E-commerce all at once, it cannot be succeeded like “prisoner’s dilemma” when only a few companies agree.The presenters said that this system is effective only in urban commercial area and co-existence with particular brand of parcel delivery would be possible.

The presenters from Europe mentioned on building energy system. There are two approaches for sustainable building. In developed countries, energy efficiency of existing buildings is the target. On the other hand, new infrastructure for building will be needed in developing countries. In addition to these, NCC concept house- the house without electricity bill was introduced. Though the house is still four times expensive than usual house, energy use is not influenced by house owner’s operation. In future, these three approaches will be mixed for sustainable building. The important thing to remember is local variations must be taken into consideration.

NCC Concept house
http://www.index2005.dk/Members/sosibhuku/communityObject#

I interpreted “Sustainability is not simple” as meaning that it is not simple BECAUSE each local area needs each customized solution for sustainability depend on the climate, the culture, the economic condition, the political background etc.

List of presenters
1) Towards sustainable buildings- transforming the heating market
by Filip Johnsson, Chalmers University of Technology
2) Energy efficiency in the industrial sector by Thore Berndtsson, Chalmers University of Technology
3) Energy demand in the building sector by Carl-Eric Hagentoft, Chalmers University of Technology
4) Chinese Mobility and Transportation Technologies by Kebin HE, Tsinghua University
5) Challenging CO2 reduction potential in Urban Logistics: Can E-Commerce Break Yokes Off in Joint Parcel Delivery Systems? by Hitoshi Ieda, Univ. of Tokyo
6) Options for sustainable rural energy development in China by Changhe LU, Chinese Academy of Sciences
7) Energy efficient technologies towards a 2kW society by Daniel Favrat, EPFL

Education Session 2:

Different approaches in Sustainability Education

Moderators: Takashi Mino（UT) & Jeffery Steinfeld (MIT)
Reporter: Yumiko Watanabe (yumiko.wtnb@gmail.com)

Introduction

There are different approaches in education on sustainable development (ESD) from regional point of view, since the education programs are strongly connected to cultural, social, economical and natural conditions of the region. Though, there have to be the common bases to develop curriculum of sustainability education. Based on the reports from 5 universities (the University of Tokyo (UT), Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)), the commonalities and differences of the sustainability education programs were discussed.

Education programs on sustainable development

More than 10 education programs on sustainable development were introduced in this session, and there were both common points and different points among these programs. The figure below sums up the programs from the viewpoint of their approach and their consideration of regional diversity.

Type of program	Aim	Target	Approach	Consideration of regional diversity	Example (Organizer)
Establishment of graduate course	To collaborate interdisciplinary faculties and establish new master’s and/or doctors’ program	Students	Top-down, both Systematic/Specific		Institute of Environmental Studies (UT), IR3S (UT and others), Chalmers Environmental Initiative (Chalmers)
Intensive (short) program	To help the self-learning process of students through lectures and group works	Students	Simulational, Topical	Diversity of participants, Topic selection (specific to local situation)	YES (UT, MIT, Chalmers), IPoS (UT, AIT)
Project-Based Education	To let student learn SD through real project toward local community	Students	Systemic, Learner-centered	Locality of Project target	Energy and Climate in Cambridge (MIT)
Training of faculty	To orient decision-makers, researchers and teachers towards SD	Faculty		Dependence on local faculty’s awareness	EESD: Engineering Education in Sustainable Development (UPC, TUD, Chalmers)
Conferences/Workshops	To exchange information among experts to help universities to set targets for reforming their educational programs	Researcher			Conference/Workshop on EESD (Chalmers)

Discussion

After presentations from each university, we entered into discussion. The following differences on sustainability education were discussed.

• Education toward students / Creation awareness of faculty
• Separated courses and programs / Integrated perspective
• Research for sustainability education / sustainability education
• Learning theory of sustainability / Applying knowledge to society
• Education toward students in engineering / Education toward students in social science

Impression

The combination of the approaches are truly necessary to provide sustainability education. One approach that nobody mentioned in this session is activities of students such as UTSC. The activities can be valued from the aspect of voluntary and interdisciplinarity. This session might help UTSC to think its role in sustainability.

Workshop2: Food & Water

March 21 13:30 - 17:30
Session2: Food and Water
Reporter: T. Yamazaki


Facilitators Kensuke Fukushi (UT),
Sébastien Rauch (Chalmers),
Yang Hong (EAWAG/ETH)


This was a joint session of “food and water” and “risk governance”

Sub-session1: Food safety, stable supply and governance
Extra-Scientific Dimensions of Science-Based Decisionmaking
Hideyuki Hirakawa
Policy decisions are synthetic judgments comprising extra-scientific factors(ESFs), as well as scientific one. ESFs affect not only policy decision but also on scientific judgments. In Japan-US BSE conflict, scientific question was unique in the sense that it was based on a highly disputable and shaky presumption and run short political legitimacy like accountability or openness. In this way, extra-scientific considerations enter science through problem framing, which sometimes leads to biased political manipulation of science. To avoid this, we need to scrutinize questions from a point of view of political legitimacy of scientific questions in addition to scientific answers and new understanding of value-neutrality of science as political legitimacy of scientific questions.

Makiko Matsuo
Setting International Food Standards
-the Case of Genetically modified Organisms
At the CODEX Alimentarius committee, science, power politics and the roles of market power is important in the decision, but there are other decisive factors like procedural character historical character agenda setting, the leadership of the chairman, and funding expenses. The challenges are lack of enforcing authority, the problem of compliance.


Sub-session 2: regional food issues in Asia

Michael Ernst
Sustainability science and food security in Asia
He focuses on Ganges and Mekong basins. Major risks such as floods or droughts are threatening food security. Application of sustainable science is necessary, but there are some barriers to sustainable sciences such as multi-disciplinary fashion, not reward, lack of government support, disciplinary cultures, and resistance of bureaucracies to changes.
Hisashi Kurokura
Small scale fisheries by farmer in Cambodia
Cambodian people obtain 75% of total protein intake from fresh water fish. Because of over catch by small scale fisheries, several important fish species are depleting. As a result of the household survey, it is found that the small-scale fishing was commercially conducted and fishing played an important role as an income source because rice production was not enough and most of farmers should obtain rice from market using the income from fishing. We should take holistic approach to know backgrounds of problems such as the fact that poverty often causes unsustainable use of resources.

Kou Ikejima
Coastal Zone Management: an integrated approach for sustainable development in the complex resource system. Coastal zone has productive and valuable habitats. This implies, in turn, that users’ demands are complex, and competition and conflict between users are often severe. Because of unclear jurisdiction and common property resources, coastal zones are also governmentally complex. We should apply integrated approaches such as Costal Zone Management CZM to solve the complicated issues that cannot be solved by traditional single sectoral method.

Session3: Discussion
After session2, there was the introduction of the food and water flagship program, which objects. We discussed various agenda such as how to change the structure of Food and water flagship program.

Poster session

March 20, 2006
Poster session
Reporter: N. Iwai

Poster session was held on 20 March 17:00-19:00 in Riverside room 1&2. There were 25 posters presented, mainly by young researchers from MIT (9 posters), Chalmers (4), and UT (12). I couldn’t see all the posters in two hours, but enjoyed talking with some of the presenters, and it seemed that everyone was also enjoying their discussions.
The posters were from various fields; building design, transportation, sustainability education, landscape planning, air pollution, and so on. The diversity of these fields made me clearly realize the broadness of meaning “sustainability”. However, at the same time, I also found that there was a commonness; they have the same goal, to realize a sustainable life. Toward the goal, there were largely two types of researches. Some are studying to invent new technology, and others are trying to integrate them. In the following, I would like to make comments to some of the posters of each type.

1.Technical information posters
1-1. Study on optimization of design and operation for groundwater heat pump system. By Nam et al.
This poster was about the new technique of air-cooling system using groundwater heat. The temperature of deep groundwater is rather stable, warmer in winter and cooler in summer, so we can use groundwater as a thermal storage. Then, we can save energy and get achieve higher COP (Coefficient of Performance). This technique still has problems in generalization because the groundwater and underground thermal properties have diverse in its character. However, they are sure that they can develop it for practical use in the future.

1-2. Study on non-condensing air-conditioning system by combining desiccant air-conditioning system with CO2 heat pump. By Tsay et al.
This was also about the air-conditioning system. By some technique, we can cool the air more efficiently and without water condenses. If there is no water condenses, it won’t get moldy and can provide cleaner air. That is, this technique makes it possible both to save energy and to get healthy life. They are trying to develop this technique for practical use especially for humid and warm Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan. I think the sales point of this technique is that it gives additional value of health, not “only sustainable”. This attitude would be necessary for coming technique for sustainability.

2.Integrating suggestion
2-1. Land recycling in China – a study on contaminated land conversion. By Li and Chen.
This one is a social research considering the reason why industries are relocating their factory from urban to rural area. They thought it might be because the pollution problem is getting larger in urban area and they need to refresh their factories. The land price in rural area is cheaper, so they can use extra money for innovation of their technique. Authors said they would need something like a handbook to give the owners of factories information of how to remediate land and how to deal with pollution.

2-2. Sustainable building design: the MIT design advisor. By Urban and Glicksman
Buildings exist for long periods of time, so improving design for energy efficiency can make a tremendous impact towards reducing global energy needs. They made a simulation program where you can know how much energy will the building you are going to build consume, by just choosing the type of your building design. By using this, you can readily arrange your building more energy saving one. Try the simulation at their HP http://designadvisor.mit.edu.
I felt this trial would be very useful to connect researchers and architectures, and would contribute greatly to reducing energy consumption. This poster made me realize the need to have an effective way to diffuse new innovative technology. Even if someone invents an excellent technique for sustainable life, it will be no use if we don’t have network to know it.

Reception: U. Tokyo President's speech

Video from Welcome Party, The President
of University of Tokyo, H. Komiyama's speech

Keynote: Social responsibilities of scientic comm.

An image from Speech by President of Science Council of Japan


March 20 10:00-10:30
Keynote speech: Social responsibilities of scientific community
by K. Kurokawa, President of Science Council of Japan


Abstract: (This article is to be added.)

//////////
Image from
The Economist, Dec 11th 2003
The world's expanding waistline
The shape of things to come

割振り暫定版

--- updated: Mar. 21 11:00 ---

hsmt&kr March 20 9:00-12:10 Plenary

ps　 March 20 13:30 - 16:30 Energy
hsmt　March 20 13:30 - 16:30 Food and Water
◇　　March 20 13:30 - 16:30 Risk Governance
tm 　March 20 13:30 - 16:30 Education（交渉組の本番）

os　　March 20 17:00 - 19:00 Poster viewing time

in　　March 21 9:00 - 11:50 Plenary

yn　　March 21 13:30 - 17:30 Energy
ym　　March 21 13:30 - 17:30 Food and Water
iw　　March 21 13:30 - 17:30 Risk Governance
wt　　March 21 13:30 - 17:30 Education

tk　　March 22 9:00 - 11:50 Closing //Sheraton-->>--AIT

◇ 　March 22 15:30-17:45 Opening

mr　　March 23 9:00-12:00 Nat Disaster Management
◇　　March 23 9:00-12:00 Food and Agriculture in Asia
◇　　March 23 9:00-12:00 Urban-rural Sustainability
◇　　March 23 9:00-12:00 Students' Challenge in Sus Edu
◇　　March 23 13:30-14:30 Plenary
◇　　March 23 14:30-15:00 closing

　◇は空きの意味

　　http://www.prime-intl.co.jp/AGS2006/program.html
　　http://www.prime-intl.co.jp/ir3s-ait/program.php

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報告書作成のためのメディアとして実験中です！

報告書作成のためのメディアとして実験中です！
-tk