Kurashi - News From Japan

September 1 each year is a day when Japan remembers its many earthquakes and other emergencies. Events are held to train people how to use fire extinguishers and other equipment. This year, before that date, the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry mentioned that as a general precaution, households ought to stock up on, say 15 rolls of toilet paper rolls per month, in advance. Not a very unreasonable piece of advice. Without mentioning the focus on September 1, many foreign news media carried all kinds of headlines about this. Be that as it may. Expecting young journalists to understand Japan is like - well - it's the old hands I'm more worried about. Also, back in 1973, scare stories in Japanese media about people buying two years worth of the rolls triggered others to hoard as well. Media bears a huge responsibility in times like these. Reports about any event of mass buying will of course encourage others to engage in - mass buying. They know that back during th...

From cleantechnica.com World - Aichi Biodiversity Targets Shows Progress, But Not Enough What we eat may have the largest impact on biological diversity. Read more; It’s not just about the polar bears and the honeybees. Sustainable development, and increasingly the stabilization of climate, depend more on biodiversity than we realized even a decade ago. Extinction, deforestation, overfishing, and pollution all restrict human abilities to nourish the planet. Knowing that uniformity and paucity of species drain the world’s shared wealth and well-being, in 2011 the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity drew up a comprehensive world biodiversity plan of goals for 2020. At a meeting in Aichi, Japan, representatives of 194 nations formalized these global priorities. A report called Global Biodiversity Outlook 4  (downloadable), released this week, demonstrates that “with concerted efforts at all levels,” we can still achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. If ...

C onsumers, farmers, activists, and invited guests from Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil, Germany, Sweden participated in the Korean demonstrations at the MOP7 meeting in Pyeongchang, October 2014. Among the topics were farmers' rights as well as local seed saving and consumers' right to know. Do share. Seems Japan has totaly ignored this opportunity to make any effort at all to lead in the effort to work for biodiversity. Korea isn't doing much better, but we can only hope. Or will they just pass the bucket to Mexico, the next host in 2018? People do attend these meetings hoping to make a difference. Why does industry (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, and others...) have such a massive influence on the results? Deutsche Welle: UN alarm over shrinking biodiversity Grim warnings on the earth's dwindling biodiversity have been given at the opening of a UN conference in South Korea. A UN report says governments are only...

The COP12 conference in South Korea is currently discussing all kinds of matters related to biodiversity, from falcons and sharks to illegal logging and "Action for a World Living in Harmony with Nature": Read more: http://biodiversity-l.iisd.org/guest-articles/how-cites-is-taking-concrete-action-for-a-world-living-in-harmony-with-nature-cites-contribution-to-the-un-decade-on-biodiversity/ The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) from 1973 is contributing to: realizing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (2011-2020); achieving the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets; and celebrating the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity's vision of a world living in harmony with nature... Learn more about CITES by visiting www.cites.org or connecting to: www.facebook.com/CITES ; www.twitter.com/citesconvention ; www.youtube.com/citesvd ; and www.flickr.com/cites . The CBD Alliance is in Pyeongchang, and publishes dail...

Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, founded in 2000, showing how rural Japan is doing so much better than big cities. Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) aims to realize sustainable energy society based on four pillars: (1) Efficient energy system based on renewable energy, (2) Fair distribution of risk/benefit regarding to energy use, (3) Transparent and participatory decision making regarding to energy policy, (4) Decentralized and autonomous individuals and communities, and has engaged in the policy research, advocacy and information dissemination. And after 3.11, in the course of fundamental reconsideration of energy policy in Japan, we have developed the transformative strategies and concrete measures. Tokyo, Osaka, and other large cities are ranking really low on this ratio of renewable energy share... More about ISEP and its global network “Renewables Japan Status Report 2014”, Executive Summary (English version) Producer： Institute for ...

Curiosity about the Nobel Prize in Physics that went to three Japanese researchers who developed the blue light emitting diodes (LED) that has ushered in a revolution in electricity savings: Back in 1981, a Swedish band, Adolphson & Falk, had a hit with a tune called Blinkar Blå, recorded with Greg Fitzpatrick from the US who was selling novel Japanese synthesizers by Casio and Yamaha in Stockholm. The lyrics paint a lonely picture of a man sitting by his controls, maybe in a space ship, or at night inside a nuclear power plant, and as long as the controls are "flashing blue" all is OK. He trusts his computers, but... Back then, of course, there were no such blue LED lights, so the lyrics had a certain sense of futurism...And uncertainty. Wikipedia has more about the song: Blinkar blå (Flashing blue) På panelen ser jag lamporna som lyser. Processens steg står under min kontroll. Jag håller ögonen på datorns analyser. Här har ovissheten spelat ut sin roll. K...

Tragic eruption at Mt. Ontake bringing the total number of victims to 51 in Japan's worst postwar volcanic disaster, according to The Mainichi . NAGANO (Kyodo) -- Four hikers have officially been confirmed dead after their bodies were found on Mt. Ontake in central Japan on Saturday, bringing the total number of victims to 51 in the country's worst postwar volcanic disaster. Search efforts that had been suspended for two days by rain were resumed one week after the deadly disaster. Around 930 police officers, firefighters and Ground Self-Defense Force troops took to the mountain in midsize helicopters and on foot amid concerns their efforts could be halted again with the approach of powerful typhoon Phanfone, expected to bring rain to the area from Sunday. With the past two days of rain having turned accumulated volcanic ash into mud, the risk of mudslides has prevented the use of lar...