Energy / Climate Change

April 23, 2006

 

Shiga Prefecture Sustainability Vision to Half CO2 Emissions by 2030

Keywords: Climate Change Local government 

The Lake Biwa Environmental Research Institute in Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, released a vision for a sustainable Shiga on February 14, 2006. The institute has been working on this project since 2005.
It is the first case in Japan of a design for sustainable society being prepared at the prefecture-level.

The proposed vision defines a "sustainable society" as a society where human activities do not exceed ecological capacity, and thereby can preserve a favorable environment and abundant natural resources for future generations. To realize such a society, the vision sets two main goals to be achieved by 2030: reduction of carbon dioxide emission by half and improvement of the water environment in Lake Biwa to attain the level of the late-1960s.

To achieve these goals a combination of two types of measures is proposed: those that utilize state-of-art technologies, and those that create a harmonious coexistence with nature. A back-casting approach was used to analyze the required changes, starting from the desired future vision and working back at the current situation. Under exogenous factors such as population and economic indicators, the institute analyzed how Shiga will be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to half of the 1990 levels by 2030, by changing variables such as energy, lifestyle, industries, agriculture, forestry, fishery, transportation, commodity distribution and land use.

The summary document was posted on the institute's website on February 20, 2006.
http://www.lberi.jp/ (only in Japanese)

http://www.lberi.jp/root/en/bkjhindex.htm

Posted: 2006/04/23 02:20:16 PM
Japanese version

 

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