Today's economic activities are only maintained by the consumption of tremendous amount of natural resources and products, which in turn result in the generation of tremendous amount of wastes. To change this pattern of social and economic systems, Japan has been working hard to realize a sound material-cycle society while it has been witnessing rapid growth of natural resource demand and expansion of international trade of secondary products, which are stimulated by the economic growths of China and other neighboring Asian countries、National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) has been working on the analysis of the status of international material flows for more than a decade, especially on the hidden flows (Ecological Rucksacks) associated with international trade.
It is needless to say that the issue between natural resource extraction and its consequent environmental problem can not be addressed by a single nation. In December of 2005, for example, the European Commission (EC) announced the "Thematic Strategy on the sustainable use of natural resources" and is now establishing an international panel on the sustainable use of natural resources with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). China is also conducting various efforts to build a "Circular Economy".
Given the background above, this workshop aims (1) to share the latest policy and institutional actions for sustainable use of natural resources and material flow analysis in the international context and (2) to discuss the research results on material flow analysis, including the project titled "Study on material flow models to assess achievement towards sustainable production and consumption", which is funded by the Global Environment Research Fund. We believe that the presentations by invited experts, including from UNEP and China, as well as the discussions by all participants will contribute to the re-examination of the relevance of the "cradle to grave" approach of whole "life-cycle" of a material flow. We hope that this workshop provides an opportunity to explore the direction of future actions for sustainable use of natural resources.
English (simultaneous translation between English and Japanese will be provided.)
Please register at the following website.
http://www.sntt.or.jp/niese/start-niese.html
For inquiry about this workshop, please contact with Ms. Wakako Suetsugu (the Society of Non-Traditional Technology)at niesws@sntt.or.jp or telephone +81-3- 3503-4681.
This workshop is supported by the Global Environment Research Fund of the Japanese Ministry of Environment (Grant No. H-9).
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