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Preface
Sustainability is an important keyword in the design of future society, and the environmental dimension is one of the most critical aspects of sustainability.
Environmental problems typically involve many stakeholders and have a complex
nature with many uncertainties. This makes it diffi cult to come up with a consensus
among the stakeholders in tackling these problems. In this decision-making process,
we need leaders. They should be able to see problems holistically, to understand the
sociocultural and human factors of the concerned community, and to propose a new
framework that may mitigate the existing problems and provide an alternative path
for a sustainable new paradigm. It is an essential duty for the whole society, especially for higher education institutions, to foster such leaders.
In recent decades, The University of Tokyo (UT) has been keen on the issue of
the environment and/or sustainability and has endeavored to establish new multidisciplinary schemes that focus on these issues. An outcome of such efforts was the
launch of the Division of Environmental Studies in 1999, which aimed to solve
environmental problems through interdisciplinary collaboration among relevant
disciplines. In the same year, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and UT came together in the Alliance for
Global Sustainability (AGS) to discuss the possibility of organizing a summer program on sustainability, which materialized the following summer as the Youth
Environmental Summit (later renamed Youth Encounter on Sustainability, YES).
UT brought this movement over to Asia and initiated another summer program
called the Intensive Program on Sustainability (IPoS) in 2004. YES and IPoS were
experimental projects to establish pedagogy and materials for sustainability education at a higher education level by making use of the diversity of students as well as
that of instructors.
As a consequence of these educational challenges with a transdisciplinary nature,
a formal graduate program, the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS),
was established under the Division of Environmental Studies at UT in 2007. The
Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S), an institution developed in UT in 2005 to coordinate and develop research collaboration on
Preface
Sustainability is an important keyword in the design of future society, and the environmental dimension is one of the most critical aspects of sustainability.
Environmental problems typically involve many stakeholders and have a complex
nature with many uncertainties. This makes it diffi cult to come up with a consensus
among the stakeholders in tackling these problems. In this decision-making process,
we need leaders. They should be able to see problems holistically, to understand the
sociocultural and human factors of the concerned community, and to propose a new
framework that may mitigate the existing problems and provide an alternative path
for a sustainable new paradigm. It is an essential duty for the whole society, especially for higher education institutions, to foster such leaders.
In recent decades, The University of Tokyo (UT) has been keen on the issue of
the environment and/or sustainability and has endeavored to establish new multidisciplinary schemes that focus on these issues. An outcome of such efforts was the
launch of the Division of Environmental Studies in 1999, which aimed to solve
environmental problems through interdisciplinary collaboration among relevant
disciplines. In the same year, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and UT came together in the Alliance for
Global Sustainability (AGS) to discuss the possibility of organizing a summer program on sustainability, which materialized the following summer as the Youth
Environmental Summit (later renamed Youth Encounter on Sustainability, YES).
UT brought this movement over to Asia and initiated another summer program
called the Intensive Program on Sustainability (IPoS) in 2004. YES and IPoS were
experimental projects to establish pedagogy and materials for sustainability education at a higher education level by making use of the diversity of students as well as
that of instructors.
As a consequence of these educational challenges with a transdisciplinary nature,
a formal graduate program, the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS),
was established under the Division of Environmental Studies at UT in 2007. The
Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S), an institution developed in UT in 2005 to coordinate and develop research collaboration on