This is how Japanese youth view climate change today

Photo by Satoshi Hirayama

By Naoko Kutty, World Economic Forum

  • Pressure to act on the climate crisis is building among Japanese youth.

  • They are beginning to exert influence domestically and at international forums like COP27.

  • Japan’s younger generation must be fully integrated into climate policy-making decisions.

  • Read the blog in Japanese here.

As the world becomes increasingly aware of climate change, there is growing interest in sustainability, especially among the younger generation who will live to face the challenges in the next part of the 21st century. A survey of 6,800 consumers aged 15-69 in Japan about attitudes toward sustainability found that many consumers of all generations are open to paying a premium for sustainable products. What is noteworthy, however, is the flexibility on price. Generation Z have the highest tolerance for paying more, with 20% that would consider paying double – which is 2.5 to 10 times more than other generations.

Japanese about attitudes paying a premium for sustainable products.

Japanese youth mobilizing

Youth activism to demand more concrete action on climate change from the government and business is also gaining momentum. Youth Climate Conference Japan, which provides a forum for young people to talk about the climate crisis, has exchanged views with the government, major political parties, Japan Business Foundation, and has made the voices of young people visible in the form of policy proposals such as the regulation of plastic packaging and compulsory emissions labelling on food by 2025. The fact that the new generation will be the most affected by climate change, yet policy decision-makers are much older, creates a huge gap in society’s ability to address the crisis, according to one of the steering members of Youth Climate Conference Japan.

In addition, Global Climate Action, in which young people from around the world appealed for stronger measures against global warming, was organized around Japan to coincide with the UN General Assembly in September, with about 400 young people participating in demonstrations in the streets. At this protest, the first youth climate one in three years due to the spread of COVID-19, young people expressed their urgent desire to address the climate crisis, saying: “It is now or never to stop climate change” and “We can reshape our future.” One university student who is part of the Fridays For Future‘s movement in Japan, which was inspired to take action by Greta Thunberg’s school strike in Sweden, said she hopes the Japanese government will take more concrete action against its stance of maintaining coal-fired power production.

Next-generation leaders at COP27

With young people around the world speaking out against climate change more than ever before, global youth are taking a seat at COP27 in Egypt for the first time ever. Designed to amplify children and youth voices within global climate policy-making, the COP27 Children and Youth Pavilion in Egypt is positioned front and centre in the Blue Zone and is entirely led by young people.

Japanese high school and university students also participated in COP27. Suzuka Nakamura and Daiki Yamamoto, who have also been involved in Fridays For Future, are making a film at the conference, saying: “We now want to not only appeal, but also listen to people from various standpoints and send out messages.” The two students, who have continued to raise their voices on the streets and in the National Diet, admit that: “We feel weighed down by the fact that we were expected to play a role in solving climate change simply because we are young.” Their new project, entitled record 1.5, is a documentary that will chronicle the voices and actions of young people, environmental activists and local people from around the world gathering at COP27. Through these recordings, they hope to share the sense of urgency that those affected by climate change victims have for creating a foundation for dialogue toward essential solutions.

Involving children and youth in decision-making

As our planet faces a critical situation due to climate change, the world needs to take seriously the fact that young people are speaking out and taking action to challenge adults’ response to climate change.

Japan is on the path to carbon neutrality, with an interim goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% compared to 2013 levels by 2030. According to the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 797 local governments and more than 200 companies have declared their commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, and the public and private sectors are working together to achieve this goal. As the voices of children and youth are incorporated into these efforts, change will accelerate. Given that young people are powerful agents of change, it is hoped that a system will soon be in place to enable their participation in all decision-making processes related to climate change.

Pockets of collaboration offer hope for tackling global challenges

United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.
United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.

By Børge Brende, President, World Economic Forum (Public License).

World leaders are gathering in New York for the opening of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly and to discuss the major issues of the day. The list of agenda items is long.

The war in Ukraine continues to rage, energy markets are unstable, global temperatures are rising, and the COVID-19 pandemic lingers as other public health concerns emerge. Meanwhile, inflation has proved to be ubiquitous, burdening consumers, businesses, and governments worldwide.

To address these challenges, global leaders will likely stress the need for strengthening cooperation within, what the UN Secretary-General has called, today’s “fractured world”. The question is: at a time when fragmentation appears to be increasing, what can global cooperation, practically, look like?

Thankfully, we have examples. Because despite challenging headwinds, there are instances—pockets—of collaboration that are not only promising but offer insight into what makes cooperation possible, and even durable.

Fruitful collaboration tends to be characterised by three factors: the need is urgent, the area for collaboration is specific, and the benefits are clear.

Climate action is perhaps the most salient example of each of these.

The urgency of addressing global warming is undeniable. Climate change is increasingly wreaking havoc worldwide, causing immense economic and human suffering. The devastating flooding in Pakistan is the latest example of lives being lost due to more intense weather patterns. This is why the UN raised the alarm earlier this year, stating in its latest climate report that the time for action to avoid catastrophic global warming is “now or never.”

As a result of the urgency, there are specific actions needed. World leaders have developed benchmarks that, if achieved in time, could mitigate the negative effects of climate change. This includes efforts to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and hit net-zero emissions by 2050. Such a reduction, experts hope, could limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. So far, over 70 countries, which account for 76% of global emissions, have created timelines for reaching net-zero.

And the benefits of collaborating on climate change are clear. We know the effects of a warming planet respect no border, so reaching our climate objectives can only happen when parties work together. Moreover, the transition to green energy systems—key to combatting climate change—is expected to generate over 10 million global jobs this decade.

All this is why 196 parties came together in 2015 to adopt the Paris Agreement and agreed last year at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow (COP26) to increase carbon-cutting commitments.

Climate action also offers evidence that countries can compartmentalise and prioritise collaboration on a specific issue, despite disagreements elsewhere.

The United States and China, for instance, have shown a willingness to coordinate. Last year at COP26, the two countries issued a joint declaration that articulated the “seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis” and outlined areas in which both sides would take cooperative action.

More recently, at the World Economic Forum’s May 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, US and Chinese climate envoys reaffirmed climate cooperation between their two countries. To be sure, this collaboration has hit road bumps, with talks recently suspended. But US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has expressed hope they would resume because climate action “is the one area that should not be subject to interruption because of other issues that do affect us.”

It is also worth remembering that even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union coordinated environmental protection policies, specifically on guidelines around air and water pollution, environmental preservation and general mechanisms for tracking the changing climate.

Importantly, we do not need to wait on the side-lines for these three elements—urgency, specificity, and beneficial outcomes—to appear on their own. Instead, from tackling the COVID-19 pandemic to bolstering the global economy to unlocking the benefits of new technology, leaders can build momentum toward cooperation by identifying and advancing each of these elements.

There is one other factor that makes cooperation promising when it takes place. That is, inclusivity.

Partnerships between businesses, governments, and civic organizations are helping advance important efforts in battling climate change. Over 7,000 companies, 1,000 educational institutions and 1,000 cities have joined the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign to cut global emissions by 50% by 2030, which the World Economic Forum is helping advance. This type of widespread collaboration not only makes positive outcomes more likely but serves as a binding force among parties that improves durability.

Tackling the world’s challenges is no easy task. This is why we must remain on the lookout for early signs of where collaboration is possible—and shape the context so that it then becomes likely. The stakes are simply too high to allow disagreements elsewhere to hamstring progress around crucial issues.

How marsh grass could help protect us from climate change

Photo by Steve Adams on Unsplash
Marshland in Holden Beach, USA, likely to have prevented storms and surges from having a worse impact in North Carolina. Photo by Steve Adams on Unsplash

By David L. Chandler, World Economic Forum (Public License).

  • Coastal marsh plants provide significant protection from surges and devastating storms.

  • Research in MIT’s Parson’s lab can help coastal planners to take important details into account when planning projects.

  • Countries must take advantage of this modeling in order to restore marshland with specific plants in certain areas.

Marsh plants, which are ubiquitous along the world’s shorelines, can play a major role in mitigating the damage to coastlines as sea levels rise and storm surges increase. Now, a new MIT study provides greater detail about how these protective benefits work under real-world conditions shaped by waves and currents.

The study combined laboratory experiments using simulated plants in a large wave tank along with mathematical modeling. It appears in the journal Physical Review — Fluids, in a paper by former MIT visiting doctoral student Xiaoxia Zhang, now a postdoc at Dalian University of Technology, and professor of civil and environmental engineering Heidi Nepf.

“After a few years, the marsh grasses start to trap and hold the sediment, and the elevation gets higher and higher, which might keep up with sea level rise.”

—Xiaoxia Zhang, now a postdoc at Dalian University of Technology, and professor of civil and environmental engineering Heidi Nepf
A new MIT study provides greater detail about how thes protective benefits of marsh plants work under real-world conditions shaped by waves and currents. The simulated plants used in lab experiments were designed based on Spartina alterniflora, which is a common coastal marsh plant. Credit: Xiaoxia Zhang.
A new MIT study provides greater detail about how thes protective benefits of marsh plants work under real-world conditions shaped by waves and currents. The simulated plants used in lab experiments were designed based on Spartina alterniflora, which is a common coastal marsh plant. Credit: Xiaoxia Zhang.

It’s already clear that coastal marsh plants provide significant protection from surges and devastating storms. For example, it has been estimated that the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy was reduced by $625 million thanks to the damping of wave energy provided by extensive areas of marsh along the affected coasts. But the new MIT analysis incorporates details of plant morphology, such as the number and spacing of flexible leaves versus stiffer stems, and the complex interactions of currents and waves that may be coming from different directions.

This level of detail could enable coastal restoration planners to determine the area of marsh needed to mitigate expected amounts of storm surge or sea-level rise, and to decide which types of plants to introduce to maximize protection.

“When you go to a marsh, you often will see that the plants are arranged in zones,” says Nepf, who is the Donald and Martha Harleman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Along the edge, you tend to have plants that are more flexible, because they are using their flexibility to reduce the wave forces they feel. In the next zone, the plants are a little more rigid and have a bit more leaves.”

As the zones progress, the plants become stiffer, leafier, and more effective at absorbing wave energy thanks to their greater leaf area. The new modeling done in this research, which incorporated work with simulated plants in the 24-meter-long wave tank at MIT’s Parsons Lab, can enable coastal planners to take these kinds of details into account when planning protection, mitigation, or restoration projects.

“If you put the stiffest plants at the edge, they might not survive, because they’re feeling very high wave forces. By describing why Mother Nature organizes plants in this way, we can hopefully design a more sustainable restoration,” Nepf says.

Once established, the marsh plants provide a positive feedback cycle that helps to not only stabilize but also build up these delicate coastal lands, Zhang says. “After a few years, the marsh grasses start to trap and hold the sediment, and the elevation gets higher and higher, which might keep up with sea level rise,” she says.

Awareness of the protective effects of marshland has been growing, Nepf says. For example, the Netherlands has been restoring lost marshland outside the dikes that surround much of the nation’s agricultural land, finding that the marsh can protect the dikes from erosion; the marsh and dikes work together much more effectively than the dikes alone at preventing flooding.

But most such efforts so far have been largely empirical, trial-and-error plans, Nepf says. Now, they could take advantage of this modeling to know just how much marshland with what types of plants would be needed to provide the desired level of protection.

It also provides a more quantitative way to estimate the value provided by marshes, she says. “It could allow you to more accurately say, ‘40 meters of marsh will reduce waves this much and therefore will reduce overtopping of your levee by this much.’ Someone could use that to say, ‘I’m going to save this much money over the next 10 years if I reduce flooding by maintaining this marsh.’ It might help generate some political motivation for restoration efforts.”

Nepf herself is already trying to get some of these findings included in coastal planning processes. She serves on a practitioner panel led by Chris Esposito of the Water Institute of the Gulf, which serves the storm-battered Louisiana coastline. “We’d like to get this work into the coatal simulations that are used for large-scale restoration and coastal planning,” she says.

This photo shows examples of Spartina alterniflora in China. Credit: Xiaoxia Zhang.
This photo shows examples of Spartina alterniflora in China. Credit: Xiaoxia Zhang.

“Understanding the wave damping process in real vegetation wetlands is of critical value, as it is needed in the assessment of the coastal defense value of these wetlands,” says Zhan Hu, an associate professor of marine sciences at Sun Yat-Sen University, who was not associated with this work. “The challenge, however, lies in the quantitative representation of the wave damping process, in which many factors are at play, such as plant flexibility, morphology, and coexisting currents.”

The new study, Hu says, “neatly combines experimental findings and analytical modeling to reveal the impact of each factor in the wave damping process. … Overall, this work is a solid step forward toward a more accurate assessment of wave damping capacity of real coastal wetlands, which is needed for science-based design and management of nature-based coastal protection.”

The work was partly supported by the National Science Foundation and the China Scholarship Council.