Environmental Culture Creation Program: Towards a Global Environmental Culture by Articulating Science with Indigenous Knowledge

Progress and Results (2022 Year)

　

Research purpose and content

Program Object

To clarify the complex processes of interrelating and coupling forces acting on sites of global environmental problems using interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary methods. Specifically, to realize a new interrelationship between humanity and nature for a sustainable future society with a focus on the role of culture in its scope.

 

Program outline

How can we confront the global environmental problem, and how can we take steps toward solving it? This program is to respond these questions from the perspective of changes in culture and cosmology of everyday life world. Firstly, there is a need to be “aware” of the kind of “problem” that global environmental issues manifest themselves as. To accomplish this, we will analyze a massive amount of complex data through collaboration between various fields in the natural and social sciences, and “visualize” the actual crises. Such research will enable us to “recognize” environmental crises and “share” our awareness of them. By using the power of science to “visualize,” “recognize,” and “share” crises, we can prepare for solutions to global environmental problems.

However, this is not the overall purpose of this program. We must go further and clarify how we, as well as society, are changing our behavior and values in response to the awareness of global environmental crises that were “shared” in this way.

The starting point for developing such discussions is by exploring how we can incorporate the perspective of “culture” into the field of global environmental studies and discussing how we can build a sustainable future society. The perspective of culture is not only at the global or national scale. Rather, it emphasizes the unity of people who live together in a more familiar and intimate space and places. This includes values that are different from scientific knowledge. For such values, there will be a need to create a mutually transformative, convivial (i.e., how different things are connected by making use of each other’s characteristics), and creative perspective that is neither unilaterally corrective nor approving. This program will bring together research projects that create these perspectives.

 

Program Mission

The Anthropocene is an era of crisis wherein increased human activities show worrying signs of a large-scale catastrophe in the global ecosystem. A scientifically proven universal conceptualization that transcends individual societies, cultures, and values is essential to recognize this crisis accurately and respond effectively. The increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and the rapid clearing of tropical rainforests, which serve as treasure troves of biodiversity, are urgent issues that should be recognized and addressed globally.

   However, such universal conceptualizations have become dogma at sites of global environmental problems, scientism and technologism (the worldview that science and technology can solve all problems) has reigned supreme, and conflicts occur without respect for the knowledge and values of the people living in local communities. Cultural perspectives, in a broader sense, whereby a new relationship between humans and nature can be built, need to be incorporated into these global environmental problems. Such perspectives differ from anti-scientism and cultural conservatism, and will enable us to realize a dynamic and creative relationship between science and culture by combining the two goals of pursuing “universality” (science) and respecting “diversity” (culture). Solutions to global environmental problems should be identified not only by recognizing them from the perspective of science/technology and numerical goals but also by fundamentally reviewing the ideals and ways of life of the societies in which people live. This practical program intends to contribute to the deepening and development of comprehensive global environmental studies by exploring this creative relationship between humanity and nature.

   Specifically, the following issues are addressed while incorporating a broad range of humanities and social science perspectives based on natural science data and knowledge:

1) Targeting the complex connections and conflicts between the diverse and heterogeneous elements that emerge at local sites of global environmental problems, with the generation of a global environmental culture aimed at environmental preservation and halting deterioration through dialogue of the indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge.

2) Clarifying how a new interrelationship between humanity and nature can be created by having diverse actors (e.g., local residents, scientists, governments, NPOs, international organizations) face conflict, build self-reliant and co-existing relationships, and collaborate with each other.

　

Challenges and achievements for this year

Program Achievements of FY2022

This year's "Creation of Environmental Culture" program includes two Full Research (FR) projects both in the FR fourth year, three Feasibility Studies (FS), and five Incubation Studies (IS), each with its own unique research achievements. The outstanding achievements of the two FRs are reported in another section, so here we report on the contributions they have made to the program. The first contribution to the Supply Chain Project (Mapping the Environmental Impact Footprint of Cities, Companies, and Households) was as follows the critical importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the global environment is a premise for policy and lifestyle creation today. However, sounding scientifically correct alarm bells about carbon emissions does not immediately lead to a change in people's behavior or a modification of their values. This project will focus on the supply chain of such products and services in order to understand the environmental impacts of the vast accumulation of the purchase and use of a wide variety of products and services as we continue our daily urban consumption. Companies and local governments intervene between scientific findings and individual consumer behavior, and play a role in transforming scientific findings into behavioral change based on their own agendas, interests, and philosophies. The project's major contribution to the program was to focus on the middle ground of the "Dialogue between Science and Culture" and to look at the creation of an environmental culture.

 The next contribution of the SRIREP project (Co-creation of Sustainable Regional Innovation for Reducing Risk of High-impact Environmental Pollution) is as follows. It is well known that small-scale gold mining with mercury causes significant environmental and health damage. In reality, however, there are many areas around the world where small-scale gold mining continues to be one of the few valuable sources of cash income and continues to evade regulations. In this project, researchers are not simply "enlightening people with correct knowledge" or "providing them with alternative means," but they are working to create many TDCOPs (Trans-Disciplinary Communities of Practice for social implementation) at various levels, where they work with people to find ways to realize the underlying values of their society in a collaborative manner. It is in this direction that the program's potential to explore the "Dialogue between Science and Culture" is demonstrated.

   Each of the three FSs also made significant contributions. First, the " Food Life History of Cold Storage of the North Using Natural Freezing Energy" FS continued the unique research and investigation of global warming, a central issue in global environmental problems, in the northern regions. Global warming destabilizes the foundations of the affected societies and damages their sustainability. This FS focuses on the food culture that people have created in the frozen soil region straddling Alaska and Siberia as such a society, particularly the ideas and technologies of preservation and storage. Underground storage using frozen soil naturally faces many problems due to recent global warming, and not only that, the former traditional ecological knowledge and practices have been shaken by social changes such as modernization and marketization experienced by ethnic minority societies in the areas. In addition to accurately understanding these environmental changes, this FS explores the multiple roles of ice cellars and other devices used for cryopreservation with local communities, and from the meaning of these devices, attempts to look at the nature of future human society (the maintenance and utilization of multiple systems for knowledge and life). In this respect, it represents one possible direction of "Dialogue between Science and Culture.

    The next FS, "Conversion from Traditional Knowledge to Future Collective Impact with the Fusion of Science and Arts," considers the question of how local communities have coped with and survived catastrophic changes that once occurred in a certain community (e.g., great earthquake, tsunami, heavy rain, famine, war). To this end, this FS reconstructs past catastrophic events through rigorous dating of old corals and reconstructs past hardships from old documents and collective memories. We then use our imagination to derive how people and researchers living today collaboratively tried to overcome these hardships. An important means of exercising imagination was the theatrical method employed by this FS. The process of objectifying large-scale environmental change by transforming questions and issues into "personal (his or her own matters" through theater goes to the heart of this program, which looks at the prospect of behavior change and the creation of values from scientific knowledge.

   The last FS of the program, " Building up Biomass Circulation System among City and Rural Area" focuses on the circulation of garbage (waste). Especially today, when global urbanization is progressing and consumer culture is polarizing, the disposal of urban household waste is one of the most important global environmental issues. In this FS, researchers approach this problem by rethinking garbage not as waste but as circulating matter. In reality, urban household waste covers a wide range of content, but this project will first explore the possibility of converting it from waste to recyclable material on an experimental basis in areas where it is easier to target it as recyclable material. In Niger, West Africa, where long-term experiments have already been conducted, urban waste is disposed of in the suburbs to create green zones, thereby preventing pastoralists' livestock from encroaching on farmland. The project is an attempt to create a symbiotic environment by breaking the cycle of conflict between urban residents, farmers, and pastoralists, and to extend this experience to other areas. The project is making a significant contribution to this program in its attempt to re-create local cultures (values) by utilizing scientific findings.

   Lastly each of the five incubation studies (IS) has been experimentally and theoretically examined in a manner connected to the achievement of the program's mission, and these results were shared at the program debriefing session to establish a foundation for the next steps. In addition to the seminars and research meetings organized by FR, FS, and IS, workshops were held three times this year to share the results and confirm the direction of the program, and "Program-Project Roundtable Meetings" were held eight times with each research representative and core members with experts in the humanities and social sciences.

　

Future tasks

Future Challenges

 Based on the achievements of the FY2022, the following three points can be raised as future challenges for this program:

1)      Conceptualization of the convivial relationship between Science and Culture.

Establishment of a new "environmental culture" should be based on a dialogue between "scientific knowledge" and "indigenous-local knowledge. Though there is a strong tendency to take up and evaluate the relation only when they are complementary to each other, they are frequently in conflict with each other in reality. Theoretical consideration of what is the last resort to judge the relationship between the two must be needed.

2)      Establishment of organic collaboration between FR, FS and IS.

Although there have been ongoing close consultations and discussions between the Program Director (PD) and each team leader/core members of FR, FS and IS regarding what contributions each team has made to the mission of the program, the dialogue and discussions between FRs, FSs and ISs have been limited to a few times a year at the program. No channels were provided other than Q&A and comments/replies at the seminars. In the future, it is necessary to enable PD's initiative to build horizontal collaboration.

3)      Pursuit of dialogue and collaboration building across Programs.

The second program, "Combining Knowledge for a Fundamental Innovation of Land Use to Combat Global Environmental Challenges" was launched this fiscal year, and preparations for the third program are underway, In order to realize the mission of the entire RIHN through collaboration among various research teams, it is necessary to establish a mechanism for FR, FS, and IS belonging to different programs to mutually communicate and share achievements and challenges.

 

Progress and Results (2023 Year)

　

Research purpose and content

Research Objectives and Content

The "Environmental Culture Creation Program" uses interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methods to uncover the complex processes of interactions and combinations of forces at work in the field of global environmental problems. In particular, the program aims to explore the role of culture in this process and to envision a new relationship between humans and nature in a sustainable society of the future.

　If one asks how we can face the serious challenges facing modern society in terms of global environmental problems and how we can take steps to solve these problems, one would assume that the answer would be to provide scientific evidence based on accurate and rigorous measurement and analysis of the environmental crises facing the Earth (global warming, deforestation, air pollution, etc.). We can correct the way people think and lead to behavioral change. However, while the acquisition of scientifically accurate knowledge is a very important element, it alone does not automatically change people's values and behaviors. This is because there are cultural factors at work that shape people's lifestyles in both positive and negative ways. Therefore, in order to solve global environmental problems, it is necessary to address the issue of culture head on. The essence of this program is to rethink the creative power of culture from this perspective and to create an environmental culture that is linked to the solution of global environmental problems. This perspective can be described as an "equal dialog between science and culture". In the past, research on global environmental issues has been dominated by a discourse that unconsciously assumes the ultimate absoluteness (superiority) of scientific knowledge, even though it advocates interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. In this discourse, conventional and traditional knowledge that conforms to scientific knowledge is "re-evaluated", while those that do not are considered "unscientific" and "superstitious" and evaluated negatively. Under these circumstances, what is needed is neither a scientific supremacism that absolutizes science, nor a traditionalism (anti-science) that places cultural values above all else, but a relation in which both sides can engage in dialogue on an equal footing and both sides can transform themselves together. The environmental culture that this program seeks to create is the result of such a relationship.

 

Mission Statement

　To create a comprehensive environmental culture to conserve the environment and halt its degradation through dialogue, collaboration and mutual transformation with the "indigenous knowledge" generated by each society, based on the recognition and analysis of scientific knowledge, targeting the complex interconnections and conflicts among diverse and heterogeneous elements that appear in local sites of global environmental problems. The vision is to create a comprehensive environmental culture to preserve the environment and stop its degradation. We will clarify how different actors (local residents, scientists, government officers, NPO activists, international organizations, etc.) can face conflicts, build self-reliant and symbiotic relationships, and cooperate with each other to create a new mutual relationship between people and nature.

　To achieve this mission, this program will explore how to bring a "cultural" perspective to the discussion of global environmental issues and the building of a sustainable society. A cultural perspective means focusing not only on the global or national dimension, but also on the more familiar and intimate group of people living together, and emphasizing the value (way of life) of how people can live better there. This includes values that are naturally alien to scientific knowledge. It is necessary to create a mutually transformative, convivial and creative perspective that neither corrects nor endorses such values that are in conflict with scientific knowledge. This program will contribute to the creation of a new culture (we call it "environmental culture") that deals with the environment and environmental issues by focusing on and utilizing such convivial relationships among diverse knowledge about the environment.

　

Challenges and achievements for this year

Issues and Results of This Year

 In this fiscal year of the Environmental Culture Creation Program, the two Full Research (FR) programs that are entering their final year, the two Pre-Research (PR) programs that are scheduled to begin FR in the following fiscal year, and the four Feasibility Study (FS) programs that are scheduled to begin PR in the following fiscal year, each produced unique research results and continued their activities to contribute to the mission of the program. The two FS continued their activities to contribute to the program's mission. The outstanding results achieved by the two FRs over the past five years are described in the respective project accomplishment sections.

　First, his contribution to the Supply Chain Project (a study on the environmental impact assessment of cities, businesses, and households through global supply chains) was as follows; the critical importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the global environment is a premise of today's politics and lifestyle. However, sounding scientifically correct alarm bells about carbon emissions does not immediately lead to changes in people's behavior or values. This project uses big data from different regions of the world to analyze and visualize the vast accumulation of the act of purchasing and using a wide variety of products and services in our daily urban consumption, and to make it easily accessible on a map. In this process, corporations and local governments intervene between scientific evidence and individual consumer behavior, playing the role of translating scientific evidence into behavioral change based on their own agendas, interests, and philosophies. The project's main contribution to the program was to focus on the middle ground of the "science-culture dialogue" and to explore the creation of an environmental culture. 

The contribution of the next SRIREP project (Co-creation of Sustainable Regional Innovations for High Burden Environmental Pollution Problems) is as follows. It is well known that small-scale gold mining using mercury is extremely harmful to the environment and health. In reality, however, there are many areas around the world where small-scale gold mining remains one of the few valuable sources of cash income and continues to evade regulation. In this project, we are not simply "providing correct knowledge and education" or "providing alternative means with top-down support", but rather we are working to create many TDCOPs (communities of practice for social implementation) at various levels where we can work together to find ways to realize the underlying values of their societies. The work of creating a number of TDCOPs (social implementation communities of practice) at various levels, where they work together to find measures to realize the underlying values of their society, has been built with the active participation of local community members, and many of them have been successful. This direction shows the potential of the program to explore the "dialogue between science and culture".

　Two PRs also made significant contributions to the program.

First, the research project "Conversion from traditional knowledge to future collective impact with the fusion of science and arts: a lesson from resilient communities with global environmental changes" is highly interdisciplinary and longitudinal. Not only natural scientists, who are internationally at the forefront of rigorous time-measurement research using ancient corals, but also humanities and social scientists, who have studied the culture, memory, and identity of local communities, play an important role in this project. In addition, performers and artists who express their sensibility and intellect through their bodies, as well as members of the local community, are active participants. As these members work together as a whole, they transform the foundations on which they stand, realize a dialogue between science and culture on a common ground, and achieve a challenging attempt to integrate science and art. As a result, this project has greatly inspired the program by showing the difficulties of the dialogue between science and culture and the possibilities of overcoming them. Until now, the two have been fixed in an asymmetrical relationship, with one as the main actor and the other as the means to an end. In the field of environmental issues, science has been the protagonist, and theater and art have been used as tools to disseminate the results. In this project, however, we are constantly experimenting to create a relationship in which both parties assert and transform themselves together. The results are promising.

The other PR, "Building up biomass circulation system among city and rural area: Improving urban sanitation and restoring rural livelihood base", focuses on the circulation of garbage (waste). Especially today, when global urbanization is progressing and consumer culture is polarizing, the disposal of urban household waste is one of the most important global environmental problems. In this study, we approach this problem by rethinking garbage not as waste, but as a circulating material. To this end, for example, we are continuing experiments to compost food waste generated in large cities in Japan using dry composting instead of throwing it away, and we are also starting experimental trials to apply the results to Uganda and other countries. This is also a shift from the concept of "incineration" of unwanted materials to the concept of "fermentation" to convert them into useful materials. At the same time, the project has a long history in West Africa, where urban waste is dumped in suburbs to create green spaces that prevent cattle from encroaching on farmland. The project also attempts to extract the basic ideas of the practice of creating an environment for symbiosis by breaking the chain of conflict between urban dwellers, farmers, and pastoralists through the introduction of a waste recycling system and apply it to other regions. As described above, he has made a significant contribution to this program by attempting to recreate local cultures (values) through the use of scientific knowledge.

Four other FS have also contributed to the development of the program through their unique achievements.

The Ote FS, "The Value of Forests: A vision of the future for people and society living in harmony with forests", focuses on the value of forests. In modern society, forests have become disconnected from the world in which people live, and as a result, people are no longer aware of forest loss and degradation. Therefore, it is important to have practices and ideas to reconnect the disconnected relationship between forests and people. In order to realize this, this FS aimed to create a new relationship, in other words, a new environmental culture. The theme of the Kubota FS "Creation of passive architectural culture among urban houses in the Monsoon Asia" is a focus on passive architecture for Indian cities. In order to promote a decarbonized way of life in the modern world, it is important to transform the consumption lifestyles of the rising Asian urban middle class, and to do so it is necessary not only to promote the development and diffusion of urban low-carbon housing from above, but also to promote low/decarbonized ways of living and living in existing housing, which is the quintessential perspective of this FS, and it has made a significant contribution to the creation of an environmental culture.

The Yamada FS "Grasping the base values of "sustainability" and cross-cultural comparison of cognitions and practices on global sustainability concerns" focuses on the concept of "sustainability," which has been unconditionally accepted by governments and corporations alike as a theme to be promoted in recent years, including the SDGs. This project focuses on the concept of "sustainability," which has been unconditionally accepted by governments and businesses alike as a goal to be promoted in recent years, including the SDGs. The project to explore the concept of "sustainability" rooted in the fundamental values of society is based on the awareness that this concept has been disseminated as a dogma of absolute justice from the context of the values underlying each society, and that this may hinder the recognition of environmental problems. It is also important as a sociological study of knowledge about global environmental issues. The last project, the Hongo FS "Coproduction Research with Local Practice and Science for Sustainable and Fair Hunting of Forest Wildlife", is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research project on how fair and sustainable hunting of wildlife in tropical forests can be made possible through collaboration between scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge. In the modern world, the destruction of tropical forests and the decline of wildlife are remarkable, and this calls for the conservation of forests and wildlife, but it is also important to ensure the livelihoods of people living in forests, who are increasingly marginalized in society. To resolve this aporia, this project seeks to answer the core question of the program, which is to explore the creation of knowledge based on a true and equal relationship between scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge.

　Three roundtables were held this year to discuss each project with experts, and three roundtables were held with Prof. Bin Wong, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and project representatives and directors.

　

Future tasks

 

Future Issues

 

Based on the results of the FY2023 program, the following three issues can be raised as future challenges for this program.

 

1) Establishing a theoretical perspective that comprehensively understands the relationship between two heterogeneous types of knowledge (scientific knowledge and conventional knowledge).

 

The foundation of a new "environmental culture" is the establishment of a dialogue between "scientific knowledge" and "indigenous/local knowledge", but it tends to be focused on, evaluated, and praised only when the two are smoothly connected in a complementary manner. In particular, the ideal relationship between the two is often focused on the case where the efficacy of indigenous knowledge is verified by scientific knowledge. In reality, however, there are many cases where the two are seemingly irreconcilable opposites. In such cases, it is usually either scientific knowledge or conventional knowledge that makes the final judgment. It is important to explore a third possibility theoretically. Preliminary work on this through analysis of each case will be the subject of next year's project.

 

(2) Establish organic links between FRs and PRs associated with the program.

 

The coming year will be the first year in which all three FRs of the program (PRs before the FR transition) will be in place. Therefore, it will be necessary to define how the three will work together and what each can contribute to the program, and to try to collaborate on projects to that end. The challenge will be to create a forum for the three projects to discuss how they will carry out the program's mission and how their perspectives will be transformed in the process.

 

(3) Pursuing cross-program dialogue and coalition building

 

With the new second program "Combining Knowledge for a Fundamental Innovation of Land Use Program" launched this year and the preparation of the third program underway, it is necessary to establish a mechanism for FR, PR, FS, and IS, which belong to different programs, to realize the mission of the entire Institute of Earth Sciences through collaboration among various research organizations without closing research within a single program.

 

MATSUDA Motoji, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Specially Appointed Professor

HAMADA Takeshi, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Researcher