午夜剧场

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were presented at the 2015 United Nations Summit. The importance of preserving the environment and building a sustainable society is now a common understanding among many people. However, thinking about what actions are truly good for the environment is surprisingly difficult. For example, plastic waste has recently become a global issue, and the use and development of alternatives are being promoted. However, it has been pointed out that some of these could conversely worsen environmental problems. One example is the replacement of plastic beverage containers with glass bottles. While glass bottles have an environmentally friendly image because they can be washed and reused, they are heavier than plastic containers, which can reduce transport efficiency and increase the environmental burden.

In this way, a gap between "what seems good" and "what is actually good" easily occurs in environmental issues. The background to this is that the goods and services people create affect the environment through various pathways in the process from production, distribution, consumption, and reuse to disposal, making it difficult to grasp the full picture. Due to the complexity of these pathways, it is also difficult to communicate the details clearly and accurately. Furthermore, while it is desirable that many people are interested in environmental issues, there is an aspect where this interest conversely complicates the problem. Because of this interest, attention is easily drawn to images of what seems good for the environment, but sometimes the image takes on a life of its own, discussions about what is truly good for the environment are overlooked, and actions that lead to unintended consequences are chosen.

Although I am still in the middle of trial and error, ever since I belonged to an environmental economics seminar as an undergraduate, I have been working on research to socially and scientifically explore the incentives for people to take actions that have a negative impact on the environment and the effectiveness of countermeasures. However, to actually solve environmental problems, it is necessary to integrate professional perspectives from various positions, such as fields that scientifically verify the occurrence mechanisms and impacts, fields that approach people's cultural and historical nature, and the knowledge of people working in related fields. To that end, it is also essential to engage in dialogue and create a platform for disseminating and sharing the views derived there. Solving environmental problems requires a detailed analysis of the issues, the dissemination and sharing of those results, and the calm judgment and action of each and every one of us based on them.