Friday, August 20, 1999
Ken Wilkening, a Nautilus Institute Program Officer, recently participated in two workshops in Tokyo.
The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership* (CGP) sponsored the first workshop, Workshop on Sustainable Development, on 31 July 1999 in Tokyo. Its purpose was to explore future trends in the field of sustainable development to assist CGP in charting its future program and funding directions. The day-long workshop was attended by 11 experts and a small group of observers, and included a short presentation by each expert followed by discussion.
CGP, in conjuntion with the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies* (IGES), sponsored a second workshop, New Development Patterns for Sustainablity in Asia-Pacific, on 2 August 1999 also in Tokyo. Five American and five Japanese panelists presented short talks during the half-day workshop, which was attended by about 200 people. Keynote speeches were presented by Prof. Charles S. Pearson of Johns Hopkins University and Prof. Hidefumi Imura of Kyushu University.
At both workshops, Ken Wilkening talked about a “Bay-to-Bay Maritime Cooperation Project” idea that was developed in the course of the Nautilus Institute’s Energy, Security, Environment in Northeast Asia (ESENA) project. The bay-to-bay project aims to promote transnational cooperation on marine issues via localized policy initiatives in select “bay cities.” The project involves first selecting bay cities on both sides of the Pacific (for instance, San Francisco Bay and Tokyo Bay); bringing local experts and stakeholders together in each city to create a local profile of marine problems, devise local sustainability criteria relevant to these problems, and develop local policy initiatives to achieve the criteria; and then bringing individuals from each bay city together in an international workshop to assess commonalities, differences, and areas where the cities can help each other to achieve sustainability relative to the marine environment. The idea of the project is to seek grassroots-initiated sustainability through a combination of local and international cooperation. Ken Wilkening used the Bay-to-Bay Maritime Cooperation Project idea to illustrate key points about sustainability in the Asia Pacific and beyond at both workshops.