Environmental Systems Studies

1. Seeing and Understanding Interactions between Nature and Humanity.- 2. Operating Our Spaceship Earth.- 3. Understanding the Global Climate System.- 4. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service: Indicators of the Global Environment.- 5. An Evolutionary View of the Environment.- 6. Transforming Our Society: Low Carbon, Coexistence with Nature, and Sound Material Cycle.- 7. The Environment as a Commons: How Should It Be Managed?.- 8. Economics of the Environment.- 9. Resources, Energy, and Environmental Load.- 10. Japan and an Asian Perspective.

Dr. Hidefumi Imura, Emeritus Professor, Nagoya University

After Hidefumi Imura received his doctoral degree (1974) in applied physics at the University of Tokyo, he joined the Japan Environment Agency and subsequently worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Yokohama Municipal Government. After 14 years of being engaged in environmental policymaking in national, international, and local institutions, Dr. Imura moved to Kyushu University in 1988, where he was a professor at the Institute of Environmental Systems until August 2000.
From September 2000 until 2011, he was a professor at Nagoya University, moving to Yokohama City University in 2011. Dr. Imura has a wide range of expertise covering domestic and international environmental policy issues, environmental technologies, economics, and information on Japan, China, and other East Asian countries. His research focuses on energy and material flow analysis of human activities in cities, life-cycle assessment of civil infrastructures, and modeling of human and environmental interactions. Dr. Imura served as a lead author of Working Group III of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).