ABSTRACT
The Japanese live in a highly hypermodernized yet advanced aged society, but they have had to cope with natural disasters throughout history. Yet there are more challenges ahead for sustainable development, not least global warming and climate change. Confronting these challenges, Japan has recently been actively engaging in global multilateral initiatives of the United Nations (UN) for the climate change (United Nations, 2016) for sustainable development, as represented by first, the Kyoto Protocol (1997–2015) – extending the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2016), which commits state parties to reducing greenhouse gas emissions – to limit global warming; second, the 2010 Nagoya Protocol for the Convention on Biological Diversity 2011–2020 (CBD, 2010) to conserve global biodiversity, promote sustainable resource use, and facilitate fair and equitable sharing of resource benefits by all stakeholders; and most recently by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015) to achieve substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives and livelihoods.
