2nd SIMSEA Japan Workshop

Date & Time: Mar. 9 (Mon) 9:30 - 17:30
Venue: Koshiba Hall, Univ. Tokyo (Hongo campus)

The marginal seas of East Asia have been providing rich marine resources to coastal countries, but are now facing political storms related to the degradation of the marine environment and its resources. Thus there is a growing need for the countries involved, as well as the wider international community, to protect the marginal seas based on scientific knowledge. For this purpose ICSU ROAP launched the international research program, “SIMSEA (Sustainability Initiative for Marginal Seas of East Asia)”. From the perspective of Future Earth, led by ICSU, the SIMSEA program aims to tackle scientific issues in the marginal seas and coastal regions in both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways.

For the inauguration of this SIMSEA program, ICSU RCAP brought together research proposals and obtained a preparatory two-year research grant that commenced last July. The international program office was established on the Diliman campus (Univ. Philippines).

To promote the goals of the SIMSEA program, the first SIMSEA Japan workshop was held at AORI (Univ. Tokyo) last October. During this workshop both social and natural scientists discussed ways of contributing to the SIMSEA program. Last November, the first international workshop was held in Quezon (Philippines), and natural and social scientists from Southeast Asian countries gathered to select important research topics under the framework of the SIMSEA program.

The upcoming 2nd SISMEA Japan workshop aims to exchange ideas and information on how the Japanese research community can contribute to the research topics selected in the previous SIMSEA workshops. We look forward to your active participation in this workshop. Prof. Toshio Yamagata (APL/JAMSTEC) Prof. Mitsuo Uematsu (AORI/UT)

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