Sophia Magazine vol.3 / SUMMER 2016

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tion of the convention secretariat and researchers in Japan and overseas on exploring cultural and biological diversity in coastal communities in Japan. I believe that there is much to share from Japan with the global community in discussions on exploring solutions to environmental problems and future sustainability. Through this work I also became more convinced that the solutions to global environmental challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss will need to be context specific and lo-cally-relevant. There is no ‘one size fits all solution’ to global environmental degradation. Locally based diversity for our common global challenges is critical. I’ve expanded my fieldwork to include overseas communi-ties. In recent years, I’ve focused my work on artisanal and small-scale fisher communities. There is an urgent need for governments to build capacity of fishing communities to re-duce vulnerability in the face of climate change and biodi-versity loss in the oceans. Costs of inaction are projected to increase vulnerability and far outweigh any socio-economic costs. My research focuses on these challenges and I hope that by exploring potential adaptation policies for small-scale fishing communities I can contribute in some way to those highly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. Transdisciplinary approaches to environment research and education is still rather new in the field of environmen-tal studies. In 2005, Sophia University established the Grad-uate School of Global Environmental Studies, with the aim of offering graduate students a degree that combined both the humanities and sciences. Initially the graduate program was only offered in Japanese. I joined the graduate school in 2008 as a part-time lecturer of environmental history. This is a new field in environmental studies and as I had published a textbook in Japanese, the graduate school ap-proached me to teach. In the fall of 2011, I joined the gradu-ate school to work with Prof. Huang and other colleagues at Sophia University to build an English degree program. We started out in 2011 with students mostly from China, but in a short period our student make-up has grown ex-ponentially and diversified. In fact, over the last five years, we have seen the numbers of non-Japanese students grow so much that currently only 20% of students in both the Japa-nese and English program are Japanese nationals. We have students from all the continents, from developed and devel-oping countries with diverse nationalities and backgrounds. For example, in my environmental policy lecture, there are over 25 different nationalities with students of different aca-demic and professional working backgrounds from Camer-oon, Angola, France, Chile, Thailand, USA, among others. It is so exciting to walk into lecture each week. The room is always alive with spirited debate and open sharing of ideas and perspectives. I believe that our graduate school is pioneering interesting in-roads into truly global transdisci-plinary education and research. Working to Build Transdisciplinary Education and Research5. Modied Daihatsu mini-car converts at night to a camping car enabling efcient travel of the entire coastline of Japan’s four main islands. 6. Spring in Yoron Island, Kagoshima. To keep eld work costs down, pack foldable bike and travel on ferries to remote islands around Japan, cycling around interviewing farmers and sher people. 7. Rice planting in Miyagi Prefecture. Since 2001 rent old country house. Use as eld for research seminar students at Sophia University. 8. Canada’s Minamata in Ojibway community in northwestern Ontario. From 1998-2005 did research on methyl-mercury pollution in Canada, looking at long term environmental and human health impacts. 9. Mother and daughter planting rice together during Golden Week in Noto peninsula. 10. Husband and wife planting rice in Tohoku the year before 3.11 when 24,000 hectares of coastal farmland was damaged by salinization.56789109Approach

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