The Importance of Social Cohesion that will Create our Future

It is the responsibility for current generation to achieve

sustainable society with safety and security, in other words,

to take the benefits of the Earth over the future children

who will lead the next generation. But, we continue to face

difficulties toward achieving global sustainability. The

world’s population is expected to grow to 9.3 billion by

2050. If the population keeps increasing and trends of the

natural resource consumption continues, the scale of the

consumption and the environmental impact is expected

to become twice as much ecosystem recovery capacity by

2030, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The

earth has been in trouble, with problems including water

shortages, resource bottlenecks, climate change, water and

air pollution, and irreversible biodiversity losses. These

problems are caused by the growth of economic activities

and increasing inequality gaps.

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan threw

itself into recovering the affected area and revitalizing Japan.

The largest earthquake and tsunami on Japan's record

destroyed the people’s livelihoods across a widespread

area. The severe nuclear accident causes the enormous

impact of radioactive contamination and left serious and

long-term challenges for recovery, such as reconstructing

local communities, mitigating natural disaster risks, and

overcoming energy supply issues.

“The Future We Want” has been selected as the theme of

Rio-20 which is to be held this June. The global issues that

we face today force us to reconsider our lifestyle, economic

activities, and even modern civilization that we humans have

achieved. We must make effort to understand each other and

take action beyond significant gaps within all stakeholders,

in order to share a future vision and achieve a sustainable

society that will sustain 50 or even 100 years into the future.

These actions will be more deeply strengthened by people

becoming aware of their social cohesion.

The importance of the human bond becomes aware of

people with the Earthquake as a start. People living in the

affected area have faced the catastrophic disaster hand in

hand. It was a scene that attracted great attention from the

overseas, especially news media. Many people of entire

nation voluntarily gathered in the affected area to support

the victims, sent relief goods for suffering people and made

efforts for energy saving. These all made an enormous

contribution to Japan’s ability to recover from the crisis

immediately after the earthquake. Similarly, it is important

for us to recognize that human bonds can be the power for

overcoming the current sustainability crisis.