■Summary and Acknowledgements■

Today, under the theme SDGs and Social Transformation, discussions and information exchange took place between the speakers of the commemorative lectures and keynote speeches and members of the audience with an interest in the theme who participated in person or online. As indicated in the parallel session reporting, the discussions and information exchange were truly significant. We would like to express our sincere appreciation.

In the commemorative lecture by Prof. Woo, he presented some incisive thoughts on the current situation of the world. He indicated that Japan had a very important role to play in order to stop Cold War 2.0 and prevent global warming. Recognizing that Cold War 2.0 is due to the interplay of U.S.-China competition in defense technology and geopolitical strategy, he stated that it was necessary to distinguish between the policy instruments used in this competition and decouple each element. His statement was worth listening to. Japan needs to work with the U.S., China, and Korea to provide technical and economic support to ASEAN toward achieving GHG net zero emissions. Prof. Woo asserted that it was essential for Japan to form an Asia-Pacific SDG partnership by involving the U.S., China, and Korea. In addition, referring to the activities of the U.N. SDSN Asia Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, he suggested that Japan's active participation in these activities would be the first step that Japan should take.

Prof. Woo participated in Parallel Session 1, where he further detailed what I have briefly explained now. While mentioning a future use of hydrogen and other issues, he placed the strongest emphasis on the concept of “zero emissions.” Even if CO2 is emitted, zero emissions can be achieved if forests are grown to absorb the CO2 emissions.

One of the SDGs is to improve the status of women. As you might know, Japan greatly falls behind the rest of the world in this matter. The commemorative lecture by Prof. Usui concerned the results of her research on this issue. What is behind this? What should be done to improve the status of women? Intended to explore these points based on scientific, empirical analysis, her discussion was truly stimulating.

Prof. Usui focused on the low proportion of women in the fields of medicine and science. The proportion of women among young doctors was 12% in 1994, and it rose to 28% in 2016. This certainly shows an increase, but considering that the goal is 50%, the figure is still only halfway there. Furthermore, a breakdown of female doctors according to medical department shows that many of them work in obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, and anesthesiology, where the proportion of female doctors is around 40%. In surgery, neurology, orthopedics, and urology, the proportion of female doctors is less than 10%. After their initial clinical training, an increasing number of young female doctors today proceed to and remain in medical departments with a high proportion of male doctors. The gap between male and female doctors in the middle of their career development period has narrowed significantly. However, there is still a gap between them. Based on this, Prof. Usui indicated that more consideration should be given to differences between medical departments.

Regarding the small proportion of women in the field of science, Prof. Usui also presented her views based on the results of a statistical analysis of data from questionnaire surveys. According to her, there is a gender gap in the determinants of university course selection for high school students. It is problematic that there is already a significant gender gap when they are still in high school. Therefore, she called for reform of science education at elementary and junior high schools, as well as a change in parents’ awareness. She suggested that it might be necessary not only to introduce quotas for women at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Tokyo University of Science, but also to realize substantive reform on a larger scale.

In his keynote proposal to be referred to in a parallel session, Prof. Asuka spoke about the Green New Deal. I was truly impressed by his statement that the idea that renewable energy is costly and energy conservation is difficult is already a thing of the past. He indicated that the introduction of solar and wind power generation was now much more economical than the operation of existing fossil fuel power plants and nuclear power plants. He also stated that the Green New Deal had the potential to create employment opportunities through investment in renewable energy and energy conservation. I was surprised to hear that jobs for 2.54 million people would actually be created over 10 years. He also indicated that the Japanese government's target of 46% reduction by 2030 was based on a comparison with the 2013 level, but that it was inconsistent with the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target, creating doubt that Japan can actually achieve the target. Above all, he referred to IoT and other new technologies with the potential of contributing to realizing a new energy civilization by providing a flexible and disaster-resistant distributed energy system. Raising our expectations for the future, his argument was persuasive.

In her keynote proposal, Prof. Inose spoke about academia and gender. In the fields of the humanities and social sciences, there is insufficient data on the proportion of female researchers. The fields have not been included the gender gap discussion. Prof. Inose indicated that the proportion of women among researchers had increased from 11.2% to only 15.7% over 15 years, showing that the proportion remains very low.
She stated that while carrying out various activities after establishing GEAHSS, she realized that the importance of gender equality was being overlooked, mainly due to the misconception that there were many female researchers in the fields of the humanities and social sciences. Her discussion was truly significant.

Prof. Tang's lecture was full of interesting information about the progress of EVs in China. I was astonished to learn that the country was on the very leading edge in this field. In China, a shift to EVs has been adopted as a national strategy and is supported in terms of both demand and supply. What surprised me most was China’s extensive charging infrastructure, which is said to be able to charge 43% of the existing EVs in the country. If that's true, China is far ahead of other countries. In addition, China is now trying to unify charger standards and is implementing the European standard so that their chargers can be installed in any car. In Japan, until recently, even large supermarkets like AEON had only a few chargers, making me wonder if Japan was okay.

The discussions in each parallel session were introduced by the three reporters earlier.

This conference, attended by representatives from various embassies, has enabled us to reaffirm the importance of SDG initiatives in communities and countries around the world. The gender gap remains as a major issue in Japan. However, the government and the people are motivated to address it. In addition, in this age of population decline, Japan could not survive without ensuring that many more women play an active role in society. Accordingly, I believe that improvement will be made to some extent in the near future.

However, global warming cannot be solved by a single country alone. This is a case that truly requires international cooperation. I expect that the exchange of knowledge and insights from various fields and the creation and sharing of new ideas will reveal a path for building a better future. We need to go beyond mere discussion and move toward concrete action to solve this issue step by step.

Regarding the SDGs, I think that it is extremely important to start solving problems at home and change our awareness. We need to encourage SDG initiatives in a variety of ways and fulfill our mission of promoting social transformation. The ideas and insights that you have proposed and shared here today will serve as an important guide suggesting the future direction for us to take.

I would like to conclude my closing address by hoping that this conference will help to generate new cooperation and ideas, contribute to Japan’s closing its gender gaps and accelerating its efforts to tackle global warming and the other SDGs in cooperation with other Asia-Pacific countries, and ultimately be conductive to preventing Cold War 2.0.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone for their lively discussions and ideas. This conference is supported by various people, including staff of the Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute who served as secretariat staff for this event, interpreters and conference support staff, video streaming and filming staff, proceedings preparation staff, and translators. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to them all.

Next year's theme is "What will Japan do? What will become of Asia?" It is somewhat difficult to discuss what Asia will do, so we have softened the tone and instead selected “What will become of Asia?” as the theme. The subtitle is “AI & EVs Drawing Near.” Featuring this theme, the 25th Asia Pacific Forum, Awaji Conference will be held on August 1 and 2. We look forward to seeing you all again here on Awaji Island. We would like to express our sincere appreciation once again for your commitment.