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Systemic understanding of potential research activities and available technology seeds at university level is an essential condition to promote interdisciplinary and vision-driven collaboration in an attempt to cope with complex sustainability and environmental problems. Nonetheless, any such practices have been hardly conducted at universities due mainly to a lack of appropriate institutional schemes and methodologies to systemically collect, map out, and synthesize individual research activities within a university. In this paper, we present the recent initiative of such systemic and comprehensive understanding of research activities at university level. We carry out a case study, attempting to summarize all the relevant research activities and technology seeds associated with environmental issues and sustainability currently being studied individually at the laboratory level at Osaka University. We collected 138 potential seeds from the university's relevant schools and institutes and sorted them according to Japan's three sustainability visions. The case study demonstrates the university's potential to provide collective knowledge enabling the societal transition to sustainability if these seeds are systematically overviewed and effectively mobilized to mesh with specific social demands and purposes. We highlight the need for a framework and practice that allows synthesizing research activities and promising technologies even at university level to further facilitate providing collective knowledge and discuss challenges and research needs for promoting synthesis practices and interdisciplinary research that are essential to deal with sustainability problems.

Many Japanese municipalities are currently suffering from declining populations and have responded by establishing various initiatives aimed at revitalizing their communities and stabilizing their resident populations. We argue that the success of these initiatives lies in how to effectively leverage regional community resources in ways that actually revitalize the local community, while tailoring such efforts to local social conditions. In this paper, we discuss a method of resource assessment that can contribute to rebuilding declining communities and improving the wellbeing of community residents. We use the case study of Totsukawa village in Nara Prefecture, Japan. Our results highlight five necessary elements: 1) understanding local characteristics, 2) recognizing resource relationships, 3) effectively utilizing external factors, 4) considering the balance of resources, and 5) creating a community connection. These elements are vital to preserving capitalized community-specific resources and making them profitable enough to maintain livelihoods. In developing countries, where total populations are also increasing, rural areas face population drains or shrinking younger generations. In summary, we present a methodology for conducting community-led regional revitalization projects for both developed and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bio-coke (BIC) is drawing attention as a coal-coke substitute in industry. Though BIC can be used as a carbon-neutral fuel, its overall benefits, including the environmental impacts associated with its production processes and its merits as an alternative fuel, remain unknown. In this study, we investigate the overall impacts and benefits related to BIC production processes and alternative fuel applications by looking into the case of Takatsuki in Osaka Prefecture, the only commercial BIC plant in Japan. Based on the system boundary set, we calculated CO emissions per ton of BIC associated with its manufacturing and transportation processes to be 1.01 t CO. CO emission from electricity consumed in the process was found to be the largest, accounting for 74.7 % of total emission. The analyses also revealed that using one ton of BIC as alternative fuel in industry instead of coal-coke could result in avoiding 2.16 tons of CO emissions, showing a clear environmental benefit. While BIC's calorific value is almost same as pellet's, BIC had higher gross margin and energy density than pellet produced in the same facility. These findings enhance the merits of producing BIC from wood biomass and could lead the way to revitalizing forestry in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of promising visions of the future and scenarios that may lead toward building sustainable societies are being developed. At the same time, advanced technologies and research seeds that could increase the likelihood of achieving such visions are also being rigorously conceived. Even so, we face challenges and barriers in achieving these visions due to large gaps between individual technology seeds and shared visions. In this paper we propose a "vision-meso-seeds" model as a practical framework for addressing sustainability transition and demonstrate meso level research whose primary aim is to design a matching of promising seeds at the micro level and societal visions at the macro level, facilitating an achievement of the set visions with quantified targets. In particular we highlight the importance of matching various strategies and measures derived from the top-down (vision-oriented) approach and bottom-up (seeds-oriented) approach in the meso level research. We argue that the meso level research shall constitute one of the emerging core fields in sustainability science and suggest that accumulation of knowledge through case studies be needed to enhance and verify theory, specific methods and approach necessary for advancing the meso level research in the context of sustainability science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]