HR: 1340h
AN: GC33A-0943    [Abstracts]
TI: Bridging Scales: Developing a Framework to Build a City-Scale Environmental Scenario for Japanese Municipalities
AU: * Hashimoto, S
EM: hash@nies.go.jp
AF: National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, 305-8506, Japan
AU: Fujita, T
EM: fujita77@nies.go.jp
AF: National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, 305-8506, Japan
AU: Nakayama, T
EM: nakat@nies.go.jp
AF: National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, 305-8506, Japan
AU: XU, K
EM: joexu@nies.go.jp
AF: National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, 305-8506, Japan
AB: There is an ongoing project on establishing environmental scenarios in Japan to evaluate middle to long-term environmental policy and technology options toward low carbon society. In this project, the time horizon of the scenarios is set for 2050 on the ground that a large part of social infrastructure in Japan is likely to be renovated by that time, and cities are supposed to play important roles in building low carbon society in Japan. This belief is held because cities or local governments could implement various policies and programs, such as land use planning and promotion of new technologies with low GHG emissions, which produce an effect in an ununiform manner, taking local socio-economic conditions into account, while higher governments, either national or prefectural, could impose environmental tax on electricity and gas to alleviate ongoing GHG emissions, which uniformly covers their jurisdictions. In order for local governments to devise and implement concrete administrative actions equipped with rational policies and technologies, referring the environmental scenarios developed for the entire nation, we need to localize the national scenarios, both in terms of spatial and temporal extent, so that they could better reflect local socio-economic and institutional conditions. In localizing the national scenarios, the participation of stakeholders is significant because they play major roles in shaping future society. Stakeholder participation in the localization process would bring both creative and realistic inputs on how future unfolds on a city scale. In this research, 1) we reviewed recent efforts on international and domestic scenario development to set a practical time horizon for a city-scale environmental scenario, which would lead to concrete environmental policies and programs, 2) designed a participatory scenario development/localization process, drawing on the framework of the gStory-and-Simulationh or SAS approach, which Alcamo(2001) proposed, and 3) started implementing it to the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan, in cooperation with municipal officials and stakeholders. The participatory process is to develop city-scale environmental scenarios toward low carbon society, referring international and domestic environmental scenarios. Though the scenario development is still in process, it has already brought practical knowledge about and experience on how to bridge scenarios developed for different temporal and spatial scales.
DE: 6300 POLICY SCIENCES (7964)
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 6615 Legislation and regulations (6324)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting