Environment

Since a catastrophic nuclear accident seven years ago, Fukushima fishermen have made painstaking efforts to rebuild their livelihood, assiduously testing the radioactivity levels of their catches to ensure safety. Now, rapidly accumulating wastewater from the crippled power plant is again threatening this hard-won business recovery.

The global community has less than two years to reach the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set for 2020, yet public awareness of biodiversity issues is still relatively low.

A report released this month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that unless global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, Japan’s summer of extreme weather may become the new normal.

Japan is moving in a positive direction on its fisheries policy and ensuring the marine ecosystem remains sustainable, said David Rockefeller Jr., an environmentalist and a descendant of one of the most influential business families in the United States, but he noted in an interview with The Japan Times on Monday that the country needs to do more to tackle the issue of plastics polluting the world’s oceans.

As climate change threatens to transform the world as we know it, the business sector needs to increase its efforts to deal with the threat by boosting investment in environmentally friendly firms and developing green technologies, business leaders and experts said at a recent international forum.

Japan has designated two coastal areas to be of international importance, raising the number of such sites around the country to 52, the only international conservationist body focused on wetlands said Thursday.

Plastic waste is piling up in Japan with many local governments struggling to cope after China banned the import of such waste late last year, Environment Ministry data showed Thursday.

As the nation enters the autumn tourist season, concerns are growing over hornets, whose nests and number of workers are larger than usual this year because of the warmer spring and limited rain during the rainy season.

Traces of two past unknown eruptions of Mount Fuji have been found in a layer at the bottom of Lake Motosu, northwest of the country’s tallest mountain, according to a research group that included Akita University.

With an aim to facilitate the achievement of goals from the landmark 2015 Paris agreement, the Japan Action Climate Summit, organized by nonstate actors, was held Friday in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.