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August 22, 2025
 

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ENVIRONMENT

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
ENVIRONMENT / Earth science / Longform
May 26, 2025
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?
Trees have long occupied a sacred place in Japanese culture. In the fast pace of the 21st century, however, they're increasingly losing out to progress.
Over the past three years, banks with the most blended-finance transactions include SMBC, Citigroup, BNP Paribas and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 22, 2025
Sumitomo Mitsui among banks stepping up deals for blended finance
Deals blending public and private funds totaled $18 billion last year, down 21% from 2023, according to Convergence.
A partially submerged car is seen in the aftermath of Typhoon Hagibis, in Nagano Prefecture in October 2019. The Weather Attribution Center Japan, which was founded Tuesday, aims to publicize the results of its climate attribution assessment within days of a typhoon, torrential rain or extreme heat.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
May 21, 2025
When extreme weather hits, Japan scientists will have faster answers on climate links
The Weather Attribution Center will aim to publish concrete links between global warming and extreme weather events within days, rather than months.
China’s prolonged real estate slump has pushed housing construction back to early 2000s levels, sharply cutting cement production and offering a rare climate reprieve from one of the world’s biggest sources of carbon emissions.
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2025
China’s building crash is rewinding 22 years of growth
The real estate slump may be bad for the economy, but it’s good for the planet — cement is one of the most polluting substances on Earth.
Rainmaker Mountain in Pago Pago, American Samoa
BUSINESS
May 21, 2025
Trump sets stage to sell ocean mining rights off American Samoa
There’s growing appetite in Washington for new domestic sources of critical minerals, following China’s decision to curb exports of rare-earth materials.
Ocean plastic pollution is a systemic crisis that cannot be solved by a few sustainability-minded citizens recycling but requires an economy-wide solution.
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 19, 2025
The true cost of ocean plastic pollution
The problem of maritime plastic-waste pollution first became apparent in the 1970s. In the half-century since then, the problem has become ever more widespread, as scientific expeditions conducted by the Tara Ocean Foundation (of which I am executive director) have shown.
Founded with a mission of promoting electric vehicles, Formula E has always placed sustainability at the forefront of its raison d’etre.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
May 18, 2025
For Formula E, ‘sustainability is at the heart’
Now in its 11th season, Formula E's efforts to reduce emissions and promote electric vehicles are paying off.
The rush to electrify everything is reshaping energy, but without addressing demand, grid and supply risks, the green transition may falter.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2025
It’s electricity realism, not climate denialism
Electrifying everything comes with plenty of risks of its own.
SeaForest CEO Sam Elsom at the company's headquarters in Triabunna, Tasmania, on March 26
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
May 15, 2025
Australian seaweed farm tackles livestock burps to combat climate change
While far less abundant in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, methane is about 80 times more potent over a 20-year timescale at warming the planet.
New research by a U.S. climate scientists’ group reveals that extreme heat has increased the risks of preterm births and other pregnancy complications in Japan, nearly doubling the number of days that are harmfully hot for pregnant women over the past five years.
JAPAN / Science & Health
May 14, 2025
Harmfully hot days for pregnant women in Japan nearly doubled over past five years
Heat stress can raise the risks of stillbirths, miscarriages, preterm births and low-weight births, as well as congenital abnormalities for the babies.
A staff member holds a barocaloric material used by Barocal in their solid state cooling technology, at their headquarters in Cambridge.
WORLD / Science & Health
May 13, 2025
U.K. lab promises air conditioner revolution without polluting gases
Approximately 2 billion air-conditioner units are in use worldwide, and their number is increasing as the planet warms.
A small boat transits through the Bay of Balaklava near the Crimean Peninsula city of Sevastopol on the Black Sea coast. Plans to dump bundled biomass into the Black Sea have raised concerns about environmental risks.
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2025
Dumping biomass in the ocean is not a climate solution
Plans to dump bundled biomass into the Black Sea as part of a carbon-sequestration project have raised concerns about environmental risks.
The consumption and investing habits of the world's richest 10% consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heat waves and drought around the world, according to new research.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
May 8, 2025
World's richest 10% caused two-thirds of global warming, study finds
How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heat waves and drought.
The United Nations General Assembly Building in New York in 2015. An internal U.N. document shows the U.S. is opposing draft reforms of the world's financial system intended to help developing countries.
WORLD / Politics
May 6, 2025
U.N. document shows U.S. seeks to weaken global development finance efforts
It opposes draft reforms of the world's financial system intended to help developing countries, including around taxation, credit ratings and fossil fuel subsidies.
The Trump administration has launched a full-scale federal "plastic patriotism" effort to eliminate paper straws, arguing they are ineffective, hazardous, more expensive and become soggy.
COMMENTARY / World
May 6, 2025
A world restored: The U.S. takes the offensive against paper straws
The Trump team has issued an executive order and a national strategy to rid the country of the pulpy, soggy mess of paper straws that torments too many of America's citizens.
Asuka Tsuzuki (left), the principal of Linden Hall School's secondary school, and Kota Sugimoto, the school's head chef, display the Japanese Agricultural Standards certificate the school obtained for its lunches.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Kyushu
May 5, 2025
In a national first, Fukuoka school obtains organic lunch certificate
A Fukuoka school has become Japan’s first to earn JAS certification for organic school lunches, using seasonal and local produce to promote environmental education.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Apr 29, 2025
Trump administration targets scientists behind key climate assessment
Dismissal of nearly 400 contributors leaves the future of the U.S. National Climate Assessment in doubt under Trump's administration.
Stopping superpollutants like methane, which is the most potent short-lived climate pollutant, offers a fast-track opportunity to slow warming and improve public health, yet global climate plans have only recently begun to target them explicitly.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 28, 2025
The world is waking up to the dangers of superpollutants
Cutting superpollutants like methane offers a fast way to slow warming and boost public health, but climate plans have only recently begun to target them.
The Maersk Launcher, chartered by a seabed-mining company to explore the practices viability, returns from an expedition to the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean in June 2021.
WORLD
Apr 26, 2025
Trump moves to ramp up deep-sea mining for critical minerals
The move comes amid increasing concern over new Chinese curbs on the export of rare-earth materials.
An Environment Ministry survey found that PFAS in groundwater and river water exceeded the provisional standard at 242 locations nationwide.
JAPAN
Apr 25, 2025
Potentially carcinogenic PFAS chemicals over standard at 242 sites in Japan
Japan banned the production and import of PFOS and PFOA, both of which are main components of PFAS, by 2021.
JICA to designate four Japanese cities as 'hometowns' for African nations
The Japanese flag (left) with the flag of the African Union
103-year-old remembers Soviet attack right after WWII
Shoichi Takahashi holds a photo of himself when he was younger, in Otaru, Hokkaido, on May 17.
Schools get students involved in revision of unreasonable ‘black rules’
At Yawata Junior High School in Nagoya, there are no more rules on clothing and hairstyles. Students are free to wear either the school's uniform or clothes of their own choosing.
Tokyo crowned No.1 'workation' spot
Workations were a burgeoning trend in the corporate world for years before the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged it.
Japanese man suspected of ordering double murder in Manila
Two suspects arrested over the killing of two Japanese last week are held in restraints in Manila on Tuesday.
Tokyo crowned No.1 'workation' spot
Workations were a burgeoning trend in the corporate world for years before the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged it.
Atsushi Kitagawara’s exhibition finds poetry in architecture
The inverted cone, one of Atsushi Kitagawara’s six signature elements in architecture, is a key feature of the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection museum building.
Candidates preparing to make final pitches for Sawamura Award
Hawks pitcher Livan Moinelo has a 1.13 ERA in 19 starts this season.
Winning warship bid gives Japan confidence boost as Tokyo eyes more exports
Australia’s decision to select Japan's upgraded Mogami-class warship, seen in this computer-generated image, has been “well received across Japanese industry," a Defense Ministry official said.
In Paris, chefs Chizuko Kimura and Kei Kobayashi make their mark
Chef Kei Kobayashi is France's only Japanese chef with three Michelin stars.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers
By Tomoko Otake

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