Future Perfect

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nvironment

air

water

oceans

climate

change

models while considering mitigation and adaptation scenarios

that allow for carbon cycle feedbacks, including global warming.

Building an international research network

We are implementing an international ‘Urban and Regional Carbon

Management (URCM)’ project relating to the development and appli-

cation of spatially explicit land-use change scenarios with particular

reference to Asian megacities. Specifically, we are collecting geographi-

cally delineated data on socioeconomic activity related to energy

demand, population, economy and public infrastructure, carrying out

bottom-up analyses (totalling estimates for different localities) of urban

GHG emissions, developing methods for estimating urban growth and

population density through using remote sensing images, and analysing

the relationship between urban morphology (compactness) and CO

emissions. In relation to this, we are building an international network of

researchers in our capacity as the international secretariat for the Global

Carbon Project, an Earth System Science Partnership project being

carried out under the auspices of the International Council for Science.

Future challenges

We are conducting research on land-use change scenarios that

include a geographical distribution perspective and are making our

findings available to researchers involved in global and regional

climate change prediction and impact assessment. From these

initiatives, to the building of a global sustainable society – the

main theme of The United Nations Conference on Sustainable

Development (Rio+20) – we feel it is important to create a research

platform offering information that considers climate

change mitigation and adaptation measures, analyses

the compound impacts of climate change arising from

interactions between land use, water resources and

ecosystems, and provides policymakers with informa-

tion on the implications of different land-use scenarios

based on various sustainability indicators.

Net carbon emissions from land-use change for each RCP scenario. Values in parentheses of the legends indicate the cumulative

carbon emissions for 2006-2100

Source: NIES

Carbon emission projections of the IPCC AR5 RCP

scenarios. Three scenarios stabilize atmospheric CO

by the end of 21st century at different levels

Source: NIES