Sapporo City is the central city in Hokkaido with a population of about 1.96 million people. Roughly 13 million tourists a year from Japan and other countries visit us for our abundant nature and attractive cuisine. This city is promoting environmental policies on its “second basic environment plan” as a mean to achieve the SDGs and making connections with various bodies. Sustainable consumption activity by residents in an urban city as Sapporo, that consumes a large amount of resources and energy, is vital to achieving SDGs. We introduce the efforts for sustainable consumption of citizens in Sapporo city and trends for achieving SDGs in Japan.
The Asia-Pacific region is the cradle of production and the center stage of the world economy today. At the same time, the region is a flourishing arena of new socio-economic development driven by digital innovation. In light of these trends, it is necessary to examine and practice emerging opportunities for ensuring sustainable society, in which socioeconomic development and increases in environmental loads are decoupled from the real sense of securing people's well-being and happiness. Sustainability is not one-dimensional issue such as the prevention of global warming but is a multifaceted challenge, as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development indicates 17 goals and 169 targets in areas of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership,
Chemical engineers have been responding to social demands by developing and implementing innovative technologies since chemical engineering inherently pursues a problem-oriented approach. However, we have to expand our focus from increasing the efficiency of existing products and systems to aiming at the well-being of society by improving people's sufficiency in the SDGs era. For this purpose, the Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan launched many activities to extend chemical engineer's scope from efficiency to sufficiency: a study group on diversifying technology implementation, the Committee on Future Energy and Social Systems, the Gender Equality Committee and the SDGs Committee, and so forth. Likewise, APCChE can be a good place in the Asia-Pacific region to achieve Goal 17 “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.”
By integrating these activities, we will be able to live up to paragraph 67 of the 2030 Agenda that states “We call upon all businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solving sustainable development challenges.”
