Junko Edahiro
President
Institute for Studies in Happiness, Economy and Society
Junko Edahiro is one of most prominent environmental journalists in Japan and is a major icon for slow movements in Japan. She has translated books of Lester Brown, Al Gore, Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, David Suzuki and many others into Japanese, and also writes by herself dozens of books on climate change, energy, happiness, systems thinking, and many other sustainability topics. She promotes and facilitates environmental communication and dialogue among governments, corporations and citizens.
She also invites prominent opinion leaders from the U.S. and Europe, and resides several networking events, which attracts hundreds of business people, policy makers, researchers, and concerned citizens. With these activities, she is deemed as an icon figure of networking across different sectors.
In 2002, along with other collaborators, she founded Japan for Sustainability (JFS), a non-profit environmental communication platform. JFS provides information on Japan's activities promoting sustainability on the website (www.japanfs.org) and publishes weekly digests and monthly newsletters. Serving as a Chief Executive, she has mobilized hundreds of volunteers to research, write, translate and publish 30 news articles every month on new regulations, policies, business initiatives, technology development and citizens' local initiative. JFS and its website have won several awards for advancing sustainable development.
She was appointed as a professor, Department of Environmental Management,Tokyo City University in September 2014.