Atsushi Ishii

• Master of Economics
• Professor (Associate) at Tohoku University

Solar geoengineering or solar radiation modification (SRM) is increasingly looming large as a potential response to human-induced climate change. However, it is deeply mired in controversies surrounding environmental risks and social governance challenges. Given the high stakes and uncertain characteristics of SRM, it is essential to understand pub...

A recent article in this journal (Jackson 2021 Jackson, M. 2021. On decolonizing the Anthropocene: Disobedience via plural constitutions. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111 (3):698–708. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1779645.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) validly emphasized that debates about the An...

Asia-Pacific lacks an environmental leader. Japan, a forerunner of environmental regulation in the 1970s, started to engage in active environmental diplomacy in the post-Cold War era by hosting conferences of parties to multilateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora...

The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth...

The emerging narrative of the Anthropocene has created a new space for changes in global environmental change (GEC) science. On the one hand, there is a mounting call for changing scientific practices towards a solution-oriented transdisciplinary mode that can help achieve global sustainability. On the other hand, the scientists’ desire to avoid ex...

Many international commercial fish stocks are threatened with depletion; in some cases they are already badly depleted. Through Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), member countries are committed in principle to sustainable and scientific management of these fisheries. However, in practice, national policies toward international fis...

Climate engineering, a set of techniques proposed to intervene directly in the climate system to reduce risks from climate change, presents many novel governance challenges. Solar radiation management (SRM), particularly the use of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), is one of the most discussed proposals. It has been attracting more and more in...

This study explores sense-making about climate engineering among lay focus group participants in Japan, New Zealand, the USA and Sweden. In total, 23 qualitative focus group interviews of 136 participants were conducted. The analyses considered sense-making strategies and heuristics among the focus group participants and identified commonalities an...

Policymakers face a variety of challenges in implementing the 2030 Agenda. These include translating the SDGs and targets into national priorities, building on synergies and avoiding tradeoffs across the goals and targets, and building the capacities needed for the follow-up and review process. Regional institutions can play a significant role in r...

Increasing interest in climate engineering in recent years has led to calls by the international research community for international research collaboration as well as global public engagement. But making such collaboration a reality is challenging. Here, we report the summary of a 2016 workshop on the significance and challenges of international c...

Law of the Sea - Whaling in the Antarctic: Significance and Implications of the ICJ Judgment edited by FITZMAURICE Malgosia and TAMADA Dai . Leiden: Brill, 2016. ix+423 pp. Hardcover: £103; $168. - Volume 7 Issue 2 - Atsushi ISHII

Great expectations have been expressed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a key climate change mitigation option, primarily because CCS possesses the political capital to reconcile continued use of fossil fuels with greenhouse gas emissions reduction. However, technological innovation of CCS has recently stagnated, and therefore, CCS still exi...

Abstract Due to the fear of the consequences of climate change, many scientists today advocate the research into—but not deployment of—geoengineering, large-scale technological control of the global climate, to reduce the uncertainty around its efficacy and harms. Scientists propose in particular initiating field trials of stratospheric aerosol inj...

Interest in climate engineering research has grown rapidly owing to the slow progress of international climate negotiations. As some scientists are proposing to expand research and conduct field tests, there is an emerging debate about whether and how it should proceed. It is widely accepted both by the supporters and critics that public engagement...

 近年、PM2.5の大気汚染に注目が集まっている。そして、健康影響――発がん性、喘息などの呼吸器疾患、心不全などの循環器系疾患など――が、懸念されている。  日本のPM2.5の議論には、新しい越境大気汚染問題として扱うべきPM2.5の対外政策を、変動しつつある東アジアの国際関係の中に具体的課題としてどう組み込んでいくかという戦略が欠落している。先日、日中韓でPM2.5の共同観測が合意の見通しであることが報道されたが、共同観測をどのように東アジアの国際関係の中でPM2.5対策に結びつけていくのかという環境外交としての戦略がないのである。  2014年7月の中韓首脳会談および11月のＡＰＥＣ（北京）開催後の米中首脳会談ともにその成果が環境協力であったという事実は、東アジアにおける緊張緩和の...

Recently the studies on media coverage of climate change have increased significantly. Many scholars have extensively analyzed “framing” of climate change in the media. However, the focus of existing literature is only limited on the “science” of climate change, but not on the “politics”. In light of “mediatized politics”, the media has become part...

The transformation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) into a preservationist regime met with extremely fierce opposition from the prowhaling countries and created an unprecedented and famous polarization of the IWC parties into pro and antiwhaling camps, which can be observed even today. In such a bipolar and harsh process, it would be t...

CO2を大気中から隔離する技術であるCCSが近年，有望な気候変動の緩和策として注目されている．し かし，CCS の技術開発には技術的・政策的なリスクをめぐって論争がある．本稿は言説分析によって日本 の新聞報道における CCS のフレーミングを明らかにし，メディア言説が CCS のガバナンスに対して持ち うる政策的含意について考察した．日本の新聞報道はCCSを大幅なCO2排出削減が可能な革新的技術と表 象し，技術開発に対する楽観主義的な言説を構築する一方で，CO2 漏洩リスクやカーボン・ロックインと いった問題を言説的に捨象していた．日本のCCSガバナンスの文脈では，日本の新聞報道は既存のテクノ クラート主義的な統治構造を言説的に補強する政治的な機能を持っていることが指摘できる．

This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplines, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological interests, but all active in the subfield of global environmental governance (GEG). Each of them reviews the emerging literature around one specific conceptual innovation of GEG, related to one of the...

This study explores how Japanese newspapers frame carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. We applied frame analysis with the basic content analysis of newspapers texts. The newspaper texts are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The major newspapers in Japan portray CCS in very positive and technocratic framings. Specifically, the...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a significant role in bridging the boundary between climate science and politics. Media coverage is crucial for understanding how climate science is communicated and embedded in society. This study analyzes the discursive construction of the IPCC in three Japanese newspapers from 1988 to 20...

Responding to growing international political interest in the potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to contribute to climate change mitigation, multiple CCS demonstration projects of various scales are emerging globally. A fully integrated power-plant with CCS has not yet been demonstrated at scale, and acknowledgement of the scale of learn...

This chapter discusses how learning by advisory scientists in the process of scientific assessment for the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP)’s Second Sulfur Protocol, signed in Oslo in 1994, had beneficial effects on the CLRTAP regime. A theoretical framework developed by critically analyzing inputs from the institutiona...

The objective of this paper is to develop independent and systematic criteria for assessing CCS policy in terms of its level of policy integration. We believe that we should assess CCS policy in terms of the distance to an ideal integrated CCS policy in order to keep track of its trajectory toward sustainable development. After reviewing the existi...

Demonstration of a fully integrated power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale has not yet been achieved, despite growing international political interest in the potential of the technology to contribute to climate change mitigation and calls from multiple constituents for more demonstration projects. Acknowledging the scale of lear...

本研究では，日本の新聞(『読売新聞』，『朝日新聞』，『毎日新聞』)のIPCC報道によって，日本社会におけるIPCC像がどのように構築されたのかを分析し，その社会的含意を導出した．具体的には，IPCCが設立された1988年から2007年までの各紙の新聞記事を対象としたフレーム分析を行った．その結果，IPCCが地球温暖化問題における“科学の専制支配”のなかで，理性的な“警告者”として構築されてきており，新聞各紙のフレーミングとその推移が画一的であることを明らかにした．IPCCに関するフレーミングの社会的含意としては，そのフレーミングが日本の温暖化政策の決定要因である可能性は低いこと，科学的信頼性が乏しい知見が，IPCCによって言及されただけで新聞に掲載される可能性が高まり，それが地球温暖化問題の...

The future role of carbon sinks with reference to the Kyoto Protocol depends significantly on developing an international consensus on carbon-sink assessment and carbon accounting. A clear and practical approach is needed that allows both the scientific community and policy-makers to construct a viable operational framework. This article proposes t...

Scientific assessments of Carbon Sinks in the Kyoto Protocol, and Critical Loads on Acidification in the European acidification policy are compared to draw lessons for better scientific assessment of Carbon Sinks by using the approach of science studies. Epistemological realism provides the basis for the comparison. The effectiveness of assessments...

Since the Cold War détente, transboundary air pollution (TAP) has been on the pan-European diplomatic agenda. Under the Convention of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) - the diplomatic framework for international cooperation on transboudary air pollution - eight protocols have been adopted through a science-driven and evolutionary nego...

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the ongoing development of the conceptual groundwork of regime interplay studies by enlarging the scope to incorporate domestic politics into the groundwork. I first selectively go through the existing literature to derive implications for domestic-international interaction in the context of regime interpla...

There is no doubt that scientific knowledge is playing an important role in environmental diplomacy and ultimately in the pursuit of sustainability. It can guide us by pointing out the cause-and-effect relationship, the environmental impacts, the policy options, and the effect of those options to environmental problems in concern. In order to obtai...

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the ongoing development of the conceptual groundwork of regime interplay studies by enlarging the scope to incorporate domestic politics into the groundwork. I first selectively go through the existing literature to derive implications for domestic-international interaction in the context of regime interpla...