Director General' Greeting

Next year marks 10 years since the Declaration of the World Conference on Science, Budapest (Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge). The Declaration elegantly advocated the following new target values as scientific duties for the 21st century. In addition to ‘Science for knowledge; knowledge for progress’ in the 20th century, were themes of ‘Science for peace’; ‘Science for development’; and ‘Science in society and science for society’. The Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) was established following the principles of the declaration.

Now the notion of new values of science has become the world trend of policy for science and technology. This trend is driven by profound remorse that the rapid development of science and technology in the 20th century caused significant negative impacts such as global warming and depletion of energy and natural resources, which threaten our daily life and even our survival, even while science has made outstanding contributions to improvements in the standard of living.

How can we implement these principles and an awareness of remorse about science into actual research development fields? It’s easier said than done, because this challenges the institutional structure of modern science and technology which has developed for more than a century.

In response to these demands of the times, RISTEX, which advocates ‘Science and technology for science’, is reforming the process of research and development (R&D) area selection and project selection and the methods for forming organizational structures and project management systems into those, based on participation of relevant stakeholders in society and dialogue with them. I believe that setting up the new R&D area in this year, “Community Based Actions against Global Warming and Environmental Degradation,” follows the principle of the above-mentioned Budapest Declaration and RISTEX’s reform.

Led by R&D Area Director (Dr. Masayuki Horio: Emeritus Professor of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology), frequent meetings have already been held among R&D advisors and project stakeholders from industry, academia, government and citizen sectors. Through these R&D area activities, we aim to induce not only individual outcomes from each project but also new values for society as total R&D Area outcomes. There is no established way. We have to continue to be innovative to achieve our goals while actually operating R&D activities. To keep RISTEX socially valuable, I have the intention to work on our activities with deep awareness and firm determination, all the while communicating with a variety of stakeholders.