Please tell us about Fukuoka Prefecture’s unique local features and characteristics, what led to the establishment of the Local Climate Change Adaptation Center, and what its organizational structure is like.

Comprised of a well-balanced and robust mixture of the primary through tertiary industrial sectors, Fukuoka Prefecture offers a pleasant and inviting environment, with its temperate climate and abundant nature that provides fresh and diverse food sources from the sea and land, complete with superb medical services and other urban functions. Meanwhile, the impact of climate change has been manifesting in recent years, in the form of major disasters caused by cloudbursts frequently occurring in summer, for instance.

As for the inception of its Local Climate Change Adaptation Center, the prefecture started contemplating the plan in FY 2018 and opened the Center at the Fukuoka Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences (“FIHES”) in August 2019, which is the testing and research arm of the prefectural government, whose purpose is to protect the health of prefectural residents and preserve the prefecture’s pleasant living environment. The Center was established at the FIHES because it regularly communicates and can easily coordinate with other prefectural testing and research bodies such as the Fukuoka Agriculture and Forestry Research Center and the Fukuoka Fisheries and Marine Technology Research Center as well as national research institutes such as the National Institute of Environmental Studies and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The FIHES Director is also serving as Director of the Local Climate Change Adaptation Center, while the General Manager of the Department of Environmental Science at the FIHES is its Assistant Director, and the Center’s secretariat is located at the Department of Research Planning and Information Management, with two of its members being assigned to the Center. So the Center has a total staff of four, all of whom have jobs at both organizations.

Please tell us about the current activities of Fukuoka’s Local Climate Change Adaptation Center as well as its future plans.

We have been hosting the biannual conferences of the Fukuoka Prefecture Climate Change Adaptation Facilitation Council to share information related to climate change adaptation in the prefecture among concerned parties and facilitate effective adaptation measures based on experts’ advice and suggestions. In addition, we have been posting information on our website to inform the public about climate change adaptation, which includes the Council’s conference reports and diverse other information on climate change impact and adaptation. One notable example of such information is a comprehensive report on our FY 2019 survey of climate change impacts and adaptation measures, which can be sorted by category or region and is searchable using any search strings. We also produced pamphlets to disseminate to the public digestible information on climate change and adaptation, which also feature interviews conducted with concerned organizations, etc., and are distributed at environmental events. As the pamphlets are also posted on our website in electronic file format, we encourage people to come take a look.

In FY 2021, we have been conducting our activities while coordinating with the Fukuoka Center for Climate Change Actions (hereinafter referred to as the “CCCA”) to focus equally on climate change adaptation and mitigation. As the CCCA has been operating in this area for years and has various know-how on public awareness and education campaigns along with established rapports with prefectural residents, we intend to continuously cooperate with them to spread knowledge on climate change. In addition, we have been receiving an increasing number of requests to speak at workshops and lectures. Therefore, we remain committed to continuously promoting climate change adaptation with the support of concerned organizations.

Please tell us about any unique approach that your Local Climate Change Adaptation Center is taking to effectively coordinate with other departments of the Fukuoka Prefectural Government and to facilitate adaptation by the prefecture and businesses, as well as any issues, etc. you are experiencing.

Coordination among concerned departments of the prefectural government is mainly handled by the Environmental Preservation Division of the Department of Environment at the prefectural office. The Environmental Preservation Division has been periodically hosting the conferences of the Global Warming Countermeasures Liaison and Coordination Council for years and is responsible for coordinating the activities of all concerned prefectural departments. It might also be noteworthy that the Fukuoka Prefecture Climate Change Adaptation Facilitation Council counts the government-ordinance-designated cities and other core cities of the prefecture among its members in addition to the prefectural departments.

As for the facilitation of climate change adaptation among businesses, we have yet to commence our action on this front. So we are intent on formulating our plan while consulting the national Center for Climate Change Adaptation.

Please tell us what motivates you to do your current work and also your outlook on the future.

Climate change has been featured in the media, etc. more and more recently. As the incidence of disasters that are apparently induced by climate change is also on the rise, we feel the general public is starting to realize the importance of climate change adaptation. So we are keen on spreading information on the various impacts of climate change that are expected to occur in the future to encourage them to start making necessary preparations now. To this end, our Center will strive to gather relevant information and disseminate it in an easy-to-understand manner.