Kanako Morita - Appointed in AY2024

My specialty is environmental governance and finance. I have been working on global environmental issues, particularly climate change and biodiversity, while being involved in the United Nations' policy and science processes.

I have been interested in global environmental issues since I was a child. After entering university, I studied international financial mechanisms for promoting climate change countermeasures in developing countries, using research methods from economics as an undergraduate and from international relations and international development studies as a graduate student. In graduate school, through fieldwork in developing countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change such as Tuvalu, Fiji, Samoa, and Vietnam, participation in conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and studying abroad in Austria and the United States, I came to feel the importance of research in environmental governance and finance and decided to pursue studies in this field.

Currently, achieving a sustainable society requires not only promoting individual environmental measures but also transforming social systems in a short period. I am researching how to connect this to the transformation of social systems, including the relationships with various institutions and actors (international organizations, governments, private companies, financial institutions, non-governmental organizations, citizens, etc.) at the international, national, and local levels.

The scope of environmental governance and finance is also expanding, and it is necessary to consider its relationship not only with various environmental issues but also with a wide range of other social and economic issues (human rights, labor, security, trade, etc.). In one of my current research projects, I am analyzing the entire flow from the mobilization and provision of funds for sustainable finance (finance that contributes to sustainable development) to its impact on achieving environmental goals and transforming social systems. The aim is to identify the requirements for expanding the mobilization and provision of sustainable finance that contributes to solving climate change and biodiversity issues, as well as the governance challenges and ideal approaches to achieving them. My research field, including this project, requires transdisciplinary research that integrates diverse academic disciplines such as economics, international relations, and environmental science with practical knowledge. Therefore, I believe it is a research field where connections with people are also very important, involving discussions with stakeholders from diverse academic fields and actors, learning about the current situation in various countries, and working to bridge science and policy for problem-solving.

I conducted research based on economics as an undergraduate and on international relations and international development studies in graduate school, and later worked at a research institution focused on natural sciences. During that time, I visited not only UN processes but also sites in developing countries in Southeast Asia. At the time, I didn't see the connections clearly, but I feel that all of these studies and experiences are being utilized in my current research and activities.

As undergraduate and graduate students, I encourage you to talk with people from a wide range of academic fields and actors, and to broaden your horizons by paying attention to what is happening in various countries and what kind of international discussions are taking place.