Strengthening function as an international hub for providing strategic information on agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and mobilizing new research partnerships
As record-breaking heat continues across Japan and around the world, the free online video “2050 Weather Forecast (Ver. 2),” was released at 1:00 p.m. on August 3. The video was produced by the 2050 Weather Forecast Production Committee, in which NHK Enterprises serves as one of the lead organizations. Dr. HASEGAWA Toshihiro, President of the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), contributed to the project as an expert on food security issues.
From April 9 to 10, 2026, the “First ASEAN Consultation Workshop and Capacity Building: Development of Regenerative and Resilient Agriculture Systems Implementation Plan and Biochar Guidelines,” an event co-hosted by the ASEAN Secretariat and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), was held in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) participated in the workshop at the invitation of the ASEAN Secretariat.
This week, the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) is being held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. As the international community discusses responses to desertification, land degradation and drought, renewed attention is being given to Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), an approach that aims to maintain the quantity and quality of land resources at a level sufficient to support the ecosystem services needed now and in the future.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported that July 2026 was the joint-second warmest July globally, with an average surface air temperature of 16.90°C, 0.67°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.47°C above the estimated pre-industrial baseline. The month also set a new July record for sea surface temperatures across the extra-polar oceans.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the FAO Food Price Index averaged 131.1 points in July 2026, up 0.7 points, or 0.6 percent, from the previous month. Increases in the price indices for cereals, sugar and vegetable oils more than offset declines in those for meat and dairy products. The index stood 1.3 points, or 1.0 percent, above its level a year earlier, but remained 29.1 points, or 18.2 percent, below the peak recorded in March 2022.
UN News reports that biodiversity loss in Africa and other developing regions is already having serious impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, including through declining agricultural productivity and shrinking coastal fishery resources. Meanwhile, the official website of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) introduces the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) as an international framework for addressing these challenges, explaining that it sets out four goals for achieving a “world living in harmony with nature” by 2050 and 23 targets to be achieved by 2030.
A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health assessed how food systems could contribute to future transgressions of planetary boundaries at both global and local scales. The results suggest that transforming food systems—through dietary change, higher agricultural productivity, and halving food loss and waste—combined with climate change mitigation, could reduce multiple environmental pressures simultaneously.