My name is Nagata from United Nations University. On behalf of UNU, I would like to give remarks of
congratulations and welcome.
JIRCAS International Symposium 2013, “New Direction of Sustainable Technology Development in Asia:
Changing Rural Livelihood and Japanese Advantage,” ? I would like to congratulate the organizing of this
symposium.
UNU is headquartered in Japan. It’s the only UN organization headquartered in Japan. It’s a global think tank for
the UN and also an educational institution for graduate schools. Its mission is to consider urgent global magnitude
issues, such as the survival of mankind, development, and welfare, in which the member states are interested. We
are to conduct collaborative research as well as provide education to contribute in this area. That’s our mission.
In order to fulfill this mission, UNU is working together with leading universities of the world and research
institutions of member states to play the role of bridge between international academic institutions and UN
system organizations.
I understand that in JIRCAS International Symposium 2013, there will be discussion on the needs of agriculture,
forestry, and fisheries technology development needs, and to investigate the directionality of researchers in
JIRCAS and Japanese researchers for their activities in Asia and to share the results of the other research in order
to realize the sustainable development of agriculture, forestry, and fishery industries and related industries. This
theme leads to the solutions for problems in Asia and other developing countries, which is one of the missions of
UNU, and that would be a great contribution to these industries.
As you know, in the Millennium Development Goals we were to halve the starving population by 2015; however,
according to recent figures, there are still 842 million people who do not have enough food on a daily basis. The
importance of the fight against hunger has been re-recognized. I have heard that the regional representative for
Asia Pacific, Mr. Hiroyuki Konuma, is to give a keynote speech. I think it is very timely that he speaks to us.
There needs to be further strengthening of collaboration between developed and developing countries in order to
work on food security and environmental issues.
With the symposium as momentum, I hope that the collaboration of domestic and overseas researchers would
further deepen with regards to sustainable agriculture, forestry, and fisheries technological development and the
sustainable development of the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industries as well as food industries.
Thank you very much.