The worlds expanding population and economic activity places ever-greater loads upon the environment. The content and quality of the load has changed with the times. In the former high economic growth period, the pollutants abundantly discharged from mining and manufacturing industries caused bad effects to humans and agricultural products. These pollution problems were what are called the point source pollution.
However, this pollution problem has been solved by the efforts of many people. What was generated next is so called non-point source, or what I call the plane source pollution. Though the discharged concentration from each source is low, the load to the environment is very high in the total amount, since the area is broad and there are many sources. The eutrophication of lakes and marshes by the nitrogen and the phosphorous derived from agricultural and daily life drainage is representative of plane source pollution.
Next, humanity has generated the environmental problems
of three-dimensional space. It is the phenomenon of global warming with greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide derived from the combustion
of fossil fuels, paddy fields, and animal rumen and nitrogen fertilizer. It
is also the phenomenon of the ozone hole that provided shocking evidence of
the atmospheric effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used for industrial
and agricultural products.
Recently, even more complex environmental problems demand our attention. A
wide range of man-made chemicals, especially hormone-disrupting chemicals,
affect our fertility - our children. At present, the environmental problems
have exceeded our conventional perception of time and space.
There seems to be the illness of the separation of complex systems in the present society. They are "the separation of knowledge from knowledge", "the separation of knowledge and feeling" and "the separation of knowledge and action".
It can be said that present science is also the same. That is to say, we must always think about how to connect individual research, and ask whose individual research brings about greater progress, and whose individual research is actually utilized.
We want agriculture to ensure not only food production but also environmental conservation and green space for people even in the present age of complex systems. To achieve this aim, individual results introduced here should be connected with each other and linked to further research and practice.
This Annual Report introduces the research and other activity in fiscal 1999 of the National Institute of Agro-Environmental Sciences. Since the research topics are introduced only very briefly, the reader may have questions about these topics or other research carried out at NIAES. Please feel free to contact our staff at the addresses provided. We welcome all criticisms and suggestions. I hope that this annual report will stimulate discussion and collaboration among scientists and institutes who are concerned about agro-environmental issues.
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Katsuyuki Minami Director General |
