October 18th-20th, 2005, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature held the second stage of its Inaugural International Pre-Symposium in Pa-lu-luPlaza, Kyoto. Parallel sessions were held by Oasis project that carries out field work in China, Arid Area Agriculture Project that does field work in Turkey, Subsurface Environment Project targeting Thai Kingdom, Korea and Philippines, Forestry Utilization Project that researches Malaysia, and Landscape Project whose main research area is Japanese Archipelago. On the afternoon of the second day Inter-project plenary session were held under the titles of “Human History in the Changing Climate” and “Challenging for Better Human/Water Relationships”. Together with the first stage of the pre-symposium in June, altogether 330 researches participates (including 109 invited researches from 13 countries outside Japan), and heated discussions were held between the scholars of most diverse fields, starting from meteorology, glaciology, agriculture, medicine, forest ecology, economy and journalism to history, ethnology and philosophy. In his welcoming speech the Director-General of RIHN, Dr.Toshitaka Hidaka emphasized that “….as shown by the discussions during this symposium, water is not only a problem in China, India or Turkey, but has become an issue all over the world. This were the human wisdom “lets take water from where there is none” has taken us, and the issue has become so serious that we cannot but look at it pessimistically. Our aim in RIHN is to face this problem in its full gravity and to come forward with noble and striking ideas about how to tackle it.”
This pre-symposium was a paving the way for the full-scale inaugural symposium to be held in November 2006 with the purpose of introducing the research results of the institute to a broader public.
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