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Tachimoto Narifumi |
The Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) was established in 2001 by the Government of Japan to promote “integrated cooperative research toward the solution of global environmental problems” and to create the field of global environmental studies. To this end, RIHN solicits, funds and hosts three to five year fixed-term research projects on key areas of interaction between humanity and nature.
Until recently, much environmental study has been undertaken by researchers operating largely within the natural sciences. For us, natural science is one branch extending from the broader stem of human knowledge. We strive for comprehensive, integrative research capable of describing the true dynamism of earth phenomena and humanity's place in it. In this sense, our subject is humanity in the midst of nature.
At RIHN, we call this study of the human experience in a dynamic, changeable nature humanics; it offers a rich research framework, one based in nuanced appreciation for past human success and failure, present social and biophysical processes, and their inevitable change and unknown future. We use the concept of futurability, a translation of a Japanese term that combines the ideographs for “future” and “potential”, to express the wide range of possibility in future development.
The year 2010 marks the end of RIHN's first decade as an institute and the beginning of
its second planning phase. RIHN has made steady progress, having attracted many talented researchers from Japan and around the world. Yet both RIHN's intellectual goals and research structure continue to evolve as we consider how to enable the future potential in, and enhanced design of, interactions between humanity and nature.
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Message
from the Director-General |