Sustai-N-able
Towards Sustainable Nitrogen Use Connecting Human Society and Nature
Our nitrogen (N) use provides great benefits as fertilizer for food production and materials for industrial production. However, the production and consumption of food, goods, and energy induce a huge amount of reactive N (N compounds other than inert and harmless dinitrogen) loss to the environment that threatens human and ecosystem health through various N pollution. This is the N issue, i.e., a tradeoff between benefits of our N use and threats of N pollution accompanied. The Sustai-N-able project conducts inter- and trans-disciplinary research towards sustainable nitrogen use for future generations.
What’s New
- 22 May 2025
- The 5th SusN Seminar "Nitrogen use efficiency and fertilizer dependency: characterizing agro-food systems at various scales" by Prof. Miguel Quemada, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain was held at RIHN.
- 21 May 2025
- SusN FR3 Spring project meeting was held at RIHN
- 21 May2 2025
- The 4th SusN Lunch Seminar "Thinking about the earth from the perspective of coffee" by Shinji Oyama, Shoshi Azusa was held at RIHN.
- 24 Feb. 2025
- The National Institutes for the Humanities teamed up with Otemachi Academia to host an online public talk entitled “The Necessary Trouble: How Deeply You're Connected to Nitrogen.” The full session is available to watch on YouTube (only in Japanese).
- 27 Jan. 2025
- The 3rd SusN Seminar "Generating AI for Basic Knowledge and Practical Use" by Prof. Takashi Kameyama was held at RIHN.
- 11 Nov. 2024
- The “Ghost Stories and Nitrogen” exhibition, organized with Loftwork, will be held at FabCafe Tokyo from November 18 to December 4, 2024. A talk event by Prof. Hayashi will be held on November 21 from 4:00pm to 6:00pm.
- 27 Sep. 2024
- The Ministry of the Environment has released an “Action Plan for Sustainable Nitrogen Management”. It is expected that various domestic and international activities related to nitrogen management will become more active in the near future.
- 26 Aug. 2024
- A recording of the lecture by Professor Kazuyoshi Kuma (Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University and Professor Emeritus of Shiga Prefectural University) has been uploaded to the SusN YouTube channel.
- 20 Aug. 2024
- As part of the Art and Science challenge in collaboration with creators, an event to feel the invisible nitrogen, “Ghost Stories and Nitrogen” will be held at FabCafe Kyoto, from September 10th (Tue.) to 14th (Sat.)
- 26 Apr. 2024
- SusN YouTube channel was opened and nitrogen videos were uploaded
- 03 Apr. 2024
- SusN FR2 Spring project meeting was held in Keihoku-cho, Kyoto
- 29 Mar. 2024
- As a research result of the Economic Evaluation Team of this project, "持続的農業の経済学―サステナブルな窒素利用の実現 (Economics for sustainable agriculture - towards the achievement of nitrogen utilization)" is published by Chuo Keiza-sha
- 23 Feb. 2024
- The event “Sustai-N-able Island Day ~ Connecting Miyako's food and environment ~“ will be held in Miyakojima City on February 23rd (Friday/Holiday). Details are also posted on SusN Instagram shown below!
- 08 Feb. 2024
- English version of the special talk on "Nitrogen is “everywhere” and we cannot see why it’s important" from RIHN News Letter No.89. is now abailable
- 05 Feb. 2024
- Instagram on SusN Project is opened!
- Dec. 2023
- Workshop on “Promoting Understanding of the Nitrogen Problem: Capturing Complex Issues, Using Systems Thinking” was held at Loftwork, Kyoto
- 30 Nov. 2023
- New Columns written by Dr. Kyoi is updated
- 22 Nov. 2023
- New Columns written by Ms. Moonju and Dr. Saiki are updated
- 08 Nov. 2023
- New Column written by Prof. Hayashi is updated
- 05 Oct. 2023
- New Columns written by Dr. Kyoi and Dr. Dhar are updated
- 01 Oct. 2023
- English version website has been launched
- 01 Sep. 2023
- A discussion on nitrogen by PL Hayashi was published in RIHN Newsletter No.89. (only in Japanese)
- 10 Aug. 2023
- Column has been updated
- 10 Nov. 2023
- ［Event］SusN Autumn Meeting
- 14 Apr. 2023
- ［Event］SusN Spring Meeting
- 03 Apr. 2023
- Project website is now available!
- 01 Apr. 2023
- Project is now in full research (FR)
Links
— Related Links for Nitrogen Issues —
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Japanese Nitrogen Expert Group This group aims to promote to share information and exchange opinions among domestic experts on nitrogen across multiple fields.
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Towards INMS A large-scale international project aimed at establishing an international nitrogen management system. Although the project was completed on June 2023, the outcomes have been utilized for nitrogen management by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
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Nitrogen Footprint This project provides a tool (N-Calculator) to calculate our personal nitrogen footprint on the web. SusN project is working together with this project to publish the Japanese version.
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International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) An international group of experts aims to reduce nitrogen pollution while maintaining the benefits of nitrogen use. PL is a member of the INI Steering Committee and a representative of the East Asia Centre.