Nitrogen (N) provides great benefits to humanity as fertilizer for food production and materials for industrial production.However, the production and consumption of food, goods, and energy create a huge loss of reactive N (N compounds other than inert and harmless dinitrogen) to the environment that threatens human and ecosystem health via N pollution at an impact from local to global scales. We need to address this tradeoff, the N issue (Figure 1), to achieve sustainable N use.

The present knowledge of the N issue leaves much to be elucidated, e.g., ecosystem responses to human-induced N input and removal, N flows within human society and to the environment for each reactive N species, and physical and economic effects of policy, technology, and behavior on the N issue. A new N use is attracting attentions in Japan, i.e., ammonia as an energy source. Ammonia does not create carbon dioxide when combusted, and therefore the momentum of decarbonization focuses on this property. However, using ammonia as a fuel may increase the emissions of nitrogen oxides. Thus, the N issue is closely connected with other environmental issues.

Our project will tackle the N issue covering all human N uses as fertilizers, materials, and fuels considering their links between natural and human systems. We aim to produce a tool to assess the benefits and dangers of N use to support policy decision making that addresses the N issue. We share interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge of N with domestic and international stakeholders and also introduce practices of Future Design to guide them towards sustainable N use for humanity and nature. Our goal, by 2050, is to achieve the “futurability” of N use resolving the N issue and to let future generations inherit the food equity and good health of human and ecosystems.

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