In emerging Southeast Asian countries, water and soil quality deterioration, biodiversity loss and other environmental problems related to agriculture-forestry-fishery production infrastructure have grown more serious due to rapid population growth and economic development. Sea level elevation and precipitation volume and pattern changes accompanying climate change and global warming have also become serious problems that threaten stable production by affecting production infrastructure functions and the ecosystem balance. While Japan has seen production infrastructure deterioration and biodiversity loss in rural regions in the postwar period, Southeast Asian emerging countries have recently begun to rapidly experience similar phenomena accompanied by water and soil environment deterioration due to climate change and global warming. Given that an urgent challenge is to conserve the water and soil environment as life infrastructure while maintaining high productivity based on appropriate environmental assessment, measures are required from the medium to long-term viewpoint. Organizing a farm scale study and a multi-scale study covering regional, wide-area and river basin scales will be indispensable for solving these problems. We are required to develop approaches that reflect the Asian monsoon region’s unique characteristics regarding meteorology, sea waters, hydrology, land utilization, resources utilization and river basins, as well as the sparsity of data that is a common feature of emerging countries.
The Agro-production and Environmental Conservation Unit will aim to put together research resources regarding agriculture-forestry-fishery production infrastructure at the Faculty of Agriculture and the Institute of Tropical Agriculture to form research and education bases for production and environmental conservation in Southeast Asian river basins, using Vietnam’s two major international river basins - the Red River basin in northern Vietnam and the Mekong River basin in southern Vietnam - as core study fields.
- Water Environment Conservation
In Southeast Asian emerging countries, water contamination and biodiversity loss in rural areas and closed water zones have rapidly spread due to growing agrichemical and chemical fertilizer input and an increase in human waste accompanying the urbanization of rural areas. These countries are urgently required to reduce contamination load from land areas and conserve the water environment in closed downstream water zones while maintaining high agricultural productivity. Since the water environment in a river basin is formed by a material flow system covering the area from the continental upper stream to the closed downstream water zone, the so-called integrated river basin water environment management that comprehensively covers hydrological and material cycles for the whole of the land and coastal zones is indispensable for developing sustainable river basin environment management plans. By monitoring living things' responses to physical and chemical changes in the water environment quantitatively and continuously, we can set water environment and hydrosphere ecosystem conservation targets and quantitatively assess the degrees of achievement. In the water environment conservation area, we will cooperate with staffs from Hanoi University of Agriculture and the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City campuses of Water Resources University in Vietnam to develop integrated river basin water environment management approaches for the Red River basin in the North and the Mekong River basin in the South where serious water contamination and biodiversity loss are occurring. We will also aim to form research and education bases regarding the river basin water environment. Achievements in Vietnam could be used for other river basins in Southeast Asian emerging countries. Their academic significance and spillover effects would be great.
- Soil Environment Conservation
In Southeast Asian emerging countries, mountain slopes have been converted into farmlands due to rapid population growth over recent years and heavy rain in the rainy season has caused massive soil erosions and farmland collapses. On the plains, massive untreated wastewater from factories has flown into rivers, leading to soil contamination at farmlands using water from these rivers for irrigation. In coastal zones, ground subsidence stemming from groundwater overpumping and sea level rises have allowed sea water to penetrate into farmlands and cause salt pollution of soil. Since geological layers in Vietnam's Mekong and Red River deltas contain arsenic, arsenic contamination has hit groundwater and soil. In this way, the soil environment has deteriorated variously in Southeast Asian emerging countries, particularly Vietnam. This problem must be solved urgently.
In the soil environment conservation area, we will cooperate with Hanoi University of Agriculture, an institution with a long history of research and education in this area, as well as the Soils and Fertilizers Research Institute and the Institute of Agricultural Science of South Vietnam, which is known for powerful research on the area, to develop soil environment conservation solutions for northern and southern Vietnam and form research and education bases regarding soil environment conservation. These achievements in Vietnam could be used for other Southeast Asian emerging countries. Their academic significance and spillover effects would be great.