In this episode Alice Yamabe and Andre Mader speak with two IGES colleagues, Fernando Ortiz Moya and Yasuo Takahashi, about the phenomenon of depopulation. Fernando has been studying shrinking cities, and Yasuo has been doing research on urban to rural migration, so we have two quite different angles on this subject.

To many it may seem counterintuitive to worry about depopulation in a world in which the human populations continues to grow. But population growth rates have been slowing for decades, and have become negative in a growing list of countries. Interestingly, at least in Japan, this has not necessarily been good for people or the environment. On the other hand, perhaps we need to accept and adapt to this reality.

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.

In this episode of About Sustainability, we talked to Heinz Schandl, who joined us from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. He is an expert on natural resource use, and international resource flows. Among other things, Heinz explained about resource efficiency, the socioeconomic drivers of resource use, and about the possibilities of decoupling economic development and human well-being from resource use.

He also explained how resource use is measured through what we call the material footprint, and why it is important to capture the international dimension of that footprint.

We also learned about progress in indicators and data availability so that the international linkages between resource extraction and final consumption can be tracked and managed.

All these items are important for measuring progress across several SDGs including SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth, and SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production.

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.

In this episode Alice and Andre talked to Simon about the United Nations Environment Assembly, also known as UNEA, which is the decision-making body of the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEA takes place in Nairobi every second year and it is always preceded by the so-called OECPR, which stands for the Open-ended Committee of Permanent Representatives. This committee functions as the working level meeting that prepares decisions and resolutions for official approval by UNEA. This year, UNEA-6 took place in late February and I joined some of the preparations for that meeting, so in this episode we discuss some of the things that took place during the OECPR and UNEA to draw attention to those processes of international environmental governance that influence the agenda of domestic environmental policy making. Join us and listen.

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.