On Dec. 8, Skoltech hosted the STS Forum Russia-Japan Workshop Online 2021. This second installment in a series of events followed last year’s inaugural workshop, this time with a focus on the ESG agenda. Branded as an STS forum — short for science and technology in society — the workshop brought together scientists, academics, politicians, and businesspeople for a plenary session on the challenges and opportunities for sustainable development in the next decade in Russia and Japan. This was followed by three concurrent sessions themed around the U.N’s sustainable development goals and devoted in particular to decarbonization, agricultural technology, and smart cities.
Among the distinguished speakers and honorary guests joining the event were Mikhail Galuzin, the Russian ambassador to Japan, and Toyohisa Kozuki, the Japanese ambassador to Russia.
The workshop dealt with the pressing problems faced by humanity at large and confronting professional communities in particular. It demonstrated that Russian and Japanese participants had shared views, allowing the leaders of Russia and Japan to announce harmonized goals related to the ESG agenda for the next decade.
The session on decarbonization and ESG pushed for a wide range of activities replacing manufacturing technologies in the most energy- and resource-hungry industries. Thus, oil and gas companies are effecting a step-by-step change in their priorities, transforming into “energy companies” that focus their research potential on renewable energy, hydrogen generation and use. Russian companies are initiating more research in that field and many scientists have been involved in the effort in the recent years.
The session on smart cities as an element of ESG outlined the increasing number of intersections between the urban and the ESG agendas, where smart city platforms help to optimize comfort and environmental goals. The 5G communication breakthrough, for example, is providing urban services with new opportunities, enabling many previously impossible smart city initiatives. Next, 6G approaches will open the way for other ideas in the coming decades.
The session on agro technologies has shown that agriculture is becoming an important part of the ESG agenda, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in the approaches to creating next-generation products and technologies in this area. The future seems to hold promise of scientific breakthrough, and ESG requirements could both push and reshape the industry. This topic will be explored more in the future meetings.
The organizers see the key task of the STS community in achieving a common understanding of how new technologies impact decision-makers, so that rational solutions can be proposed and the new challenges addressed. As an outcome of the workshop, they expect to expand the interactions between professionals in Russia and Japan on ESG-related issues, and hopefully hear about the success of their joint initiatives.
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