COVER STORY:Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life.

Caption: Aerial view of Nagoya Castle and the city beyond     Credit: AFLO

Welcome to Aichi

The tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) will be held in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture in the Chubu region of central Japan. The prefecture has a richly varied natural environment: Kiso-gawa river flowing into Ise Bay and forming the western boundary with Gifu Prefecture; the Noubi Plain, which is the second largest plain in Japan; and the tidal flats of Mikawa Bay.

The development of Aichi Prefecture started at the beginning of the Edo period (1603–1867) with the construction of Nagoya Castle by Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Owari clan that ruled this area felled cedar trees in the mountains at the upper reaches of the Kiso-gawa, bundled them together as rafts and transported them downstream to Nagoya, the prefectural capital today. The lumber was an important source of revenue for the domain and the Owari clan prospered. On the Noubi Plain, rice crops had long thrived on the abundance of water in the river and the fertile land. In addition, shellfish harvesting, seaweed cultivation and a shrimp and sardine fishery also flourished at the coast. In this way, Aichi developed by making maximum use of its abundance of natural riches.

Today, Aichi Prefecture is the center for the automotive industry in Japan, accounting for about 40% of the total value of nationwide product shipments for the Japanese automotive industry (automobiles, automobile parts etc.). On the outskirts of Nagoya, Seto and Tokoname have for more than a thousand years been two of Japan’s main pottery producing areas. Building on this long tradition, in recent years Aichi has seen an increase in the local production of fine ceramics. Having advanced functions based on state-of-the-art technology, the fine ceramics are used in a variety of products such as solar cells, artificial joints, mobile phones and automobiles.

On another front, Expo 2005 Aichi (World Exposition) organized on the theme of Nature’s Wisdom, signifying the coexistence of human beings and the natural environment, attracted more than 22 million visitors. One might say that the message for EXPO 2005—“learning from the world's vast collection of wisdom and methods of interaction with nature, we hope to bring the world together for the creation of a global society allowing the multitude of cultures and civilizations to coexist together”—contained references to practices already in place at the locality.