What is "WWF Climate Witness?"

What is “WWF Climate Witness?” Stories of climate change & climate action People observing climate change and supporting climate solutions. Accelerating extreme weather events, melting permafrost, spread of deadly disease,,,, Climate change threatens lives, livelihoods, and lifestyles. Japan is also not immune to the impacts of climate change, as the rest of the world. WWF is connecting with individuals and communities around the world. 100 witness stories are on the WWF website from 40 countries. We are doing this to highlight the impacts of climate change and the work that people are doing to take actions. All Climate Witness stories are reviewed by a member of our Science Advisory Panel.

Visit our website “the Climate Witness Stories” http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/people_at_risk/personal_stories/witness_stories/

Climate Witness 1:

Fisherman

Morihiro Nakata

“Fish disappears from the Yaeyama sea” “I became a fisherman when I was 21. It’s now over 28 years since I first joined my father, who is also a fisherman, on his boat. Around the time when I first went out to sea, the coral was still in good shape. Before long, however, the coral rapidly began to die and fish numbers declined dramatically. Here in Yaeyama, there could be no fishing industry without the coral reefs. I think the cause of the damage is red soil runoff coupled with the impact of climate change.”

＜Scientific Background＞ The decline of coral reefs has become a serious problem worldwide. According to a report published by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, Kikohendo eno kashikoi tekio (Clever Adaptation to Climate Change), 30% of coral reefs are already in an extensive state of deterioration (Jackson et al., 2001). It has been pointed out that among the causes of coral reef deterioration are physical destruction accompanying commercial fishing, physical alteration due, for example, to landfill, destruction due to larger and more frequent typhoons, and feeding damage due to mass outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. There are also frequent reports from many areas since the 1980s that coral bleaching and disease are expanding rapidly due to high water temperatures (Harasawa and Nishioka, 2003; Weil et al., 2006).

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Climate Witness 2

Dr Shinzo Waku

Doctor

“Climate Change threatens our health” “After working for the university hospitals to clinics in villages. I inherited the clinic from my father who started his practice in 1958. It used to be a pediatric clinic in my father’s time, I still have a lot of children coming here. Since then, I noticed more and more children are getting sick on hot days, because of headaches and dehydration than previously. I am concerned that as global warming drives up temperatures, there will be an increased danger of heat strokes, and there may be an increase in intestinal and infectious illnesses.”

According to Tokyo University led research team in 2004, the hot summer days which highest temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius, will increase from 40 days per year currently to more than 100 days in 2100. (This is a relative numbers. The count method is if one place in Japan exceeds 30 degrees Celsius, it is counted as one day.) “Impacts of climate change in Japan”, issued by Japanese Ministry of Environment in May 2008, says that climate change will cause serious damage to human health, especially increases the death rate of heat related stress, such as heat strokes. It is predicted that elderly human will be exposed to significant risks. It is already observed in hot summer 2007, among sharply risen heat stroke patients, people over 65 years old suffered most.

Climate Witness 3

Kenji Ito

Photographer

“Warming winter in Hokkaido” “I first became fascinated with the natural environment of Hokkaido when I was a university student, more than 20 years ago. I was captivated by snow-covered mountains and began to climb mountains in Hokkaido and North America. I gradually took to using a camera and, as I was spending more and more time in the wild, began to be interested in the plants and animals that live there. The focus of my photography now is the nature and the life of the people in Hokkaido and the Pan-Okhotsk Region, but in recent years snowfall has decreased in Hokkaido and I feel that the climate is changing.”

＜Scientific Background＞ The Japanese Meteorological Agency report “Extreme weather report 2005”, that concludes the average winter temperature in Hokkaido (1.33 degrees Celsius) has risen significantly more than the average winter temperature increase in Japan (1.09 degrees Celsius) as a whole. It also reports that snow coverage depth, which indicates the change of snow fall pattern, has declined by 4.7 % per ten years. According to the statistics in the Japan Meteorological Agency’s observation of coastal sea ice, taking ten-year averages of the period of drift ice each year from 1946, the periods from 1988 to 1997 and from 1998 to 2007 at the cities of Wakkanai, Abashiri, Nemuro, Kushiro and Monbetsu all show averages for the number of days of drift ice lower than any of the periods in the previous 40 years, making it clear that the drift ice in the sea around Japan has decreased. (Ministry of the Environment, Wise Adaptation to Climate Change, Report by the Committee on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research, Chapter 4, 2 (5) Marine Ecology, June 2008.

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Climate Witness 4

Asami Tetsuo

Natural Ice Maker

“Making natural ice becomes more and more difficult”

“I was born into an ice-making family and our company has continued since 1890. I took over this business from my father 17 years ago. Because electrical refrigerators are now widely used in homes, and the demand for household cool-box ice has gone down, I use the natural ice I produce to make shaved ice, which I sell. Natural ice can only be produced if two conditions are satisfied—the winter must be cold and there must be minimal snowfall. This Chichibu area has traditionally been very good for ice-making because it gets very cold due to traditional cooling and it hardly ever snows. But in the last 10 years, the temperature in winter has not dropped and we have had large snowfalls. Because of this major change in the climate, I feel that it is becoming very difficult to make decent ice.” ＜Scientific Background＞ ●The Japanese Meteorological Agency reports in its “Extreme weather report 2005” that the eastern part of Japan has seen rise in winter temperature by 1.17 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years. http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/menu/report.html ●The ten lowest daily minimum temperatures-in-January in Chichibu ever measured since 1926 have all occurred between 1930s and 1950s, ranging from -12.3 to -15.8. On the contrary, no days have had the lowest daily temperature below -10 degrees since 2000 due to global warming. This seems to be the trend, disrupting Japanese natural ice making. http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/climate/cpdinfo/climate_change/

Climate Witness 5

Bird Watcher

Masayuki Kurechi

“Change in bird’s migration” “ I live in Miyagi prefecture for four decades. While running a private tutoring school, I have observed the life of Greater White-fronted Geese that spend the winter in various places in northern Miyagi, including Izu-numa. Izu-numa, a wetland with a rich natural environment, is registered under the Ramsar Convention. Many Greater White-fronted Geese spend the winter there. However, since 1990, their numbers have rapidly increased, and overconcentration has emerged as a problem. Moreover, various changes can be observed in the behavior pattern of the geese. I am concerned that their breeding grounds may be lost before too long if global warming continues unabated.”

＜Scientific Background＞ According to Summary for Policymakers of the Contribution of Working Group II(WG II) to the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) (2007), recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and the earlier timing of spring events, such as bird migration and egg-laying, as well as pole-ward and upward shifts in ranges in plant and animal species have been observed in the Northern Hemisphere. Phenomena such as the transformation of stopover points into wintering sites and the earlier timing of migration from wintering spots to the north in the spring that has been observed since the 1990s among Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons) spending the winter in the area around Izu-numa coincide with these description by the IPCC. Moreover, some papers have reported geese spending the winter in Otomo-numa, a former stopover point in Akita prefecture (1) and that in January 2007, due to the warm winter, the flocks left the northern part of Miyagi prefecture where they spent the winter and moved northward to Otomo-numa earlier than usual (2).

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Climate Witness 6

Chairman of WWF Japan

“Drastic change in Tokyo’s environment”

Tsunenari Tokugawa

“I was born with the surname “Matsudaira” but when I was in junior high school, I was adopted by my mother’s side of the family, and became the 18th head of the Tokugawa family. I was born in Tokyo but was taken to San Francisco straight after birth, returning to Japan just before the outbreak of the Pacific War. After returning to Tokyo from Gotenba, where I had been evacuated during the war, I lived in Shoto, Shibuya and started elementary school in 1946, the first post-war Grade 1. Winter was very cold—most mornings the temperature was below zero degrees Celsius. Charcoal brazier and kotatsu (a table with a heat source underneath and quilts under the table top which extend to the floor, keeping the heat in and warming the feet and legs) were the only means of heating available in the house and often the pipes would freeze so we would be without water. Of course there was no hot water, so in the morning I would wash my face and rinse my mouth with water that was icy.” ＜Scientific Background＞ The average temperature for Japan overall has risen 1.07 degrees over the last 100 years but in Tokyo there has been a 3 degree rise over the last 100 years, because of the heat island phenomenon, which is a result of urbanization. Tokyo’s weather has undergone major changes due to this rise in temperature. Together with urbanization, Tokyo’s environment has radically transformed. As Mr. Tokugawa mentions, until the 1950s-60s, it was quite normal for Tokyo’s lowest temperature in mid-winter to be below zero. From 1876, when weather records began, until around 1960, the average lowest temperature for January was mostly below zero. However, from the end of the 1960s, average temperatures of below zero were hardly ever recorded and in recent years, an average lowest temperature of over 3 degrees has become normal. As for the average highest temperature in summer, until the mid 1990s, it moved around the mark of a little above 30 degrees, but from 2000, years with an average highest temperature of over 33 degrees became more common. According to Mr. Tokugawa, record high temperatures exceeding 35 degrees have become increasingly commonplace since the 1990s. In 2007, the Japan Meteorological Agency created a name for days over 35 degrees—“extremely hot day.” Previously the Agency had only set references for days over 25 degrees—“summer day” and days over 30 degrees—“mid-summer day.”

Climate Witness 7

Katsuo Sasaki

Farmer

“Rice farming in Japan being forced to change” “I am a farmer and I have more than 40 years experience in growing rice. I am based in Miyagi on the northern part of mainland Honshu. I have been growing organic rice since 1993, aiming to secure the supply of healthy food. I have been experiencing a lot of changes that affect my farming activities, which I believe are due to climate change, especially in the last ten years. I am afraid that my farm will no longer be suitable for producing rice in next decades.”

＜Scientific Background＞ According to IPCC Third Assessment Report, the average temperature increased 1ºC in Japan, and the precipitation increased 5 to 10%. IPCC projections suggest that this trend will continue, thus affecting Japan’s agriculture sector. The Japanese National Agriculture and Bio-oriented Research Organization (NARO) that concludes warmer temperatures have degraded rice quality and increased the incidence of harmful insects in 70% of Japan’s rice fields, and that rice production is likely to shift to the northern part of Japan.

※Mr. Katsuo Sasaki had passed away in the event of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in March 11 2011 while delivering rice to his customers. We would like to express our deepest and most heartfelt condolences to Mr. Sasaki and his family.

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