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In both the UK and Japan, the great majority of citizens live in towns and cities. Urban areas face many environmental challenges that have a direct impact on the standards of living and health. Last autumn, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution announced that its next major study would be on the urban environment. The Commission will hold a seminar at the end of March 2004 to determine the exact focus of the study. Japan's experience in transforming itself from an urban society with serious pollution problems to one which, with some exceptions, manages to combine high population densities with high standards of physical environmental quality, could well be relevant to the Commission's interests.
The contributors:
Professor Sir Tom Brundell FRS is the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and is Chairman of Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. He has an active role in science policy and has been a member of the advisory group to the Prime Minister, Director General of the Agricultural and Food Research Council, and Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. He has a long-standing interest in East Asia and was Chairman of the Royal Society Exchanges Committee for China and Japan.
The second speaker is to be confirmed.
Professor David Cope (chair) is Director of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Before assuming that position in 1998, he was Professor of Energy and Resource Economics at Doshisha University in Kyoto, moving there from Cambridge where he was Director of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development. An earlier period as Environmental Team Leader with the International Energy Agency gave him world wide experience of pollution control initiatives, including in Japan.
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