The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released between 2013 and 2014, provides new scientific knowledge, such as regarding temperature rise in the deep ocean, thus revising our understanding of climate change for the first time in seven years. The IPCC has the unique role of providing basic scientific information for the formulation of international policy. International attention is now focused on the new international framework for mitigation of global warming after 2020, to be adopted at the end of this year, succeeding the Kyoto Protocol.

"Kikigaki," or folk narrative recording, is not only the putting of someone's life experiences down into words, but is a process in which the interviewer empathizes with the thoughts and feelings the informants shares about their past, thus providing a vicarious experience of the informant's life through the transcribed recording. If the sharing of marine technologies with people in other countries is accompanied by such folk narrative recordings, I believe the technologies and systems we want to impart will take a firmer root in their daily lives.
Selected Papers No.20

The abnormal weather being caused by global warming is already bringing severe damage to peoples' everyday lives. With the cooperation of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and various corporations, we were able to produce a program entitled Sacred Eco Journey, reporting on the damage being incurred in different places around the world. In this article I would like to report on what we saw during our filming in the Maldives.