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By C40 Cities
Fumiko Hayashi has been mayor of Yokohama since 2009 and is the first woman to hold the post. Her previous roles have included president of BMW Tokyo, president of Tokyo Nissan Auto Sales and chairperson and CEO of the Japanese supermarket chain Daiei.
In 2006, Forbes magazine named her 39th most powerful woman in the world, the highest rank for a Japanese woman. Ms. Hayashi is the president of Mayors Association of Designated Cities in Japan and also serves as the member of the Council for Gender Equality of the Cabinet Office of Japan. She has also written several books on management and workforce relationship.
C40 Cities had the chance to connect with Hayashi to learn more about her efforts:
Q. What has been your biggest climate or environmental achievement as mayor?
A. Yokohama has implemented urban development in cooperation with various stakeholders such as citizens, companies and other groups, overcome many environmental issues and promoted city development that harmonizes the environment and the economy. In dealing with climate change, we are promoting efforts that take advantage of our achievements in urban development up until now.
With regard to energy issues in particular, through the Yokohama Smart City Project, in collaboration with 34 major Japanese companies, we are aiming to realize an advanced, energy-circular city with systems aimed at optimizing the balance between energy supply and demand in existing urban areas such as by introducing the Home Energy Management System in 4,200 homes and improving the energy efficiency of commercial buildings. We were well-received at C40 and awarded the C40 Cities Award in the Clean Energy category in 2016. Behind this was the fact that ours are some of the world's leading large-scale projects in existing urban areas.
Q. What are the key climate change and environmental challenges facing your city? What are you doing to address them?
A. Developing the city to be low-carbon and disaster-resilient. With 3.73 million citizens and more than 110,000 businesses, Yokohama is a major city and a major energy consumer. The key is solving issues and for this, not only the government but also the power of our citizens—which is the pride of Yokohama—and the technical expertise cultivated in the public and private sectors have become major strengths. As a "FutureCity," we will continue to work hand in hand with citizens and companies.
Q. Were there any women leaders who inspired you when you first entered politics?
A. A woman leader I was inspired by is Sadako Ogata, who helped provide humanitarian aid for many years as Japan's first UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Even as ethnic and religious conflict was intensifying, I was impressed with the way she visited these various locations and flexibly built new support frameworks through her strong leadership. I met her in person when she was serving as president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency and she was a wonderful woman with a strong will, heart-warming humanity and overflowing hospitality.
On the other hand and much regrettably, the participation of women in Japanese politics seriously lags behind. Even at present, it represents no more than 1.6 percent overall, with only 28 women leaders of local governments. Having women in leadership positions can help deepen men's understanding of working women and promote a society in which women can participate more. I view this as my mission, after having worked for more than 50 years in an androcentric structure and is why I took up politics.
Q. What obstacles do you think women leaders still face in delivering their agenda, including on climate change?
A. Being a woman will not be an obstacle in implementing the agenda. The strength of women lies in leadership that employs empathy and acceptance. Better results are produced by men and women taking advantage of each other's strengths, coming together and producing results in tandem. Therefore, I believe that women's ability to demonstrate their capabilities in all areas, including climate change countermeasures, will yield great results. Under the leadership of C40 Chair Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, we will deepen the unity of C40 member cities and continue to work to implement climate change countermeasures.
Q. What advice would you give to young women in Yokohama—or any other city—who are concerned about climate change and want to do something about it?
A. Climate change is a complicated and very difficult issue occurring on a global scale and is caused by a variety factors. It is critical to think about this global issue with a broad perspective but also in terms of what can we do in our own everyday lives and what is to be done in society as a whole—thinking together with numerous people and putting into practice what is initially possible. I expect much from today's young women.
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gmnicholas / E+ / Getty Images
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Andrew Yang's assertion that people move away from the coast at the last Democratic debate is the completely rational and correct choice for NASA scientists in Greenland.
By Johnny Wood
The Ganges is a lifeline for the people of India, spiritually and economically. On its journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, it supports fishermen, farmers and an abundance of wildlife.
The river and its tributaries touch the lives of roughly 500 million people. But having flowed for millennia, today it is reaching its capacity for human and industrial waste, while simultaneously being drained for agriculture and municipal use.
Here are some of the challenges the river faces.
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Leaked Audio Shows Oil Lobbyist Bragging About Success in Criminalizing Pipeline Protests
By Jake Johnson
As a growing number of states move to pass laws that would criminalize pipeline protests and hit demonstrators with years in prison, an audio recording obtained by The Intercept showed a representative of a powerful oil and gas lobbying group bragging about the industry's success in crafting anti-protest legislation behind closed doors.
Speaking during a conference in Washington, DC in June, Derrick Morgan, senior vice president for federal and regulatory affairs at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), touted "model legislation" that states across the nation have passed in recent months.
AFPM represents a number of major fossil fuel giants, including Chevron, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil.
"We've seen a lot of success at the state level, particularly starting with Oklahoma in 2017," said Morgan, citing Dakota Access Pipeline protests as the motivation behind the aggressive lobbying effort. "We're up to nine states that have passed laws that are substantially close to the model policy that you have in your packet."
Big Oil is now using its political power to try and criminalize protests of oil & gas infrastructure.
— Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) August 19, 2019
"This legislation has potential to punish public participation and mischaracterize advocacy protected by the First Amendment."https://t.co/bmiHjONEhy
The audio recording comes just months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that would punish anti-pipeline demonstrators with up to 10 years in prison, a move environmentalists condemned as a flagrant attack on free expression.
"Big Oil is hijacking our legislative system," Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said after the Texas Senate passed the bill in May.
As The Intercept's Lee Fang reported Monday, the model legislation Morgan cited in his remarks "has been introduced in various forms in 22 states and passed in ... Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota."
"The AFPM lobbyist also boasted that the template legislation has enjoyed bipartisan support," according to Fang. "In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the version of the bill there, which is being challenged by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Even in Illinois, Morgan noted, 'We almost got that across the finish line in a very Democratic-dominated legislature.' The bill did not pass as it got pushed aside over time constraints at the end of the legislative session."
Many of the state bills restricting the right to protest have been "drafted by companies and passed through groups like ALEC, the secretive group of corporate lobbyists trying to rewrite state laws to benefit corporations over people." @greenpeaceusa https://t.co/ZxpTjWdrwT
— Stand Up To ALEC (@StandUpToALEC) May 6, 2019
Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.
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