Plenary Lectures

In the 21st century, the most serious global environmental crises are global climate change and loss of biodiversity, and CBD and UNFCCC were launched at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to deal with these challenges. However, these two issues cannot be solved without the participation of private sectors since private corporations are significant contributors of carbon emissions and conversion and destruction of natural habitats. Fortunately, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) framework has emerged as a critical driver for integrating these environmental challenges into corporate and financial decision-making. ESG focuses on non-financial factors that can impact a company's long-term performance and sustainability. In the environmental pillar of ESG, climate change is currently the hottest issue, but biodiversity loss is expected to become comparable to climate change in its importance. Many international organizations and reporting initiatives have prepared disclosure standards, and EU, USA, and other countries will enforce these guidelines into regulations. However, ESG has some shortcomings in biodiversity conservation such as lack of clear standardized metrics for biodiversity, weak representation within environmental field and possibility of greenwashing, and this is part of the background for the establishment of TNFD. TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures), launched in 2021, is a global initiative that builds on the success of TCFD (focused on climate) but applies its principles to nature-related risks. TNFD provides companies with a comprehensive framework to assess and disclose their dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities related to nature. Its core methodology, the LEAP (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) approach, helps organizations systematically analyze how their activities interact with ecosystems and biodiversity. It aims to redirect financial flows toward nature-positive outcomes, thereby contributing significantly to biodiversity conservation. Its final recommendation was announced in September 2023, and it aligns with global policy goals such as the Kunming-Montreal GBF (Global Biodiversity Framework). Kunming-Montreal GBF target 15 is related with ESG, asking businesses to assess, disclose and reduce biodiversity-related risks and negative impacts. In 2023, Korean Government established NBSAP for 2024-2028 based on the Kunming-Montreal GBF, setting up 21 targets, one of which is ESG management (disclosure) on biodiversity. ESG and TNFD together with Kunming-Montreal GBF will serve as a pivotal tool in integrating biodiversity considerations into financial and business practices. Difficulties and current trends related with ESG and TNFD will be discussed.

Spatial conservation planning is becoming increasingly important. in recent years. The "30 by 30" goal that aims to conserve 30% of the land and sea by 2030 is exactly on spatial planning. In addition to biodiversity conservation, there are multiple critical environmental issues that need to be addressed at the same time as conservation, such as climate change mitigation. Spatial planning is also essential to the simultaneous resolution of such environmental issues, for example, ensuring the appropriate siting of renewable energy installations considering conservation.
In addition, because of limited human and financial resources, it is essential to search for measures that enable integrated solutions of conservation and the other social issues using ecosystem services, such as disaster prevention and sustainable agriculture utilizing pollination service. Spatial planning also plays an important role for such purposes by efficiently allocating area of conservation and land uses depending on ecosystem services. I will introduce examples of integrated spatial planning analysis in Japan and discuss research efforts related to the "Nature Symbiosis Sites," which are the Japanese certification system of OECM (Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures), which is attracting attention in achieving the 30by30 target.

There is a great concern regarding biodiversity loss. The rapid decline of intraspecific variation, encompassing genomic and phenotypic diversity within and among populations, represents a hidden biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity assessments often overlook this critical loss within species. While biodiversity exists at multiple levels in the biological organization, most assessments focus primarily on species diversity and phylogenetic diversity among species. As a result, the significance of intraspecific diversity is frequently ignored.
Intraspecific diversity plays a fundamental role in shaping community structure and ecosystem function. Previous studies across various taxonomic groups have demonstrated that differences in genotypes can significantly influence population growth rate, community diversity, and ecosystem processes. Moreover, ecological effects of interspecific and intraspecific diversity are often comparable in magnitude, and both diversities can interactively influence ecosystem functioning outcomes.
Intraspecific variation is also a crucial source of evolutionary responses to environmental changes. Anthropogenic environmental changes, such as urbanization, trigger rapid evolution in many organisms. However, if intraspecific variation is lost, species may lose their ability to adapt to these changes. Understanding how intraspecific variation supports adaptive evolution and monitoring its spatio-temporal dynamics within and among species are urgent research priorities. Importantly, interspecific and intraspecific diversity are interconnected. Changes in species diversity and composition can impose different natural selection, altering genetic variation within species. These evolutionary shifts, in turn, influence species diversity and composition, forming a process known as eco-evolutionary feedback. While eco-evolutionary feedback can contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity at both interspecific and intraspecific levels, its role remains poorly understood in natural populations and communities.
Finally, geodiversity—the comprehensive abiotic heterogeneity of Earth's surface and subsurface—is gaining recognition for its influence on biodiversity and community assembly. It is well established that abiotic environments shape biodiversity and vice versa. However, the detailed relationship between geodiversity and biodiversity, in particular intraspecific diversity, remains largely unexplored. Thus, we need to newly bridge the gaps among multiple biological levels from gene to ecosystem.
In this talk, I will discuss a demand of much greater focus on intraspecific variation towards integrating biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, evolutionary dynamics, and geodiversity, even though we have already recognized the importance of intraspecific variation. Recent advances of methodology can provide tools and dataset for the new integration. We should reflourish studies on intraspecific variation in multiple fields in ecology and evolution, and in both basic and applied sides.

Nitrogen is an essential element for all lives. The increasing demand to feed growing world population requires ever increasing use of chemical nitrogen, which has dire consequences on both environmental quality and climate change, such as the emission of potent greenhouse gas-N₂O and high demand on energy for ammonia synthesis. On a global average, reactive nitrogen (Nr) in Earth's environment has crossed the safe operation space of the planetary boundaries, therefore maintaining the homeostasis of reactive nitrogen is key to planetary health and sustainability. This presentation will discuss major pathways that will contribute to the mitigation of environmental pollution with Nr. The first pathway is the anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process that can counteract the release of ammonium and N₂O in many oxygen-limited situations, facilitating the homeostasis of Nr in the Earth's ecosystem. In this talk we will discuss the characteristics of the anammox hotspots across various types of ecosystems, particularly at the oxic-anoxic transition zones worldwide. Based on the discovery of an anammox hotspot capable of oxidizing ammonium under anoxic conditions into N₂ without N₂O by-product, an innovative concept and technical route of nature-based anammox hotspot geoengineering has been developed and used in the real world. In this 'Earth's wrinkle zones' geoengineering project, anammox has been proven to be effective in ensuring clean drinking water, regulating the climate, fostering plant and animal diversity, and enhancing long-term environmental quality. The second pathway is to use microbial reduction of N₂O through the enzyme N₂O reductase (NosZ), which catalyzes the reduction of N₂O to N₂, thus mitigating the emission of greenhouse gas and reducing Nr pollution. It has been demonstrated that by using organic waste as a substrate and vector for N₂O-respiring bacteria selected for their capacity to thrive, thus will significantly strengthen NosZ activity in the environment to mitigate N₂O emission. The last route this talk will cover is the Nr retention and recovery from soil and waste stream, which is facilitated by both microbial and chemical processes, such as abiotic nitrate reduction to ammonium in paddy soils, and microbial protein production from high Nr-organic wastes.