Towards US-Japan Co-creation of Sustainability Transformations:
Exploring Opportunities in Sustainable Consumption and Production
The Japan-US Sustainable Transitions Network (JUSTra Network)

Norichika Kanie is a professor at the Graduate School of Media Governance, Keio University, Japan, and the Representative of xSDG Laboratory of the SFC Research Institute in the same university. He previously worked at Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Kitakyushu. He was also a Marie Curie Incoming International Fellow of the European Commission. He serves various committees and steering groups, including a member of the SDGs Promotion Roundtable Meeting, established by the Japanese government under the SDGs Promotion Headquarters, a member of the Expert Study Group for the Promotion of SDGs by Local Governments for Japanese Cabinet Office. He has been appointed by the UN Secretary-General as a member of fifteen independent scientists to prepare the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report.

Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity (CECE) and a Professor in the School of International Service at American University. She currently serves as the President of the Eastern Sociological Society. Her research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics — most recently studying political elites' responses to climate change, how federal service corps programs are working to integrate climate and diversity, equity, and inclusion into their efforts, and activism around climate, systemic racism, and the American Resistance. Professor Fisher has authored over seventy-five research papers and book chapters and has written six books. Her seventh book, Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, is currently under contract with Columbia University Press. She served as a Contributing Author for Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Review (IPCC AR6) writing about citizen engagement and civic activism. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Governance Studies program at The Brookings Institution. Her media appearances include ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS Newshour, and various programs on NPR, BBC, and CBC. Her words have appeared in the popular media, including in the Washington Post, Slate, TIME Magazine, Politico, the Nation, and the American Prospect. Fisher holds a Ph.D. and Master of Science degree from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her undergraduate degree is in East Asian Studies and Environmental Studies from Princeton University.

Reiko Sodeno is a professor in the Department of Architecture and Environment Systems, College of Systems Engineering and Science, Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT) of Japan. She has worked on various environmental problems, such as waste management, climate change, air and water pollution control, and international cooperation at the Ministry of the Environment of Japan for more than twenty years. Based on this experience, she is currently studying environmental policies and social systems focusing on the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs). She also actively contributes for society as a member of committee or council of Japanese government and municipalities.

Prof. Dr. Makoto Taniguchi is a hydrologist and a deputy director-general at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan. He is IUGG Fellow, JPGU Fellow, Cooperation Member of Science Council of Japan, and a Future Earth Assembly member, Steering Committee member of Water-Energy-Food Nexus KAN. He served PI and Co-PI of many research projects including UNESCO-GRAPHIC (groundwater and climate change), Groundwater in Asian Megacities, Water-Energy-Food Nexus, and Belmont Forum SUGI Food-Energy-Water NEXUS. He has worked on water-related projects around the world, authoring or co-authoring over 180 articles, and editing or co-editing 8 books.

Yasuhiko Hotta is the Program Director/Principal Policy Analyst of the SCP Unit at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Sussex (2004) and has an extensive background in sustainable resource circulation. Prior to joining IGES in 2005, he worked as a project assistant for UNU/Zero Emissions Research Initiative and as a Contracted Researcher for the Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. At IGES, Hotta coordinates the Plastic Taskforce and leads the organization's partnership with the ERIA Regional Knowledge Centre for Marine Plastic Debris. He has also been involved in policy initiatives such as G8's 3R Initiative and the OECD Working Party on Resource Productivity and Waste. From 2016 to 2021, Hotta served as one of four theme leaders for Japan's Environment Research and Technology Development Fund S-16 Project on Policy Design and Evaluation to Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns in the Asian Region (PECoP-Asia). He currently serves as a part-time lecturer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Vice President of the Asia Pacific Roundtable of Sustainable Consumption and Production (APRSCP) since 2021.

Tarek Katramiz is a Project Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University. He was previously a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). His main interest is in the politics of sustainability and development, local community, energy, and environmental policies. His current research projects are looking at how the SDGs potentially influence and stimulate new directions of national development planning and assessing the steering effects of the SDGs on local governments and non-state actors, the contestations and synergies in national implementation of energy and climate goals and other SDGs.

Emily Huddart Kennedy is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on civic engagement in environmentalism, which led her to study sustainable consumption. She has studied household-level sustainable practices, local food movements, and the relationship between sustainable consumption and environmental impact. Her current projects explore how sustainable consumption has changed the structure of social status, and consider the implications of this shift for political polarization over the environment.

Andrew Jorgenson is a Professor of Sociology at University of British Columbia and a Research Fellow at Vilnius University. Much of his research focuses on the societal dimensions of the climate crisis. His work appears in such venues as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Nature Climate Change, Social Forces, Environmental Research Letters, Social Problems, Sustainability Science, and Science of the Total Environment. He is a recipient of the Fred Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology, and coauthor of the recent book, Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions.