The water conservation forests that lie within the west of Tokyo are the supply of life for residents within the Japanese capital. The Bureau of Waterworks, Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities (Tokyo Waterworks Bureau) has established naming rights for components of the forests and is working with firms to keep up them. Considered one of them is Casio Forest, named by Casio Laptop Co., Ltd. We spoke to Yamagishi Masakatsu of the Sustainability Promotion Workplace at Casio’s Company Communication Headquarters concerning the initiative and the corporate’s affect within the forest.
Selling Deliberate Forest Conservation
Tokyo’s water conservation forests unfold throughout the city of Okutama in western Tokyo in addition to components of the neighboring prefecture of Yamanashi. As of April 2024, they cowl an space of roughly 25,000 hectares, extending 30.9 km from east to west and 19.5 km from north to south. That is about 50 p.c of the full forest space alongside the higher reaches of the Tama River that runs via Tokyo, and is 4 instances greater than Manhattan, making it the most important forest within the nation owned by any water provide utility.
An official from the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau explains the aim of incorporating naming rights into the conservation of the forests: “We’ve got been managing the forests for greater than 120 years, however we thought it was needed to advertise systematic forest conservation to be able to proceed to correctly handle them. We additionally thought we wanted to cooperate with numerous entities to advertise understanding of the significance of water supply conservation and to broaden participation in upkeep of the forests.”
Casio signed a naming rights settlement with the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau in 2018, with 2.46 hectares of land now known as “Casio Forest” positioned in Koshu Metropolis, Yamanashi. Yamagishi says, “We have been contemplating measures to handle environmental points and in search of methods to include CO2 discount into the enterprise operations of your complete Casio Group, and determined to signal the settlement as a result of we thought defending the water conservation forests was crucial to that finish. By the way, the founding father of Casio occurred to be from Kochi Prefecture, which is legendary for its forestry.”
The corporate’s actions in Casio Forest vary from web site preparation to planting, weeding, and thinning to sustaining an applicable forest atmosphere, in addition to acorn assortment and seedling elevating to assist the supplementary planting of oak bushes. It additionally covers a variety of actions, together with the creation and set up of nest bins to encourage the breeding of untamed birds to stop ailments and bug pests from damaging the forest, and common cleansing.
Heightened Consciousness of Telecoupling
At first of the mission, all workers have been invited to take part within the conservation actions. Nevertheless, this participation was not a part of their job, and so they have been required to work on it as volunteers, paying for the whole lot together with transportation. “I wished them to go to the location on their very own initiative, see what wanted to be completed there, and really feel the need for conservation firsthand. The concept was that they would wish to behave voluntarily relatively than being required by work to be able to consider it as their very own drawback.”
The settlement dictates that on-site actions be held thrice a 12 months, within the spring, summer season and earlier than winter. Initially, solely a few dozen folks participated, however the quantity regularly elevated over time, reaching greater than 20 this 12 months. “We’ve got repeat members, however as we printed our exercise experiences internally, an increasing number of workers got interested. Additionally they wished to come back with their members of the family, together with kids, and the circle regularly expanded to former workers and out of doors specialists who heard about it.”
Feedback from members embrace, “It was enjoyable and helped me perceive the significance of sustaining the water conservation forests,” “Experiencing environmental conservation within the area made me begin to consider social points comparable to SDGs as my very own,” and “I felt that I may uncover numerous social points and new enterprise concepts via this exercise.”
Yamagishi says, “In fact, the water conservation forests are fairly far, and it takes a very long time to get there from Tokyo, however these of us who dwell and work within the metropolis shouldn’t be detached to the atmosphere of these forests. I consider that the elevated consciousness of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) like that is additionally an necessary profit for the corporate.”
Casio has additionally actively labored in direction of nature conservation at its seven places of work nationwide. These initiatives proceed at two places, together with the Hamura R&D Heart in Hamura Metropolis, western Tokyo, the place greater than 1,000 workers work. Yamagishi explains the actions going down there:
“It began across the identical time because the Casio Forest mission. For instance, we performed a biodiversity survey to see what sort of crops and animals exist on the location. Some workers even observe the crops once they arrive at work each morning. It seems that we have now some endangered crops there. We are attempting to guard them via trial and error by doing issues like asking specialists, consulting literature, and protecting them with nets to maintain pests away. We wish to create an atmosphere the place a wide range of crops appropriate for this space can develop wild as a lot as attainable.”
Via these efforts, a sure shared tradition was regularly fostered among the many workers. “Considered one of our materialities (key points) resides in concord with nature. I really feel that this consciousness is spreading via our actions in Casio Forest and at our places of work.”
Yamagishi is starting to really feel that this elevated consciousness will ultimately give some impetus to the corporate’s general enterprise. “We even have watch merchandise with out of doors parts, comparable to G-SHOCK and PRO TREK. I hope that this may have a optimistic influence on the planning and gross sales of such merchandise sooner or later.”
Interview and writing by Yoshida Shuhei
Pictures courtesy of Casio Laptop Co., Ltd.
Translation by Endo Toshio
