On October 24, Okayama University’s Faculty of Environmental Science and Technology held a lecture presentation, inviting the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Dr. Junko Nakai to lecture on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Dr. Nakai is working for the UNDP as an environment and energy specialist in West Africa.

On the day of the lecture presentation, Dr. Nakai delivered her lecture, titled Sustainable Development & the Environment, to President Hirofumi Makino, faculty, staff and students of Okayama University in English. Dr. Nakai spoke lucidly on the transformation of the eight MDGs (Millennium Development Goals, 2000-2015), the forerunners of the SDGs, to the current SDGs (2016-2030), economic development brought about by humankind’s rule over nature since the Industrial Revolution, and the fundamental problems of the destruction of the natural environment that have come as a price for this. Dr. Nakai also explained that environmental destruction associated with the current economic development model generates a poverty gap between developed countries and developing countries, and the mechanism whereby this economic disparity leads to further environmental destruction. Dr. Nakai concluded her lecture by making an appeal for the necessity to create a development model that differs from that followed in the past and stated that it is principally the responsibility of the developed countries themselves to realize sustainable development and demonstrate its potential to the world.

The participants all gained a renewed awareness and determination to support the attainment of the SDGs.