Public policies to nourish"slow"businesses under environmental risks

商业这个词经常与“快”或“迅速”联系在一起。然而，在当前的环境风险下，“慢”的概念似乎变得很重要。快速做事需要大量的资源，尤其是精力。另一方面，我们可以通过慢慢做事情来减少对环境的影响，例如在自然过程的帮助下。然而，“慢”和“业务”被认为是不相容的。我们研究的目的是阐明公共政策如何有助于以一种兼容的方式将“慢”和“商业”联系起来。我们首先对食品、休闲和住房行业进行了案例研究。我们观察到的是，商品或服务的供应商与消费者之间缺乏沟通。信息差距造成了“慢”和“快”（或传统）商品或服务之间不合理的价格差异。有时慢的价格更低，快的价格更高，这传递了慢的质量更低的信息。在加拿大，有机食品市场比日本表现得更好，消费者似乎更关注他们购买的东西。“慢”商业公司更渴望向消费者传达有关其产品或服务的信息。对此，公共部门必须向企业提供帮助。政府的另一个作用是在某些领域为企业提供指导方针或标准。我们参加了许多国内/国际会议。其中，酒井法子2004年5月受韩国科学院邀请，在首尔举办了题为“全球化与科学家在亚洲经济中的作用”的讲座。我们还邀请了各种演讲者。2006年3月，mathis Wackernagel博士和yoshihiko Wada博士加入我们，讨论了如何将生态足迹分析应用于政策制定过程。该项目的成果已在本报告中列出的各种期刊上发表。

The word business often associates "fast" or "speedy". However, the concept of "slow" seems to become important under current environmental risks. Doing things quickly requires a lot of resources, especially energy. On the other hand, we can reduce the impact on the environment by doing things slowly, for in stance with the help of natural processes. However, "slowness" and "business" have been considered to be incompatible. The aim of our research is to clarify how public policies can help to connect "slowness" and "business" in a compatible way.We first have case-studied on food, leisure and housing industries. What we observed was the lack of communications between the suppliers of goods or services and their consumer. The information gap creates unreasonable price difference between the "slow" and "fast (or conventional)" goods or services. Sometimes the slow gets lower prices, and the fast higher, and which sends the message that the slow is lower quality.In Canada, where organic food market is performing better than in Japan, the consumers seem to pay more attentions to what they buy. "Slow" business companies are more eager to convey the information about their products or services to the consumers. Regarding to this, public sectors have to offer assistance to the businesses. Another role of governments is to provide guidelines or standards to businesses in certain area.We have participated in many domestic/international conferences. Among them was Sakai's lectures on "the role of globalization and the scientist in Asian economy", invited by the South Korea science academy, Seoul, May, 2004. We have also invited various speakers. In March 2006, Dr.Mathis Wackernagel and Dr.Yoshihiko Wada joined us and discussed how to apply the ecological footprint analysis in policy making process. The outcomes of this project have been published in various journals as listed in this report.