Universality and Diversity in Sustainability: Sea resource use (whaling) in Japan and Australia

本研究试图通过对海洋资源利用（捕鲸）的分析，通过对日本和澳大利亚作为捕鲸国和非捕鲸国之间的政治和社会冲突和磨损进行比较分析，来检验可持续发展概念的普遍性和多样性。实地考察和媒体分析是本次调查的主要方法。很明显，两国在两个方面存在分歧，不仅限于收获的目的（油/肉）。捕鲸首先定义了国际关系：对于澳大利亚来说，与英国和其他英语国家保持关系至关重要，而对于日本来说，捕鲸被证明是在二战失败后获得国际信誉的一种手段。捕鲸业也塑造了环境观念，因为鲸鱼代表了人类未知且无法进入的广阔而深邃的世界。媒体在环境思维中营造出一种“普遍性”的感觉，这是当今的趋势。与此同时，由于气候变化和物种消失等快速环境变化，许多诞生于自然世界相互作用并由此创造的地方或地区特征的文化正在消失。今天可持续发展的普遍性是“人类世的伦理”，这是我们应该如何对人类对环境的影响承担责任的问题；可持续发展概念的多样性是我们从不同角度理解和采取行动的方式。可持续理念的推进有赖于两者的相辅相成。

This study attempted to examine universality and diversity within the sustainability concept through the analysis of sea resource use (whaling) though a comparative analysis of political and social conflicts and abrasion between Japan and Australia as whaling and non-whaling nations. Fieldwork and media analysis was the main method for this investigation. It was evident that the two nations differ on two, not limited to the purpose of the harvest (oil/meat). Whaling defined firstly international relations: for Australia, maintaining ties with Britain and other English speaking nations was vital, whereas, for Japan, whaling was proven to be a means to gaining international credibility after its defeat in WW2. Whaling also shaped environmental idea, as whales represented a vast, deep world unknown and inaccessible to humans. It is today’s tendency that media makes up a sense of ‘universality’in the environmental thinking. At the same time, many of the cultures born out of interaction between the natural world, and thus created identity of a place or region are being lost due to rapid environmental changes such as climate change and species loss. The universality of sustainability today is the ‘ethics in theanthropocene’, that is the question how we should take responsibility for the anthropogenic impacts on the environment; and the diversity within sustainability concept is the way we understand, and act on from various standpoints. The advancement of the sustainability concept relies on the mutuality of the two.