Public policies to nourish"slow"businesses under environmental risks

商务这个词常与“快速”或“迅速”联系在一起。然而，在当前的环境风险下，“缓慢”的概念似乎变得重要。快速地做事情需要大量的资源，尤其是能量。另一方面，我们可以通过缓慢地做事来减少对环境的影响，例如在自然过程的帮助下。然而，“慢”与“商”一直被认为是水火不容的。我们的研究目的是阐明公共政策如何以兼容的方式帮助连接“慢”和“商业”。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其消费者之间缺乏沟通。信息鸿沟造成了“慢”和“快（或常规）”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，这就传递了慢的质量更低的信息。在加拿大，有机食品市场的表现比日本好，消费者似乎更关注他们购买的东西。“慢”企业更渴望向消费者传达有关其产品或服务的信息。在这方面，公共部门必须向企业提供援助。政府的另一个作用是为企业在某个领域提供指导或标准。我们参加了许多国内/国际会议。其中包括2004年5月应韩国科学院邀请，在首尔作的题为“全球化的作用和科学家在亚洲经济中的作用”的演讲。我们还邀请了一些演讲者。2006年3月，马西斯瓦克纳格尔博士和和田良彦博士加入我们，讨论如何将生态足迹分析应用于政策制定过程。该项目的成果已发表在本报告所列的各种期刊上。

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.