UTokyo-Cambridge Voices: Resilience and Global Risks

The UTokyo-Cambridge Voices Series titled “Resilience and Global Risks” was held as part of the strategic partnership agreement between the University of Tokyo and the University of Cambridge. The speakers included Dr. Matthijs Maas, postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge and Hideaki Shiroyama, professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo. The session was moderated by Yee-Kuang Heng, professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo.

Maas first introduced CSER, an interdisciplinary research center within the University of Cambridge which aims for the study and mitigation of risks with providing advice to various stakeholders and institutions, including the UK government. He then raised a question about how to reconfigure a national resilience strategy to effectively reckon with global catastrophic and existential risks and conveyed his analysis on CSER’s submission to the UK National Resilience Strategy. CSER’s interdisciplinary team of experts covered both conceptual insights and practical policy and institutional recommendations in response to the the new resilience strategy. Notably, they suggested three points which should be developed: elucidating the approach to both resilience in general as well as global catastrophic and existential risks; taking a long-term approach to responding to the challenges posed by these risks; and developing a more comprehensive and global strategy. Responding to Maas’s presentation, Professor Heng agreed on the need for a holistic understanding of the risk landscape given how the risks that we face today are overlapping and interconnected, the close links between national resilience and global resilience, and the need to further develop the global governance ecosystem which remains fragmented.

Professor Shiroyama began by analyzing Japan’s responses to complex risks, using the two cases of the Fukushima nuclear accident and COVID-19 and addressed some of the challenges with both. He particularly emphasized incomplete interdisciplinary communication, the relationship between science and politics, especially regarding agenda setting function of science after the accident/ incident, and the possibility of institutionalizing all hazard approach. Based on the lessons from the two cases, he suggested a possible institutional mechanism of resilient governance for managing complex risks. For options, he recommended the possibility of coordination under an integrated system, preparedness and resilience under a certain time frame, measures to disconnect or disaggregate connectivity, or a flexible situation-based approach to manage risks under different types of time dimensions. Professor Heng agreed with the challenges in interdisciplinary communication, not only in the nuclear regulatory sector but also the coordination of discourses in COVID-19 and underlined the question of why some risk analyses are discarded or not heard. Finally, he posed the important question of human resources and capacity, and the issue of how experts can more proactively frame the agenda.

Professor Heng asked two questions about terminology, particularly, to what extent terminology is commonly shared across different stakeholders and different disciplines, as well as perceptions of time horizons, including long-term risk trends and the specific time frames for resilience planning in the Japanese context. Dr. Maas responded that while academics underlined the importance of subtle differences between risk-related terms, the same policies are often applied to different risks and disasters aimed at ensuring resilience. He also elaborated on the significance of long-term perspectives to deal with the changing risk landscape and the potential risks that are potentially emerge on longer time scales. Professor Shiroyama addressed the difficulties in having common definitions between different stakeholders with different perspectives. He lauded the Japanese development of the concept of a “complex disaster” after the Fukushima accident and suggested that it provides a conceptual ground to better prepare for future risk trends, such as natural disasters that may occur concurrently during a pandemic. He also agreed that different time horizons are required according to different types of risk but conveyed his concern over the organization of long-term planning for future nuclear accidents with different stimuli and dynamics.

The two speakers also discussed audience questions about how we can implement risk governance decisions that may run counter to corporate profit-seeking motivations and how far we can expect banks to be prepared for various risks, such as earthquakes, pandemics, cyberattacks or terrorist attacks. The speakers finally shared their opinions on what educational institutions should do for human resource development in order to better cope with present and future risks.