Osamu Saito

Osamu Saito is an Academic Programme Officer, UNU – Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), and Visiting Associate Professor, the University of Tokyo. As an expert in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services, he has been working on the interlinkages between ecological, human and social systems through sustainability science approaches. His research experiences include socio-ecological studies on the ecosystem services provided by traditional rural production landscapes (Satoyama) in both Japan and other Asian countries. As a coordinating lead author (CLA) of the chapter on the conceptual framework, he significantly contributed to Japan Satoyama-Satoumi Assessment(JSSA) which is one of the sub-global ecosystem assessment conducted in Japan from 2006 to 2010. At UNU he has been also actively promoting various activities for Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for the last three years. He has been a managing editor of the Sustainability Science journal published by Springer since 2011.