As someone who lives in Tokyo, I admit I've never seen this before. Not sure about "suddenly everywhere" but if it is I've never come across it. I haven't gone out much since covid but still...
I teach at a public university in Tokyo. “SDGs” is clearly a current buzzword being promoted by government policy in Japan. I subscribe to the paper edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and nearly every day there are multiple advertisements and articles that mention “SDGs,” often prominently.
Not only Japanese companies but also Japanese universities have been quick to adopt it. Some examples of university programs with “SDGs” in their titles are at [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
In my experience, the currently promoted buzzwords are often included in university program names in order to attract government funding. Five or ten years ago, the leading buzzword was “global.” My own university has probably a dozen or more programs with “global” in their titles; my colleagues often remark how hard it is to remember which is which.
Another current buzzword, in both business and academia, is “DX” (digital transformation).
Though the SDGs bandwagon is still going strong, some Japanese commentators have started to question it. A person interviewed in an article posted on Friday to a radio station’s website [6] calls SDGs “fraudulent.” He also notes that Japan leads the world in Google searches for “SDGs,” followed by Zimbabwe.
Not sure it's a pure scam, but it sure is very performative. But then, when you see the number of businesses proudly showing "ISO9001" on their buildings...
As a counterpoint, I see it so frequently you could conceivably describe it as being “everywhere” but it’s mostly within corporations, so you wouldn’t exactly be seeing it on the streets of Shibuya (although you do in fact see it there sometimes too)
Now that you’re aware of it, keep your eyes open and you’ll see it pop up in various spots
It is everywhere, and you'll notice it now that you know about it. I never noticed until I learned about about sometime last year and then I saw it everywhere. It's on suit pins, trucks, businesses, etc.
As someone who lives in a not exactly big but also not quite small city that I wouldn't quite call inaka but my wife does, I've never seen this logo, and not much about SDGs around here, but boy is it all over the media. I remember checking out when the initiative started because I hadn't heard about it even once before suddenly you couldn't spend a day without hearing about it. IIRC, it started in 2014, and somehow, Japan suddenly woke up a year or two ago.
> Whales, the argument goes, consume a ruinous quantity of fish, and controlling their population is critical for preserving the oceans’ diversity. An online video from an industry association recommends eating the mammals “to protect the balance of the marine ecosystem and contribute to marine S.D.G.s!”
Among whales, only the Killer whale and the Pilot whale feed on fish, and they do not consume a ruinous quantity of fish. Only commercial fishing consumes a ruinous, species-extinction level quantity of fish. It is a shame we can't do anything about this sort of ignorance and bias that is engrained in some cultures, nor hardly anything to stop commercial fishing from depleting fish stocks season after season. We are killing the ocean. Once the fish are all gone, they never ever come back from being fished to extinction.
Those goals being: No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, Reduced Inequality, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life On Land, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, Partnerships for the Goals.
All agreeable prospects, but all too vague and hard to define. They're more a wish-list than goals.
For example, what defines poverty? Wages vs the median, or quality of life factors? What makes work "decent"? What does inequality mean in this context, economic, judicial, racial?
Vague aspirational goals sound nice but are rarely met without considering the real decisions that have to be made to meet them. These things are things everyone wants, but what are we willing to sacrifice to meet them?
> All agreeable prospects, but all too vague and hard to define. They're more a wish-list than goals.
> For example, what defines poverty? Wages vs the median, or quality of life factors? What makes work "decent"? What does inequality mean in this context, economic, judicial, racial?
Japan consistently ranks the last of the developed countries on gender equality[1], and they kill hundreds of dolphins a year in a frowned-upon manner[2], so are there any specific measures Japan is taking or is it all posturing?
And they’ve been hovering around that and on a trajectory of slow decrease long before this SDG thing is “suddenly everywhere”, so I doubt SDG has anything to do with it. This vacuous SDG thing sounds like bureaucrats and corporatists finding something to do to justify their jobs. It’s like trying to refactor working code into using abstract class factory factories.
You're probably right about that, but I'm just saying that "They kill dolphins!" is a low-effort remark, when America is doing much more damage to the ocean via CO2 emission.
There are many axis of taking care of the environment, and CO2 emissions is fairly (but not completely) independent from killing dolphins in a cruel way. This unfortunately makes it so that comparing how environmentally friendly one country is from another is very tricky.
To be fair it's a resource poor (having only modest coal deposits) nation for electricity generation that idled most of their nuclear reactors after Fukushima. That greatly increases their carbon output.
It's actually renewable-heavy, I don't know the details (which might be important here) but Japan is very rich in wind and water resources, so solar, eolic and hydro could be major players. If only there weren't usual typhoons and floods and earthquakes that could make those nonviable (that's why details might be important).
Why the random mention of dolphins? The ones being hunted aren’t at risk of extinction.
It’s not as bad as cattle farming, which is straight up destroying the environment in several ways, from clear cutting rainforests to feed them to filling the air with methane.
Eating dolphinidae has proven to cause brain impairment in human children and babies, so will affect the public health, one of the objectives of this thing. Because cetaceans will typically bioaccumulate heavy metals and toxic products in its fat.
> The ones being hunted aren’t at risk of extinction.
Cetaceans travel huge distances so... how much are "too much" dolphins? 1000 dolphins in a bay can seem a lot but, what if is 1000 for the entire Mediterranean?
If a machine comes with 30 screws, you just don't remove 20 screws randomly and expect the machine work as well as before. Is clearly a bad idea. Top predators provide environmental services for free, that are extremely expensive or impossible to replace. When we broke it, is broken for a long, long time, at least the rest of our lives.
On the contrary, the fact that SDGs became buzzwords is likely tied to the fact that Japan does well or can market itself as doing well in most of these indicators. Obviously gender equality is a glaring problem, but you'll notice they rebranded whaling (and possibly dolphin hunting if we dig into it) as controlling the fish population as per the article. Their systemic issues such as a greying population are not in the SDGs because Japan is essentially a snapshot of what awaits developed economies in the future rather than anything to do with the struggles of development.
I don’t know. The train I take sometimes have SDG wrapping, the ads on TV always mention SDG and the Starbucks have been asking me whether I want my coffee without lid (futa nashi), so they must really care about it /s
If you go here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals#goals then click on each goal, its expanded in more detail, including implementation targets, of which there are over 150.
Many, especially governments, have definitions of poverty which are statistical, either percentile or a proportion of median income which makes it either actually impossible (there will always be a bottom n percent) or practically impossible (nobody earning less than half median wages).
I won't be surprised if those in the upper/ruling class considers maintaining a certain level of homelessness and unemployment as appropriate motivation to keep the working class in line.
for evidence that this is mostly bullshit, look no further than bizarre things like this:
> Whales, the argument goes, consume a ruinous quantity of fish, and controlling their population is critical for preserving the oceans’ diversity. An online video from an industry association recommends eating the mammals “to protect the balance of the marine ecosystem and contribute to marine S.D.G.s!”
It is fascinating that whales have found a way to be both an endangered species, and an overpopulated ocean scourge (as an apex predator, no less) at the same time!
While I agree that is a fairly comical quote, I also think it’s an oversimplification to say that whales are “an endangered species”. There are many different species of whale, some of which are endangered and some are not. The humpback whale, for example, is no longer listed as endangered as of 2022.
I don’t think that’s relevant to the discussion here, because Japan does not hunt Right whales. Japan’s fishing ministry only allows hunting of Minke, Bryde’s, and Sei whales [1] - and in limited numbers which would not endanger the overall population of those species.
> The humpback whale, for example, is no longer listed as endangered as of 2022.
I see, so , humpback whale population has just crossed the line of no longer being an endangered species, *this year*. So did they overnight become an environmental pest that is decimating the fish population? I am going to guess you would say no. So I don't think your comment is relevant to the actual point being made. If OTOH you are just applying some factual editing so that my amazing comment can be printed in a newspaper, let's clean up that language sure!
I was just pointing out what I think is a major flaw in your logic. I think it’s entirely possible to have some stocks of whale which are endangered, and other stocks of whale that are not endangered and are eating large amounts of fish and krill.
Do I think that whales are decimating fish populations? Probably not, but I would need to see some data to say with any degree of certainty. And again, this is something you would need to look at in terms of local whale stocks and fisheries vs. just looking at all whales as a whole.
> So I don't think your comment is relevant to the actual point being made. If OTOH you are just applying some factual editing so that my amazing comment can be printed in a newspaper, let's clean up that language sure!
I think it is relevant to point out flawed logic or overly simplistic thinking in pretty much any discussion - regardless of whether or not it will be printed in a newspaper.
> I was just pointing out what I think is a major flaw in your logic. I think it’s entirely possible to have some stocks of whale which are endangered, and other stocks of whale that are not endangered and are eating large amounts of fish and krill.
OK see this is where you are wasting everyone's time. Japanese whaling fleets are targeting those exact whale populations that *are* endangered. Most of the international community opposes their practices and there are many international protections on various whale species that the Japanese whalers simply ignore. pointing out "flaws" in what random people are saying about some random NYT article that mentions it is irrelevant to understanding what is actually going in the world, things that are true and actually happening that you can confirm (or whatever you feel like) on your own, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Japan.
> Do I think that whales are decimating fish populations? Probably not, but I would need to see some data to say with any degree of certainty. And again, this is something you would need to look at in terms of local whale stocks and fisheries vs. just looking at all whales as a whole.
your time then would be better spent *researching that* instead of wasting it nitpicking people. If I make a comment here, my audience are those people interested in making good faith interpretations. Sitting back and saying "hmmm, what if whales DO actually eat too much fish, and maybe the Japanese are only hunting whales that are not endangered? Here's one that's stopped being endangered for 8 months! ah HA! a flaw!" that's what we call a "bad faith" interpretation. it's non-constructive and reveals you aren't really very curious about the actual issue. I am not very interested in word games myself.
> I think it is relevant to point out flawed logic or overly simplistic thinking in pretty much any discussion - regardless of whether or not it will be printed in a newspaper.
The argument made by Japanese whalers in that quote is clearly idiotic, which you can confirm through a little bit of googling, where you would then know more about the subject. Correcting people who are failing to convince you of something due to small inaccuracies in their language OTOH fails to teach you anything new at all.
Put another way. an actual rebuttal to my comment would be, "I'm a marine biologist, and here are whale species X, Y and Z that are not endangered at all, to which the ecosystem is now being improved thanks to the Japanese whaling industry wiping out a third of them, and here's why the vast majority of the international oceanic community is wrong on this issue in their opposition to Japan's killing fleets". That would be some argument for sure, since it doesnt exist, but if one did, would at least be an informed comment that's valuable to the discussion.
> Japanese whaling fleets are targeting those exact whale populations that are endangered.
But the wikipedia article you linked basically says the exact opposite - that Antarctic Minke whales are not designated as threatened:
> Their objective is to hunt 3,000 Antarctic minke whales over 10 years, starting with 330 whales during the 2015–16 season.[citation needed] Antarctic minke whales have experienced an apparent decline in population, though the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that it lacks sufficient data to confer a threatened designation on the species of minke whale.
It also says:
> The 1985 IWC estimate put the Southern Hemisphere minke whale population at 761,000 (510,000–1,140,000 in the 95% confidence estimate).[179] A paper submitted to the IWC on population estimates in Antarctic waters using CNB gives a population of 665,074 based on Southern Ocean Whale and Ecosystem Research Programme (SOWER) data.[180]
So Japan is planning to kill about 300 Minke whales a year out of a population of 500,000 or so (using the lowest estimates from the wikipedia page). That’s about 0.06% of the population per year, which definitely does not seem like enough threaten the survival of the species.
With regards to:
> Correcting people who are failing to convince you of something due to small inaccuracies in their language OTOH fails to teach you anything new at all
In my opinion the inaccuracies in your comments thus far go far beyond mere "language" issues. I don't think any amount of careful rewording would fix them. These are factual and logical misunderstandings that are core to the very point you are trying to make.
I also believe that I am acting in good faith by engaging with the things you have written so far and browsing the article that you have linked. If you have more evidence that you would like to cite to support your views (ideally something a bit more specific than telling me to "research it" on my own - citing the fact and then providing a link to the source is the generally accepted standard), I would be happy to have a look.
first off there are many examples in that article of currently endangered whale species still being killed by Japanese whalers. I did not say anything about "Minke" whales specifically. Per the article, killing of endangered species continues:
> Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994,[141] but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales.
Secondly, the actual point is that Japanese whalers claim existing whale populations are bad for the environment because such populations are too large, which is ridiculous, given the endangered, recently endangered, or nearly endangered status of most of the whale species they have targeted, not to mention apex predators are not prone to overpopulation since they rely on lower levels of the food chain to survive. It does not matter which species are currently endangered and which are not. It is not my burden to disprove a made up fact.
> So Japan is planning to kill about 300 Minke whales a year out of a population of 500,000 or so (using the lowest estimates from the wikipedia page). That’s about 0.06% of the population per year, which definitely does not seem like enough threaten the survival of the species.
nor would it therefore have any impact on reducing overconsumption of other fish species, which is their actual claim, if in fact their population reduction across all whale species is extremely low.
> In my opinion the inaccuracies in your comments thus far go far beyond mere "language" issues. I don't think any amount of careful rewording would fix them. These are factual and logical misunderstandings that are core to the very point you are trying to make.
you are clearly very skilled at language which makes it all the more clear that your continued intentional misunderstanding of a point I was making is not constructive.
> Japanese whaling fleets are targeting those exact whale populations that are endangered
And the evidence you have cited was this line from a wikipedia article:
> Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994,[141] but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales.
There are a number of different issues here:
> Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994 ,[141]
This ended nearly 30 years ago, so I will ignore as it is not relevant to the discussion of what Japan is currently doing. (That citation from the wikipedia article is also completely bogus - if you visit the link you will find an article written in 1818 (!) that has been translated to Chinese. So definitely not about modern Japanese whaling.)
> intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales
Issues here are:
* No citation given in the wikipedia article
* Saying it happens in “unknown scales” provides no indication of the size of the problem. Is is 1 per year or 1000?
* “intentional” appears to be a typo here. “By-catch” by definition means the unintentional capture of non-targeted species.
So to recap - you made a claim earlier that Japanese are targeting endangered species. And then as justification you referenced an improperly cited claim about something that ended 30 years ago, and an un-cited claim about by-catches - which is very much not the same thing as targeting endangered species. There is absolutely nothing here to justify your claim.
By the way, I do think that by-catch is a real issue that is estimated to kill 300,000 cetaceans every year [1]. So many orders of magnitude more impactful than Japanese whaling. But it is a global issue inherent to commercial fishing rather than an issue with Japanese fishing in particular.
> It is not my burden to disprove a made up fact.
I’ll remind you that this whole thread started precisely because you did attempt to disprove this claim. If your position is simply that “This seems like an unlikely claim, but I have no evidence to disprove it” - then that’s perfectly reasonable. But based on the arguments and evidence you have put forth so far, any degree of confidence in your opinion beyond that is completely unjustified.
And finally, I would just like to point out one more inaccuracy in your most recent comment for good measure:
> not to mention apex predators are not prone to overpopulation since they rely on lower levels of the food chain to survive
Baleen whales (which are the types that are targeted by Japanese whalers) are not considered apex predators since they feed primarily on krill and smaller fish. So basically they are competing with fish for the same food source.
The last time I felt the U.S. as a country had a goal that was outward looking, forward looking was when we were adopting the Metric System back in the early 70's when I was in elementary school.
Okinawa is derided as being "a time warp 10 years behind mainland Japan". The first Don Quixote was opened shortly after I got here (2011? 2012?), we just got 7-11 konbinis within the past 5 years, and we are still waiting for our 1st Costco to be built.
I've never seen these wheels. Maybe in 2032? shrug
When people hear the word 'propaganda' often what springs to mind are relics of the cold war: gritty soviet posters; or GI Joe. This is what the propaganda of the 21st century looks like, however.
No one is really talking about how all these goals are already incorporated into your local administrative region's development plan. Normally, if you search 'xxregion development plan' you get a document of what is planned - more bikes lanes, less cars, denser housing, etc. The documents are very similar everywhere. And this is because they are working off the same templates. I'm not sure about this but I understand there are monetary incentives given for the implementation of the goals.
Which is to say, that without a vote being cast, these plans are being implemented locally across the world.
If that's correct, is this not a UN takeover of government? Yes, worthy words around the goals etc, but aren't the people allowed a choice, with understanding, about what's coming their way?
In democratic countries, if it’s being implemented by the local authorities, you can’t really say it’s ‘without a vote being cast’. Elected representatives of the people have bought into the ideas. They’re not only allowed a choice, they’re actively making one.
In the other direction, the UN only exists because nation states voluntarily choose to be a part of it. It’s not some external force.
Did you vote for the UN to manage your what your local authority does?
Are you not at all concerned that there is an organisation that is deciding what to promote, and that there is little you can do, once you 'elected representative' waves through whatever is proposed to them? And did you realise when you voted for your elected representative, that they were going to accept(/refuse) the UN sustainable development goals and implement them locally?
