IPoS 2009 – “Food, Energy and Water”
The IPoS 2009 summer session was held in Rayong Province, Thailand, 1-12 August. The theme was “Food, Energy and Water”. These are closely related with each other. Water and energy are necessary for food production. Energy can be produced either by growing crops (as energy crops) using water or by using water in hydropower stations. Using large amounts of energy, fresh water can be gained from seawater through desalination, or agricultural water use can be avoided by importing food from other countries (the virtual water trade). In this way, relationships among food, energy and water are very complicated and differ from place to place depending on local conditions.
Through this theme, IPoS 2009 tried to let students notice that there are different dimensions to sustainability issues in the world, different framings and different disciplines, and then tried to foster their capability for multi-cultural and multi- and trans-disciplinary collaboration. At the end of the course, students prepared presentations in groups, and the students and staff voted to award the “Best Presentation” and “Professor Sumi Prize” to two groups.
Though the process in which the students with such multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary backgrounds worked together to solve sustainability issues was very hard, the outcome obtained from the active and exciting discussion was very great.

Nissan Workshop 2009

Most of the students of the summer IPoS course came back to strengthen their friendships, collaboration, and understanding at the Nissan Workshop in December in Yokosuka, Japan. The theme “Sustainable mobility with zero emission vehicles” challenged the students to think about best scenarios and design proposals for how zero emission vehicles could create sustainable mobility in different kinds of city – under different levels of density, compactness, and transport nodes.

More information at Intensive Program on Sustainability (IPoS) website