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Yurika Ayukawa

Yurika Ayukawa
Fall 1996 Fellow
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Yurika Ayukawa
Fall 1996 Fellow
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Major Fellowship Activities: Ayukawa created an electronic newsletter to combine issues of plutonium disposition from dismantled nuclear warheads and the civil use of plutonium.  It intends to provide the readers an inter-connected relations of civil and military use of plutonium. She also worked to support PSR’s public education efforts on fissile material disposition policy issues.

Current Activities: Ayukawa is Professor Emeritus of Chiba University of Commerce. In addition, she is a Director of and helped to establish CUC Energy Company, Inc. The company helps Chiba University of Commerce with funding for the necessary investments to make the university 100% renewable in all energy including gas and heat by 2020. She is currently working on more solar PVs on the rooftop of all the buildings on the campus. She is a member of the Board of Director of the Sompo Japan Koa Environmental Foundation, which sends university students for internships at environmental NGOs for seven months, is a Steering Committee Member of the Japan Trust for Global Environment, funded by Mitsui Sumitomo Trust Bank and organized by Global Environmental Forum, and is an Advisor to the Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy.

She has retired as a professor at Chiba University of Commerce in the Faculty of Policy Informatics teaching environmental issues, energy and climate, and the UN negotiations related to environment and sustainability. In June 2011 she received a Com Sophia Award from the Sophia University Alumni Association for the work she has done on MOX plutonium fuel and industry, especially the translation of the book by IPPNW titled “The MOX Industry or The Civilian Use of Plutonium.” She was interviewed on “Democracy Now” following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

In August 2012, she became the founding member of a group to make a Nuclear Phase Out Legislation, mainly led by lawyers. She also coordinated an Civil Society Policy Forum Event, “Post Fukushima – The Role of the Financial Sector in Energy Future” held by Takagi Fund for Citizen Science, in October at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meeting in Tokyo. Since November 2012, she serves as the Chairperson at the Ichikawa City Council’s Environment Committee, working to draw up a Biodiversity Strategy for the City of Ichikawa, Chiba prefecture where her university is located. In April, 2013, she became an advisor to Citizens’ Committee on Nuclear Energy, sponsored by Takagi Fund for Citizen Science. She also became a Board Member of Greenpeace Japan.

Prior to her current work, she worked at World Wide Fund for Nature in Japan till 2008, as a Special Advisor , and before that the group leader of  to the Climate Change Program where she was involved in the UNFCCC international negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol and its future, trying to introduce a cap and trade emissions trading scheme in Japan, working with businesses to initiate a voluntary reduction scheme (Climate Savers), and informing the public about the urgency of the issue. She was also the Deputy Representative of the “2008 G8 NGO Forum, ” Deputy Director of the Climate Action Network Japan. She also worked as, and a member of the Japanese Ministry of Environment’s “Capacity Building of Environmental Human Resources at Universities in Asia” Committee, “Carbon Tax Committee” and “Kyoto Mechanisms Committee”.

In 2009 she worked as a consultant for Greenpeace International to follow the negotiations towards Copenhagen COP15 in December 2009. She served on the board of the Green Energy Certification Center, a private organization partly funded by the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy. She was a Special Professor at Osaka University Research Institute for Sustainable Science, and a part-time lecturer at several other universities. She has appeared on NHK TV several times speaking about WWF’s Climate Change Campaigns and about whereabouts of the Climate negotiation by the UNFCCC. She has been quoted numerous times in various media including CNN and BBC and other international newspapers.