Kazuhiko Takemoto

Kazuhiko Takemoto is Senior Advisor to the Japanese Minister of the Environment and Programme Director and Senior Fellow at United Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies, based in Yokohama, Japan. As part of his role with UN University, Mr. Takemoto runs a number of environment and sustainability programmes and he currently chairs the UN Interagency Committee for the Decade on Education for Sustainable Development, which includes UNESCO, UNDP and the United Nations Environment Programme, among others.

Prior to these appointments, he developed policies on international environmental cooperation and global environment as Vice-Minister for Global Environment Affairs. He also served as a Director-General of the Environmental Management Bureau, responsible for air and water quality management. Mr. Takemoto also served as the Alternate President for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) and as Vice Chair of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Environment Policy Committee. He received his Master Degree in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University SAIS and a Bachelor Degree in Engineering in Environmental Planning from the University of Tokyo.