Kazuhiko Takemoto is a Programme Director and Senior Fellow at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies and Senior Advisor to the Japanese Minister of the Environment. He currently chairs the UN Interagency Committee for the Decade on Education for Sustainable Development. Previously he was Vice-Minister for Global Environment Affairs and Director-General of the Environmental Management Bureau, as well as Alternate President for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s tenth Conference of the Parties and Vice Chair of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Environment Policy Committee.