At the G7 Summit held in the UK in June 2021, G7 leaders agreed the G7 2030 Nature Positive and all G7 countries pledged to conserve or protect at least 30% of their national land and sea areas by 2030 (‘30by30’) toward the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss (nature positive).

Toward domestically achieving the 30by30 target, Japan has launched the 30by30 Alliance for Biodiversity at the initiative of the Ministry of the Environment. In addition to expanding Japan’s current protected areas such as national parks and improving its management quality, a scheme is implemented to register areas that have been conserved by the private sector and others as OECM*.

In June 2022, our company joined the 30by30 Alliance for Biodiversity, aiming to obtain OECM certification for the “Ikoi no Mori” biotope at the Shizuoka Plant and to contribute to the conservation of 30% of land and sea by 2030.

As part of its efforts to achieve nature positive, the Ministry of the Environment started a system in 2023 to certify areas that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity as a result of initiatives by the private sector and others (i.e. corporate forests, satochi-satoyama landscapes and urban green spaces) as OECM. Applications were accepted from April this year and experts reviewed them. The Minister of the Environment designated 122 locations (across 35 prefectures) as OECMs for the first time. The total area of these 122 locations is approximately 77,000 hectares, which is approximately 0.2% of the total land of Japan, exceeding Tokyo’s 23 wards.

In the Shizuoka Plant of Sumitomo Bakelite Co., Ltd., 2100 Takayanagi, Fujieda, Shizuoka 426-0041
For reserving tours, see the website.

The results of an investigation into the relationship between the business sites of our Group worldwide and protected areas where biodiversity is considered important indicated that none of our business sites were located in these areas. Although not a protected area, the results of an ecosystem survey conducted in fiscal 2011 at the site of our Shizuoka Plant located in Fujieda City, Shizuoka Prefecture, confirmed the presence of Japanese killifish, a vulnerable species (VU). After determining the strong need for preserving the biodiversity of this site, we decided to create a company biotope. The creation and maintenance of the biotope were completed in March 2017. The biotope, which occupies about 5% of the Shizuoka Plant’s 287,000m2 site, serves as a habitat for a wide variety of fauna and flora, including ancient Oga lotus and jewel beetles, among others, in addition to Japanese killifish.

We continue to engage in communication with local communities, such as by spreading the word on the significance of our biotope for biodiversity to the community and supplying some of the Japanese killifish that have taken root and multiplied within our biotope to neighboring locations.

In fiscal 2023, the biotope was opened to the public for the first time after three years and there were 113 visitors. We continue to engage in dialogue with neighboring elementary schools regarding biodiversity conservation efforts centered on the biotope, and as in the previous year, we have responded to requests for visiting guest lessons at schools, field trips using the biotope, and other activities. We provided a total of approximately 60 killifish to three elementary schools in the neighborhood, and gave a visiting guest lesson at four schools (330 students in total) on how to conserve southern medaka while introducing our SDG initiatives. In addition, two field trip visits to the biotope were held (total of 228 students), one in the spring and the other in the fall, and a set of visiting guest lessons and a tour of the biotope were provided for one class (86 students) as in the previous fiscal year.