Waseda Center for a Carbon Neutral SocietyWaseda University

Waseda University began a university-wide minor system in 2007, and all undergraduate students, irrespective of whether they belong to humanities or sciences faculties, are required to acquire another specialty besides their major and receive a wide-ranging of education.
We  established the Carbon Neutrality Leader minor on the theme of carbon neutrality in AY 2022. This minor  serves as an educational program that is open to all undergraduate students, across the humanities and sciences, and our aim is to foster human resources who can promote carbon neutrality from a global perspective, not only while they are enrolled at Waseda University but also after they graduate, and do so all across Japan, all across the world, and across all industries.

This minor is aimed at having students become carbon neutrality leaders with a broad and deep intellect. Students will acquire knowledge and information directly related to carbon neutrality, such as international trends related to climate change, the development and social implementation of technologies that contribute to carbon neutrality, and information about domestic and international energy situations, as well as fundamental knowledge about the whole carbon neutrality field, including the legal, economic, and scientific and engineering knowledge that form the basis of carbon neutrality efforts such as the environmental economy, environmental regulations, and resource recycling.

Carbon neutrality is being pursued in a variety of forms across government, industry and academia, that is to say private businesses, government agencies, and educational/research institutes, and the knowledge and thinking gained through this minor can be put to good use in any field in the future.
Additionally, even if students with this minor do not have the opportunity to work directly on carbon neutrality in the future, the methods and approaches gained through this minor, of humanities-sciences fusion to solve problems, can be utilized and applied to solve a variety of other problems they encounter that do not have a single correct answer.