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Dr. Kanako Morita, is a senior researcher at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, a project assistant professor at Keio University, a visiting research fellow at the United Nations University – Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, and a visiting researcher at National Institute for Environmental Studies. She is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report Working Group III Chapter 15 Investment and finance, and was a contributing author for the Fifth Assessment Report Working Group III Chapter 7 Energy systems.

She earned her Ph.D. from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2010. She attended the Young Scientist Summer Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in 2005, and was a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara from 2006 to 2007. From 2010 to 2013, she worked at the National Institute for Environmental Studies as a research associate.

Her research interests focus on the effectiveness of climate change, biodiversity, forest, and renewable energy-related institutions, the links between international environmental regimes, and the effectiveness of sustainable development goals. Her background is in international relations and development financing, and she uses interdisciplinary approaches to address the above issues. She has been studying effective governance and financial mechanisms for the Sustainable Development Goals adopted at the UN Summit in 2015, and climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation (with a focus on energy, ecosystems, and forestry sectors), under research funds from the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan.

Furthermore, she has been studying effective governance and financing options to meet the needs of sustainable development, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation in countries in the Asia-Pacific region (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Samoa, Fiji, Tuvalu, Vietnam, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand). Since 2010, she attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP16, COP17, COP18, COP19, COP22, COP23, COP24; the Convention on Biological Diversity COP10, COP 11, COP12; the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification COP10; and intersessional meetings as a member of the Japanese delegation.

 

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