Ricoh Chairperson hands policy proposal on activating event attribution of climate change to Ministry of the Environment as Co-chair of JCLP

TOKYO, June 22, 2023 – Ricoh announced today that Jake Yamashita, its Chairperson and Co-Chair of the Japan Climate Leaders' Partnership (JCLP)^* has delivered a policy proposal on activating event attribution, a scientific analysis, to reveal link between extreme weather and climate change, to Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan on June 16, 2023.

Event attribution is a methodology to reproduce extreme weather events on a supercomputer to determine if global warming is the cause. In recent years, event attribution has been attracting attention due to its capability to analyze correlation between most recent extreme weather events and climate change in a brief period of time with high precision. In Europe and the United States, the scales of event attribution research is large and multiple extreme weather events are swiftly and comprehensively analyzed.

In the proposal, the JCLP seeked expansion of Japan's research system, including budget, structure, and collaboration between ministries and agencies, by leveraging event attribution in Japan, and enhancement of promptness, comprehensiveness, and dissemination in providing information to Japanese society. By this activation, the JCLP hopes to clarify the connection between extreme weather events and climate change and encourage every Japanese citizen to recognize and understand climate change efforts as a personal matter.

The JCLP is a coalition of 242 Japanese companies who hold the firm belief that economic prosperity and sustainability go hand in hand, as of June 2023. Ricoh is a founding member of the JCLP and has continued to stress the importance of climate action through various events organized by the partnership. In addition to Jake Yamashita's keynote speech at the Climate Week NYC in 2018, Ricoh announced its support for the United Nations Global Compact's “Uniting Business and Governments to Recover Better” in 2020. The company is also actively disseminating information and collaborating to achieve this goal.

Ricoh will continue to promote the realization of a sustainable society through active participation in global sustainability-related initiatives in addition to those in Japan, such as JCLP, and advocacy activities.

Left to right: Naoki Nishizawa, Vice President, Members Co., Ltd.;
Jake Yamashita, Chairperson, Ricoh;
Tokuya Wada, Vice-Minister of the Environment;
Hiroko Miyazaki, Managing Director, 3M Japan Limited.

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JCLP is a coalition of businesses in Japan launched in 2009 to encourage the business sector to develop a sound sense of urgency on climate action. It aims to become leading companies necessary on the pathway towards a decarbonized society. As a cross-sectoral business group, it has a membership of 242 including major companies in Japan (as of June, 2023), its total sales are estimated to be ¥130 trillion, and electricity demand together amounts to approx. 65 TWh (including overseas businesses). Since April 2017, JCLP has been the Climate Group's Regional Delivery Partner on RE100, EP100 and EV100 initiatives in Japan. The group is actively working on collaboration with various actors from local governments to international organizations as seen in the signing of a comprehensive partnership agreement with Yokohama City and co-hosting of RE Action, Japan's unique initiative to support small and medium enterprises and other organizations to declare 100% renewable electricity.

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