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Lecture Abstract:  National governments the world over face the formidable challenge of figuring out how to sustain or enhance economic prosperity while contributing to the global effort to ensure environmental sustainability.  The Government of Japan, together with the business community and civil society, have been wrestling with this issue for several decades.  Japan has promoted the development and implementation of new products and services, urged commercial exports of environmental technologies and implemented stringent environmental protection measures.  While far from the only nation seeking to produce "Green Growth," the Government of Japan has encouraged a wide range of technological innovations, from electric and fuel cell vehicles and smart grid implementations to futuristic technologies designed to convert energy from outer space into electricity on earth.  The Green Growth strategy remains largely untested, in part because of the inherent contradictions of seeking to expand economic activity while conserving energy, reducing pollution, and constraining the  environmental impact of human beings. This presentation examined Japan’s commercial developments service innovations and explored the lessons to be learned from the Japanese approach to the promotion of Green Growth.  

Speaker Bio:  Dr. Carin Holroyd is President, Japan Studies Association of Canada and Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan.  She has published extensively on aspects of Japan’s international trade, commercial relations with Canada, and national innovation policies in Japan.  Her books include Government, International Trade and Laissez Faire Capitalism: Canada, Australia and New Zealand’s Relations with Japan (McGill-Queen’s) and co-authored with Ken Coates, Japan and the Internet Revolution (Palgrave-Macmillan), Innovation Nation: Japanese Science and Technology in the 21st Century (Palgrave¬ Macmillan), Digital Media in East Asia: National Innovation and the Transformation of a Region. (Cambria Press) and The Global Digital Economy (Cambria).  Her most recent book, Green Japan, Environmental Technologies and Economic Growth, will be released by the University of Toronto Press in 2017.