NYK donated ten million yen to Akita prefecture to improve the water quality and conserve the environment of Lake Hachiro. The prefecture will use the donation to support the below three activities selected as the subsidy programs of its project to promote water quality conservation for Lake Hachiro.
| Party | Program | |
| １ | Kageyama Lab. Akita University Graduate School of Engineering Science Faculty of Engineering Science |
Filming the surface of Lake Hachiro with a drone equipped with a multi-spectrum camera, which visualizes information invisible to the human eye, and estimating water conditions utilizing AI. Assessing the effect of water quality conservation measures and investigating the mechanism of water contamination. |
| ２ | Conference for Maintaining Beautiful Lake Hachiro in Future | Establishing an experimental site for the proliferation of freshwater clams, where they filer Lake Hachiro into their bodies and it. purify . |
| ３ | Nonprofit Organization (NPO) Hachiro Project | Installing “Mogurium”* in neighboring areas for environmental studies in elementary schools and other activities. *Observation tank for growing seeds of Mogu, a water plant collected from the stratum of Hachirogata (Hachiro Lagoon) before the reclamation. |
Lake Hachiro, located around 20km north of Akita city, is the remaining part of Hachirogata (Hachiro Lagoon) in the reclamation works commenced in 1957. The lake water originates from around twenty small or medium-length rivers. It is desalinated by a tide gate installed between Japan Sea and utilized for agriculture in neighboring cities. Furthermore, the lake brings many blessings to the people, such as the fishing industry, where pond smelt and glassfish are the primary species. Meanwhile, the lake’s eutrophication is gradually progressing, and thus the water contamination, such as the plague of water-bloom, is becoming apparent.
Improving the water quality of Lake Hachiro will reduce malodor to the neighborhood residents, promote agriculture and fisheries, and conserve the lake’s biodiversity, such as the birds and fish living there and migratory birds. Furthermore, as Lake Hachiro is discharged to the Japan Sea when it exceeds the controlled water level or upon floods, improving its water quality will contribute to the conservation of the ocean environment.
In February 2022, NYK concluded the comprehensive partnership agreement, which includes initiatives for environmental conservation, with Akita Prefecture. Based on these circumstances, NYK donated ten million yen as a part of the “Return on Earth” initiative, which NYK indicated in “NYK Group ESG Story,” aiming at giving back to the oceans, earth, and the people.
In November 2022, an event of reaping amorpha fruticosa, a shrub causing the worse view around the lake, was held in Mitane town (Yamamoto District, Akita Prefecture) as part of Akita prefecture’s project to conserve the water condition of Lake Hachiro. Tatsuya Shimomura, the General Manager of NYK’s Akita branch, was named as a participant.
Based on the Group’s corporate philosophy of contributing to the realization of a better global society, the Group will actively promote efforts to resolve social issues.
Location of Lake Hachiro and neighboring municipalities
（OpenStreetMap
）
From left, NYK president Hitoshi Nagasawa with Akita Prefecture governor Norihisa Satake,
holding an inventory of the donation (May 2022)
The reaping event of amorpha fruticose (November 2022)
On March 10, 2023, the NYK Group released its medium-term management plan, “Sail Green, Drive Transformations 2026 — A Passion for Planetary Wellbeing.” The NYK Group is promoting growth strategies with ESG at the core, based on the Group’s basic philosophy of “Bringing value to life” and a new corporate vision for 2030, which reads, “we go beyond the scope of a comprehensive global logistics enterprise to co-create value required for the future by advancing our core business and growing new ones.”
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