The social environment regarding environmental impact assessment has been dramatically changed recently. In this meeting, we invited the following four NGO members who are engaged in environment impact assessment to introduce their practices and awareness of “Better Assessment”.

・Mr. Seiichi Urashima (TANGO; Association for Protecting Nature in the Windswept Wild Mountains)

・Ms. Kaori Takeda (AM Net:Advocacy and Monitoring Network on Sustainable Development)

・Yoshihiro Natsuhara (Nature Conservation Society of Osaka)

・Hiroyuki Hasegawa (Akishima Environment Forum)

Guests were asked to summarize their remarks in advance on the following three points. a) An overview of the activities being undertaken with regard to development planning. b) What they consider to be the problems of assessment in Japan. c) Expectations for future assessments.

In common with the four guests, the NGOs themselves surveyed the region and, based on their findings, actively expressed their opinions and made recommendations on the state of development. Based on such practices. The following five points were generally raised as the way forward for future impact assessments.

(1) Promote impact assessment through community-based research and information exchange

(2) Conduct impact assessment from the perspective of sustainability of local communities

(3) Effective impact assessment from the planning stage

(4) Involvement of independent experts

(5) Support by local environmental administration for voluntary research and learning activities by local residents

62 people attended this meeting, including those online.

Sustainability Assessment (SA) is widely recognized as a fundamental tool for shaping a sustainable society by integrating consideration of environmental, economic, and social impacts in various decision-making, unlike conventional EIA or SEA. On the other hand, there are few examples of SA in Japan, and discussions toward its institutionalization have not kicked off. This paper summarizes the international discussions on SA and the concerns of issues on SA that have been presented, focusing on key pieces of literature. This paper also shares the purpose and future research activities of the Study Group on SA, which was established within the Japan Society for Impact Assessment, to develop discussions on SA in the academic society.

The mayor's opinion on the Environmental Impact Assessment Brief for the 2025 Japan International Exposition in accordance with Osaka City ordinances requested that the developer take special conservation measures for the habitat of living creatures on Yumeshima, the site of the exposition. Despite the mayor's opinion, the construction work to fill in the wetlands, which are habitats for living creatures, is continuing. In response to this situation, a local nature conservation group demanded a moratorium on the construction and filed a request for a community audit. This report presents a case in which a residents' group used other laws as a means to ensure the effectiveness of the environmental assessment.

In this study, we investigated the actual state of pollution in sewage, which is considered to be a pollution source of marine microplastics. As a result, the MPs number density was 1,500 / m³ to 2,000 / m³ (median). At this sewage treatment plant, more than 99% of 100µ-5mm microplastics were recovered. This is equivalent to the amount recovered from previous studies, confirming that the sewage treatment plant functions as one of the MPs recovery. However, when simple discharge is carried out, the number density of MPs tends to increase. The size of microplastics in sewage tended to decrease as the number density increased.