05 December 2025 – Yoshitsugu Hayashi, Executive Committee member of the Club of Rome and President of its Japanese Association, has spent his life weaving together science, policy and humanity. He reflects on his work with communications fellow Yvonne Wambua.
When you reflect on your own life’s journey, was there a turning point where you realised that system change was not just necessary, but urgent?
Yes, vividly. In Bangkok in the early 1990s, I witnessed millions of people losing hours of their lives every day to traffic congestion, with no railways to relieve them. As chair of a Japanese Aid Project, I helped introduce the city’s first urban rail systems. At the start, hardly anyone believed in the idea. Yet within 25 years, Bangkok built over 300 kilometres of railway. Compare that to Tokyo, which took nearly 90 years to achieve a similar scale.
That experience crystallised something for me: systemic change is not a distant dream but a matter of political will, vision and empathy for the daily suffering of citizens. The urgency became undeniable when I saw how infrastructure inequality directly affected people’s lives, their health, their time with family, their very dignity.
Your work often measures success by how it improves everyday life—access to hospitals, safety, the environment. What inspired you to centre human wellbeing in transport planning?
Because safety and opportunity are profoundly unequal. Air pollution silently kills 6.5 million people annually, far more than traffic accidents, yet it receives less global attention. Vulnerable families in flood-prone areas, like the Manila Bay slums, face daily risks that wealthier neighbours nearby can avoid. This inequity is unacceptable.
Infrastructure must reduce these risks, not deepen them. That is why I wrote Disaster Resilient Cities, documenting cases where resilience and equity were inseparable. The core message aligns with the SDGs: no one should be left behind. Human wellbeing must always be the first measure of success, not an afterthought.
How did you first become involved with the Club of Rome, and what drew you to become a member?
It began with creating something unprecedented at Nagoya University in 2000: Japan’s first horizontal graduate school. We brought together earth sciences, engineering, social sciences, law, economics and even philosophy under one roof. Our conviction was that sustainability cannot be understood through one discipline alone but must be experienced as an interconnected whole.
While serving as dean, I invited Ernst von Weizsäcker, then co-president of the Club of Rome, to join us many times as a speaker and peer reviewer. Through these exchanges and with encouragement from Ernst and Roberto Peccei, I became a full member. For me, it meant belonging to a community that shares a commitment to holistic, human-centred sustainability—a natural extension of what we were building in Nagoya.
You also serve on the Executive Committee and as president of the Japanese Association of the Club of Rome. What do these roles entail, and what work are you particularly proud of?
On the Executive Committee, I worked to establish a more systematic and fair process for welcoming new members. Instead of relying only on personal recommendations, we introduced criteria to ensure diversity by gender, geography and field of expertise. It may sound technical, but what it really means is creating a space where voices from underrepresented regions and perspectives are heard and valued.
As president of the Japanese Association, I wanted to shine light on Asia’s own contributions to global sustainability dialogue. I discovered that culture can be a powerful bridge. Take anime, for instance, beloved by children and adults around the world. It carries stories of empathy, imagination and care for future generations. Or judo, whose philosophy teaches us to use strength wisely and to respect opponents, bowing before and after each match. These practices embody coexistence and harmony, values the world urgently needs. Through symposia in Japan, Taiwan and China, we use these cultural touchpoints to spark dialogue about peace and sustainability in ways that resonate deeply across cultures.
How does your current work align with the goals and mission of the Club of Rome?
My guiding principle is that sustainability and resilience must go hand in hand. I often explain this with the image of a tightrope walker balancing with a long bar. Resilience is the ability to recover when the wind blows you off balance, while sustainability is the bar itself, the steadying force that keeps you moving forward. Without resilience, each step becomes impossible; without sustainability, the bar breaks and the walk ends.
In my research, this translates into tackling issues like uncontrolled urban sprawl. I advocate for “smart growth,” where cities expand along railway lines to keep communities connected, and “smart shrink,” where cities retreat from hazardous areas to protect lives. These ideas are not abstract. They are about giving people safer, shorter commutes, cleaner air and better quality of life. This is how my work resonates with the Club of Rome’s mission: combining systemic change with genuine care for everyday human experience.
If you could call for one shift in the global mindset about transport and climate resilience, what would it be? How might that shift support the Club of Rome’s mission for a better future?
We must leave behind “either-or” thinking. It is not cars versus buses, or growth versus decline. It is about integrated systems that combine the best of all options and recognise trade-offs honestly. More fundamentally, the world must learn humility. Humans are not at the top of the living order; we are one member among many, interdependent with all life on Earth.
Once we embrace coexistence as our starting point, resilience and sustainability will follow naturally. This mindset, grounded in respect for all life and equity for all people, will ripple outward to support the Club of Rome’s vision of a more just and sustainable world. It transforms how we design cities, how we move people, how we allocate resources—everything flows from that fundamental shift in perspective.
After decades of watching cities transform, what gives you hope that a sustainable, equitable future is still within reach?
Hope comes from people and from culture. I see it in the philosophy of judo, where opponents bow to one another, recognising their shared humanity even after fierce competition. I see it in Ubuntu, the African philosophy of togetherness, and in the countless small acts of solidarity I have witnessed across countries.
History also tells us that change can be faster than we imagine. Bangkok’s railway story is proof: what took Tokyo 90 years was accomplished in 25. And I draw hope from The Club of Rome itself. From The Limits to Growth to inspiring the Brundtland Commission and the SDGs, its legacy shows that ideas rooted in long-term thinking can shape global action.
These are reminders that even amid today’s crises, respect, cooperation and imagination can still carry us toward a sustainable and equitable future. The tools are in our hands. What we need is the will to use them, together.
