Environmental Issues Map
A structured visualization of complex, hard-to-grasp environmental issues using a shared format.
What is the Environmental Issues Map?
The Environmental Issues Map structurally visualizes the main stakeholders of environmental problems and their connections. It first addresses the structure of problems common to environmental issues, and then takes up specific problems: “pollution,” “climate change,” and “resource issues.” Using the Environmental Issues Map, you can better understand the essence of environmental problems and intuitively grasp how they relate to us. This diagram was created in collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).
How the Environmental Issues Map works
What is the Environmental Issues Map?
Environmental Issues Map
A diagram that shows the main players in an environmental problem, and how they connect, as a structure.
How to read it
The basic structure
The balance between the economy and society affects the environment.
How to read it
How the burden grows
A loop of economic activity, production and consumption by companies and people (thin arrows), increases the burden on the environment (outlined arrow).
How to read it
How conservation works
To limit the harm caused by that burden, a loop of responses through society (thin arrows) conserves the environment (outlined arrow).
How to read it
The whole diagram
In this way, companies and people relate to the economy, the environment and society through two loops.
How to read it
Five phases of an environmental problem
An environmental problem goes through five phases, from its start to its resolution. The diagrams show, in time order, how a problem arises, spreads and is brought under control.
- 1. Early(Green)
- 2. Spreading(Amber)
- 3. Response(Red)
- 4. Containment(Amber)
- 5. Resolution(Green)
Who uses it
- teachers and trainers who explain how environmental problems work in class or training
- sustainability staff who explain how their business is connected to environmental problems
Environmental problems such as pollution, climate change and resource issues can be drawn in one shared format: the parties involved and how they connect. What to include and what to leave out was settled through repeated discussion with the National Institute for Environmental Studies. All 44 diagrams are also published on the Institute's website, free for anyone to download and use.
Made with
- Tomohiro TasakiNational Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES)See members →
How the Environmental Issues Map Was Born
The Environmental Issues Map was born from the aim of making complex, seemingly hard-to-approach environmental problems easier for more people to understand by structuring and illustrating them in a shared format.
This set of diagrams takes up a common “environmental issues” diagram, as well as problem-specific ones: “pollution,” “climate change,” and “resource issues.” Environmental problems are extremely complex and often cannot be stated as simply as written here, so we often struggled over what information to include and what to omit; but through expert advice and discussion with the National Institute for Environmental Studies, they settled into this form.
For the intent behind these diagrams, and for the detail we could not fit here, we hope you will also look at what the National Institute for Environmental Studies publishes.
News about this framework
Contact
A problem you are stuck on, a project you are considering, a press inquiry. We also take inquiries that have not taken shape yet.
Talk to us