About Takuya's Work
Takuya Takahashi is a Professor at the School of Environmental Science, The University of Shiga Prefecture, working at the frontier of environmental economics, forestry, and the cultural foundations of human–nature relationships.
His research asks a central question: how do societies perceive, value, and govern nature across time, institutions, and cultural contexts? To address this, he combines econometric analysis with spatial simulation and historical reconstruction.
One strand of his work reconstructs the environmental impacts of mining development—particularly smelter-induced air pollution—through quantitative and spatial simulations, revealing how production decisions, technological change, and compensation mechanisms co-evolved under environmental constraints.
Another strand pushes beyond conventional economic approaches by analyzing Japanese perceptions of nature embedded in waka and tanka poetry, opening a novel pathway to integrate cultural narratives into environmental valuation and policy thinking.
Alongside these, he studies forest commons, socially supported forest management, and the links between well-being and forest use, contributing empirical evidence to debates on sustainable resource governance.
By bridging quantitative rigor with cultural insight, his work seeks to redefine how we understand sustainability—not only as an economic or ecological problem, but as a deeply social and cultural one.