Hiroshima University has been promoting cross-disciplinary, project-type research activities that go beyond specialist fields and are implemented based on an autonomous, free-thinking approach. While conducting advanced research the university has also realigned its research organizations to meet the needs of society. In environmental research, this has produced top level research results that go beyond existing disciplines, to resolve the world’s environmental issues. As a base for ‘cross-disciplinary’ environmental research that spans the entire university, the Global Environmental Leaders Education Program has as its aim the training of new global environmental leaders to drive sustainable growth throughout the world, through the resolution of environmental issues that cannot be resolved by humankind when constrained to existing academic fields, and the incorporation of research results into the public domain and the resulting social contribution.

The Asian region accounts for sixty percent of the world’s population, and is achieving rapid economic growth. At the same time, the region is still facing numerous issues related to environmental security that threaten the existence of humankind, including resource and environmental constraints, and poverty. There are concerns that such issues will not only become bottlenecks for secure and sustainable growth in the future, but in terms of today’s globalized economic system, may also have a major impact on sustainable growth throughout the world. It is for this reason that there are now demands for sustainable or in other words green growth that is based on the establishment of environmental security, and the development of human resources to achieve this.

The Global Environmental Leaders Program is a five-year doctoral course program that spans the entire university. In the program, students will conduct practical educational research activities on how to deploy the results of environmental research, which leads to innovations in fields related to the establishment of environmental security faced by humankind, to markets throughout the world, in particular the Asian market, which is showing significant growth in green growth areas. The establishment of environmental security and the creation of innovations in the fundamental areas of economic growth will lead to the securing of the foundations for social growth and production. Such foundations, as a base for the creation of various innovations, are highly anticipated to make a major impact for future sustainable growth.