Two of the biggest challenges facing mankind in the 21st Century are how to achieve sustainability in agriculture and forestry production, and to develop technological systems that are in harmony with environmental conditions. The Division of Appropriate Technology and Science for Sustainable Development believes that the “eco-region” is attainable when economic activities and the technologies employed in resource uses are well coordinated to ecological dynamics. Thus, we share in the belief that the eco-region is maintained only when moderate yields are produced under the limited environmental capacity, by applying technologies that do not undermine the self-replenishing capacity of the ecosystem in a production. We are therefore convinced of the necessity of developing new technologies and social systems in accordance with this concept of eco-region.

The global targets for the research and education of this Doctoral Program are to create and maintain the eco-region in our society. The creation and maintenance of eco-region may be attained by a proper unification and/or combination of modern innovative technologies to conventional technologies which exist in different forms in different societies and communities. We call this unified technology as an “Appropriate Technology.”