Naoki Yoshikawa

EcoBalance 2016-responsible value chains for sustainability (October 3-6, 2016, Kyoto, Japan)

The International Conference on EcoBalance, organized by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan (ILCAJ), has been held as a biennial conference in Japan since 1994 (Morimoto 1999; The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 2000; Inaba et al. 2003; Matsuno et al. 2005; Matsuno and Moriguchi 2007; Nakajima and Matsuno 2009; Nansai et al. 2011; Miyamoto et al. 2013; Kondo et al. 2014). With the life cycle concept as its core concept, EcoBalance has become recognized as one of the world’s premier conferences for academic, industry and government professionals. EcoBalance serves as a forum for discussions on environmental performance evaluation, information disclosure regarding evaluation results, and for the development and implementation of the methods discussed. The 12th EcoBalance conference, EcoBalance 2016, was convened on 3–6 October 2016 in Kyoto, Japan. The overall theme of EcoBalance 2016 was, BResponsible value chains for sustainability .̂ EcoBalance 2016 aimed to discuss the challenges associated with incorporating sustainable value chains that create corporate value in business, collaborating with various stakeholders, and identifying solutions based on scientific knowledge. Given this context, we invited three distinguished keynote speakers who shared their insights on the role of life cycle thinking and how it can be used to achieve responsible value chains. In the scientific program, 310 presentations covered overarching topics (methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA), applications in practice, policy implications, etc.), and intensive discussions were used to forge links between the areas of science, real practice and policymaking. Over the course of the conference, 372 international attendees from 28 countries contributed to numerous valuable discussions. In addition to the main scientific program, several official side-events were convened on corporate information disclosure, E-waste, sustainable food supply chains, urban mining and global LCA data access network. This year, we convened an BEcoBalance International School^ on a trial basis to provide attendees with the opportunity to acquire fundamental, but state-of-the-art, knowledge on life cycle assessment from distinguished international experts. These two courses, BLife Cycle Assessment: theory and practice^ by Prof. Sangwon Suh from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the USA, and BCurrent Developments in Life Cycle Impact Assessment^ by Prof. Francesca Verones from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway were both well attended. A Young Researchers Meeting was also held to give young attendees the opportunity to communicate with each other and network. Taken together, these events helped attendees to benefit from their * Masaharu Motoshita m-motoshita@aist.go.jp