My keywords in this Laidlaw Scholarship were Nature, People and Conservation. My first-year research project was “Collecting scientific knowledge for practical conservation in County Durham”. My LiA project was about Nature conservation and how to solve the nature-human conflict at Shiretoko. Both opportunities taught me the importance of wide conversation and collaboration. Especially, I want to share three key lessons that I learnt. 

1.  Understanding different perspectives and being open-minded 

I talked to many people from different positions and organisations during the first and second-year projects. It clearly showed me that there are many ways to think. Not all ideas and thoughts can be agreed upon easily especially if we have our thoughts already. However, I learnt that it is crucial to be open-minded and leave some space to listen and accept various thoughts.

• Importance of Collaboration 

Nature conservation is often related to nature, people and economy in one area. Therefore, it is important to work together to create the best solution. I’ve seen amazing collaborative work at both Shiretoko and Durham University. In order to collaborate, I think “respect” and “open-mindedness” are key as I wrote in the first lesson. 

• Challenge everything 

During my Laidlaw Scholarship, I tried to say “YES” to everything. Sometimes, I was a bit worried and anxious, but I tried to get out of my comfort zone. This small courage helped me expand my network and get more experience. 

What are ethical and global leaders for me?

The other component of Laidlaw Scholarship is “Ethical and Global Leadership”. At the beginning of this scholarship, I did not understand the meaning fully. However, as I walked through this programme, I got a clearer idea of such leaders. I would like to share my meaning of ethical and global leader & citizen. 

Ethical: To be Respectful, Fair, Being able to listen and understand. I believe that a great ethical leader is a person who can listen and understand various opinions. After accepting different thoughts without any bias, I believe that we can listen, compare our own opinions and shape better ideas. 

Global leaders: I believe that it is connected to being an ethical leader as it is a person who can understand and respect various opinions and perspectives. By living and studying in The UK and Japan, I realised the differences in the concept of nature and thus lifestyle with nature. There are so many differences in culture and environment in each country, region and town. I think it is important to recognise that my usual is not always usual for others. 

My feature perspective 

This scholarship programme let me develop and realise my style of leadership. In the future, I want to be a person who creates places where people and nature can live together in harmony and support each other. So, next year I am going to work as an environment consultant who can be a bridge between local companies and technology for nature and people. I am sure that my leadership and experience will help me work in this field. 

Before the end, thank you so much to everyone who supported me during this Laidlaw scholarship. I will work harder to make a difference for people and nature in the future.