🌐 日本語版（持続可能な環境教育 ESD Project）はこちら / Read this page in Japanese
Learning that changes the future
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is learning that treats global challenges as your own, and changes the future from the local level up. Think globally, act locally — ESD is the foundation beneath the SDGs, and it grows the people who will carry a sustainable society forward.
Karatsu Farm & Food is a government-designated Regional ESD Activity Promotion Center — the first in Karatsu City (registered by the ESD Activity Support Center of Japan's Ministry of the Environment and MEXT). Together with the Karatsu Minami High School "Niji-no-Matsubara" project team, we build hands-on ESD around food, farming, environment and circularity — where students lead, work with their community, and turn learning into action.
Recognized nationally and internationally
In partnership with us, the Karatsu Minami High School Niji-no-Matsubara project team has earned recognition that travels well beyond Japan:
- Ministry of the Environment Good Life Award — Environmental People-Building special prize (2024)
- Japan youth representative at TEMM25, the 25th Tripartite (Japan–China–Korea) Environment Ministers Meeting Youth Forum, Jeju, Korea (2024) — theme: realizing a plastic circular economy
- Presented at EXPO 2025 Osaka, TEAM EXPO Pavilion (2025)
- 2nd in the world at the Ocean Revival Competition (2023) — ocean-plastic solutions and sustainable tourism
- Top national prizes — best award at the National Agricultural High School Essay Contest and the National Disaster-Prevention Essay Contest, and an excellence award at the National High School Environmental Speech Contest
- Commended by the Saga Prefectural Board of Education and Superintendent (2026)
With Karatsu Minami High School — the Niji-no-Matsubara project team
At the heart of this work is the Karatsu Minami-style Matsubara Circulation Project, running for 21 years. It conserves Niji-no-Matsubara — one of Japan's three great pine groves — and turns its pine needles into products (cider, beer, cookies, even a craft gin), funding conservation while teaching circular thinking.
The team's learning reaches across our other projects too: native honeybee keeping at the Yokomakura OECM site, disaster-prevention food for island communities, and plastic upcycling with Precious Plastic Karatsu. And it is generational — graduates go on to become educators, some returning to Karatsu to pass the work on to the next students.
Our programs
Our ESD programs combine food, farming, environment and circularity through workshops and fieldwork. Cumulatively, more than 6,587 participants have taken part in our environmental-education programs. We design them so young people learn by doing, alongside their community.
Research, institutional & international collaboration
We work with universities and institutions — for example the National High School Environmental Speech Contest hosted by Chiba University of Commerce — and we run international exchange, such as welcoming agricultural trainees from ten countries (India, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and others) through the OISCA West Japan Training Center, sharing Niji-no-Matsubara conservation through picture-story shows in each visitor's language. As a Regional ESD Activity Promotion Center, we are glad to be a point of contact for research and educational institutions that want to collaborate.
Partner or sponsor our ESD work
We welcome companies as ESD partners and sponsors. Supporting youth environmental education is a meaningful, visible contribution to society — for example, we have collaborated with MUJI on a disaster-prevention and regional-support program. If your organization would like to partner on, or sponsor, hands-on environmental education with real-world impact, we'd be glad to design something together.
Work with us
Whether you're a research institution, school, foundation or company, we'd love to explore an ESD collaboration. We read and write English well; for calls, an interpreter helps, so tell us your preferred language.
Related
▶ Precious Plastic Karatsu
▶ Nature Positive — Saga's first OECM site
▶ Regenerative tourism & corporate study visits
▶ 日本語版：持続可能な環境教育 ESD Project（受賞実績つき）
About the organization
Karatsu Farm & Food
A non-profit based in Karatsu City, Saga Prefecture, Japan, working on ocean-plastic solutions, the circular economy, environmental education (ESD) and the management of Saga's first OECM site. As a government-designated Regional ESD Activity Promotion Center and a partner of Karatsu Minami High School's Niji-no-Matsubara project team, we turn local restoration into hands-on learning that passes from one generation to the next. Think Locally, Act Globally.