Kentaro Hayashi began his career as a natural scientist out of an interest in living things. But these days, he’s more focused on the environments they inhabit and how the global cycling of chemicals — particularly nitrogen — affects them. Hayashi, a professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, now leads research on the nitrogen cycle and sustainable nitrogen management — a crucial area of study as the planet struggles to keep warming in check.
The invention in the early 20th century of the Haber-Bosch process, which made the industrial synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas possible, has transformed how we grow food. As a primary source of chemical fertilizers, ammonia has supported an explosive growth in food production alongside a fivefold growth in the world’s population since 1900. While nitrogen gas is harmless and makes up 78% of the air we breathe, human activities have dramatically increased the production and release into the environment of various forms of reactive nitrogen — chemically active compounds with myriad negative impacts on human health.
Excess reactive nitrogen is a cause of air and water pollution, acid rain and eutrophication — a term that refers to a body of water that is overly enriched with minerals and nutrients. Starting on Monday, Hayashi will chair the 10th International Nitrogen Conference in Kyoto. The forum is held roughly every three years by researchers to share their findings and get them reflected in policymaking.
The Japan Times recently caught up with Hayashi to ask why nitrogen matters and what can be done about the issues caused by its overabundance. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. I love living things, so I started out as a natural scientist.
But I realized the environment surrounding them is also crucial. If that environment deteriorates, it naturally causes harm to those creatures. And human activity is now having an incredibly large impact on that deterioration; global warming is definitely a prime example.
I joined Japan’s Antarctic research expedition about 10 years ago, but even before that, I had conducted research on an island in the Arctic. As expected, the sea ice is melting at an incredible rate, and the permafrost on land is thawing as well. As a result, the creatures are struggling to survive amid these rapid changes in the environment, and I’ve been thinking there must be something I can do to help.
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