Japanese High School Students Win 2004 Stockholm Junior Water Prize

A group of students at Okinawa Prefectural Miyako Agriculture and Forestry High School in Japan won this year's International Stockholm Junior Water Prize, which recognizes outstanding activities aimed at solving water issues. Tsutomu Kawahira and two others, all seniors at the high school, received a US $5,000 award and a crystal trophy at an award ceremony held in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2004.

The prize, sponsored by the Stockholm Water Foundation, is presented annually to high school students or others below the age of 20 who have conducted remarkable water-related research in the environmental, scientific, social or technological fields. Students from 25 countries participated in the 8th international competition this year.

The prize winners' high school is located on Miyakojima Island, one of Japan's southernmost islands, where groundwater is the only source of drinking water. Much of the groundwater, however, is contaminated with nitrate-nitrogen leached out from chemical fertilizers used in sugarcane farming. To cope with this problem, the students developed an environmentally friendly organic fertilizer, and then promoted its practical use by farmers. The prize nominating committee expressed great appreciation for their achievements, noting that the method they used is applicable to many other places around the world.

Their specific purpose in developing an alternative fertilizer was to enhance the efficient use by crops of phosphoric acid, because a large amount of phosphoric acid from chemical fertilizers had accumulated in the soil without being absorbed by crops. The new organic fertilizer is composed of by-products produced at sugarcane factories and phosphate-solubilizing bacteria taken from the soil. The amount of chemical fertilizer applied to the soil can be reduced by combining the organic fertilizer with chemical fertilizer. This reduction is expected to result in reduced groundwater contamination.

http://www.siwi.org/

Posted: 2004/12/24 01:39:09 PM
Japanese version