On July 4 (Sat) and 5 (Sun), 2026, the Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens hosted "Nature Jobs Festival 2026 Summer — Your Experiences Shape Nature's Future" (Shizen no Oshigoto Fes 2026 Natsu), a pre-event for the 2nd Global Nature Positive Summit. The festival puts into practice the vision developed through "Triple Positive Kumamoto," a project in which the Ohashi Laboratory participates. The festival attracted media coverage and was featured on "Kenmin no Gimon," a program on KKT (Kumamoto Kenmin Televisions), and in the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun, a local newspaper.
The Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens and "Triple Positive Kumamoto"
The Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens opened in 1929 and will celebrate its centennial in 2029. The gardens suffered severe damage in the Kumamoto earthquakes of April 2016 and, after a period of partial operation, fully reopened in December 2018 — roughly two years and eight months after the earthquakes. In recent years, the gardens have been redefining their role as a hub connecting local people with the region's nature.
On January 26, 2026, the gardens served as the venue for a co-creation workshop. It was organized by the Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens and its Master Plan Promotion Council, co-organized by the School of Environment and Society at Institute of Science Tokyo (Ohashi Laboratory) and Mirai Relations Co., Ltd., with cooperation from grubio Inc. Around 50 participants — including professionals from the tourism and finance sectors as well as university researchers — worked through a seven-stage process, from preliminary interviews and a site tour of the gardens to the formulation of an action plan. The participants articulated a regional vision: a community where nature, people, and the economy flourish together (Nature Positive / Human Positive / Economy Positive). This series of activities constitutes "Triple Positive Kumamoto." Kimoto Hiromi (doctoral student / Arc & Field) and Matsumura Daiki (Researcher, Ohashi Laboratory / Butterfly Lab Inc.) designed and facilitated the entire project, from the workshop through to the festival, grounded in the framework of Transition Design.
Two Days of Hands-On "Nature Jobs" for Children
The Nature Jobs Festival 2026 Summer, a pre-event for the summit, grew out of the vision developed through the workshop. It was the first initiative of its kind to be jointly planned and implemented by the gardens in collaboration with local companies and organizations. Through hands-on experiences of nature-related work, the festival aimed to help children and their families learn in a playful way about the various efforts underway in Kumamoto to protect and enhance nature.
The festival ran from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on both days and featured ten advance-booking programs and four drop-in activities. These included a shooting game using tools from Aso's traditional grassland burning, a program in which children rode an aerial work platform to experience a giraffe's eye level about six meters above the ground and then built a diorama of a giraffe-friendly habitat while learning about the animals' ecology, hands-on removal of invasive aquatic plants from the stream running through the gardens, and tree climbing to experience tree management.
Television Coverage, and On to the Nature Positive Summit
On July 8, KKT's "Kenmin no Gimon" aired a segment that followed the festival, titled "Do You Know 'Nature Positive'? A Close Look at a Hands-On Event for Children." The story was also distributed via Yahoo! News.
Beyond the festival lies the 2nd Global Nature Positive Summit, organized by the Nature Positive Initiative (NPI) and the Japan Committee for IUCN (IUCN-J), with the Ministry of the Environment and other bodies as co-organizers. The main conference will be held on July 14 (Tue) and 15 (Wed) at Kumamoto-Jo Hall, and an excursion focusing on Kumamoto's natural environment is planned for July 16.
Regional practice that begins at the zoological and botanical gardens will now connect to international discussions at the summit. Looking ahead to the gardens' centennial in 2029, the work of "Triple Positive Kumamoto" continues.