Kimiko Hirata currently serves as executive director for the Tokyo-based think tank, Climate Integrate, which focuses on accelerating decarbonization.
16 Facts About Kimiko Hirata
1.
2.
In 2021, Kimiko Hirata became the first Japanese woman to be awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, nicknamed the "Green Nobel".
3.
Kimiko Hirata holds a PhD in social sciences from Waseda University, and is the author of Climate Change and Politics in Japanese, and co-author of many books and articles.
4.
Kimiko Hirata was born in southern Kumamoto prefecture, and studied education at university.
5.
Kimiko Hirata first became aware of the magnitude of climate change during the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, which was covered widely in the Japanese media, and started reading books including Earth in the Balance by Al Gore.
6.
Kimiko Hirata became interested in international activism while taking a course taught by Masako Hoshino, an activist who had helped to launch one of Japan's first NGOs.
7.
Kimiko Hirata continued reading about environmental issues and studied English.
8.
Kimiko Hirata earned a PhD at the Waseda University Graduate School of Social Sciences in 1999.
9.
Kimiko Hirata founded Kiko Network, an NGO focused on halting climate change, in 1998.
10.
Kimiko Hirata realized that Kiko Network needed to shift its focus from policy-driven work to grassroots campaigning, and adopted a multi-pronged strategy to fight against coal.
11.
Kimiko Hirata enlisted support from international experts in analyzing the costs and risks associated with coal plants, and released their findings.
12.
Kimiko Hirata worked with a researcher from Greenpeace on a report which found that the expected air pollution would lead to 1,000 premature deaths in Japan annually.
13.
The international outcry against Japan's coal policy was covered extensively by the Japanese media; Kimiko Hirata coordinated protests at several COP meetings, and spoke to the press ahead of the G20 summits.
14.
In 2020, Kimiko Hirata spearheaded a shareholder campaign to force megabank Mizuho Financial Group, the world's largest private lender to coal developers, to tighten lending to coal companies.
15.
One month after the motion was proposed, Mizuho announced that it would stop issuing loans to new coal plants in June of that year, and that it planned to exit coal investments by 2050; one day later, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group announced that it would stop issuing loans to coal plants in May Kimiko Hirata responded that both initiatives fell short of compliance with the Paris Agreement.
16.
Kimiko Hirata stepped down as international director of Kiko Network in December 2021, although she remains on its board of directors.