Finding the Missing Link is a project by Akio Matsumura to connect people, information, and ideas to provide effective and innovative solutions to new types of international problems.
We are asking new questions and providing new answers.
- What are the greatest challenges humanity faces in the coming century?
- How do we define security now, in the age of climate change, nuclear energy, and terrorism?
- How, as policymakers, do we think about time and responsibility in a world with rapidly evolving technology?
The project’s work is taken into account by influential government and business leaders worldwide, especially by decision makers in Japan and the United States, as the majority of our attention has been focused there since the Fukushima accident in March 2011.
Akio Matsumura’s unique background and impeccable international reputation allows Finding the Missing Link’s recommendations to carry weight with government, religious, and business leaders worldwide. Japanese by birth, and living at times in Tokyo, London, and New York, he has spent four decades at the United Nations and in other international activities redefining what population, development, the environment mean at the international level.
As Founder and Secretary-General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival, Matsumura broke ground by bringing together hundreds of top-flight international political and spiritual leaders at Oxford, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Konya, and Kyoto to redefine the international agenda throughout the 1980s and 90s. A concept based on strong personal relationships across a wide range of sectors — who else can claim to be close to Mother Theresa, President Gorbachev, Carl Sagan, Shirley MacLaine, John Whitehead, and Senator Claiborne Pell? — as well as a strong sense of moral obligation to humanity and the environment has been the key to opening doors closed to others.
In 2005 the World Business Academy established the Akio Matsumura Chair to apply in the private sector the talents and contacts developed in 40 years’ success in international diplomacy. Matsumura was Secretary-General of the Parliamentary Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. For other highlights from Mr. Matsumura’s career, click here.