The foundation's location on the island nation of Japan has made us sensitive to the delicate balance between our increasingly fragile oceans and the needs of the international shipping industry. The demands that the world's burgeoning population place on the oceans continue to intensify, increasing the impact of pollution and maritime disasters, while at the same time escalating the potential for regional conflict to alarming levels. Never before has there been such a need to focus on maritime safety and more importantly, to establish a new, internationally accepted order of the seas.

Safety on the seas is an issue that we have worked with since the 1960s, and the most concrete example of our work in that time is our effort in the Malacca Straits. The Straits are one of the world's most important sea-lanes. At the same time, however, they are infamously treacherous: narrow and plagued by shifting shallows and currents. A major oil spill that blocked the straits would devastate the region's fishing and tourism industries, damage its economy, and cost shipping companies hundreds of millions of dollars, as they were forced to use longer routes. To fend off this type of scenario, over the past four decades we have surveyed the entire straits, supported the building of 45 lighthouses and navigational aids, trained the staff to manage them, and donated buoy-tender vessels to the littoral nations. Further, in 2007, we followed up on this effort by bringing a new form of cooperative framework before the International Maritime Organization, through which the users of the Straits contribute to the maintenance of safety there.

Work to devise new international standards that are more in keeping with the changing needs of today's world is our other key focus. In this area, we feel that our work can have the deepest impact if we concentrate on developing human resources in such a way that maritime leaders from the developing world can come to the table with the same expertise and ability as their counterparts from more developed nations. We have established scholarships for students from developing nations at several major institutions, such as the World Maritime University, where they can pursue master's degrees that enable them in turn to then raise the level of maritime expertise in their own nations. Further, we initiated and have fully supported the International Association of Maritime Universities, an NGO comprised of 48 universities from 25 nations, which has consultative status at the International Maritime Organization.

As our demands on the sea continue to rise, it will become more and more important to find new ways to work together to use this vital resource in sustainable ways. The foundation's programs are already pushing toward that goal.