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Long-term interplay between humans and nature is inherently precarious and open-ended. Because of this precarity, humans have made strenuous efforts to control nature. From agriculture to forestry ...

To reframe the imperfect review processes of nation-scale actions on area-based conservation through protected area (PA) networks, we first created novel infrastructure to visualize nation-level biodiversity information in Japan. We then assessed the performance of the existing PA network relative to land exploitation pressure and evaluated conservation effectiveness of PA expansion for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Zonation algorithm was used to spatially prioritize conservation areas to minimize biodiversity loss and the extinction risk for 8,500 Japanese vascular plant and vertebrate species under constraints of the existing PA network and land use. The spatial pattern of the identified priority areas, which were considered candidate areas for expansion of the current PA network, was influenced by land-use types according to the mask layers of non-PAs, and low-, middle-, and high-ranked PAs. The current PA network reduced the aggregate extinction risk of multiple species by 36.6%. Indeed, the percentage of built-up areas in the existing PAs was in general smaller than that in the areas surrounding PAs. Notably, high-ranked PAs fully restrained built-up pressure (0.037% per 10 years), whereas low-ranked PAs in the national park and wild-life protection areas did not (1.845% per 10 years). Conservation effects were predicted to substantially improve by expansion of high-ranked (legally strict) PAs into remote non-PAs without population/socio-economic activities, or expansion of medium-ranked PAs into agriculture forestry satoyama and urban areas. A 30% land conservation target was predicted to decrease extinction risk by 74.1% when PA expansion was implemented across remote areas, satoyama, and urban areas; moreover, PA connectivity almost doubled compared with the existing PA network. In contrast, a conventional scenario showed that placing national parks in state-owned and non-populated areas would reduce extinction risk by only 4.0%. The conservation prioritization analyses demonstrated an effectiveness of using a comprehensive conservation approach that reconciles land-sparing protection and land-sharing conservation in other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) in satoyama and urban green spaces. Our results revealed that complementary inclusion of various PAs interventions related to their governance and land-use planning plays a critical role in effectively preventing biodiversity loss and makes it more feasible to achieve ambitious conservation targets.

Landscapes can be regarded as ‘a culture–nature link.’ Many examples of ‘living’ landscapes in the world are rich in natural and cultural values and have proven sustainable over centuries because of their maintenance by local communities. Satoyama, a traditional socio-ecological production landscape, provides a functional linkage between paddy fields and the associated environment with many ecosystem services. The idea of landscape conservation and paddy field revitalization was introduced into Taiwan’s amended Cultural Heritage Preservation Act in 2005 as a new legal instrument entitled ‘Cultural Landscape.’ To help stakeholders from governmental authorities and local communities apply this new instrument, this action research employed a community-based landscape and participatory approach to put relevant international concepts into practice. Learning from culturally grounded indicators of resilience in social–ecological systems, the study adopted a set of indicators of resilience in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes to successfully help residents evaluate the management of a designated Cultural Landscape through a series of local workshops. The case study shows that a landscape and participatory approach can be welcomed by rural people and can create a new style for ‘living’ protected landscapes in Taiwan’s nationally protected area system.

Many global biodiversity hotspots have been cultivated for food for centuries and their unique agrobiodiversity is now under threat from land-use conversion, land abandonment or agricultural intensification. Wildlife-friendly farming (WFF) certification is a market-based approach that aims to alleviate the threats through charging a premium over conventional food products. This study explores the economic demand for WFF to protect biodiversity and maintain traditional rice cultivation in the Satoyama landscape of Japan by quantifying the price differential for key attributes of a landscape scale WFF scheme using choice experiments with consumers. A novel component of this study was to combine the choice experiment data with qualitative interviews with stakeholders together with observational and participatory approaches to identify underlying motivations for purchase decisions and to assess using a mixed methods approach the potential of WFF schemes to support landscape scale conservation and rural development. We found that consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) for organic rice was the highest, with a premium of 2937 JPY (26.83 USD) compared to non-organic rice. Respondents were also willing to pay more for all rice that conserves individual target species, with WTP for bird species the highest and for rice produced specifically in the traditional Satoyama landscapes. Although a WFF-Satoyama programme would bring public benefits and support rural livelihoods we suggest there are several challenges to widespread adoption that include an ageing farming population, a lack of appropriate business skills and technical capacity, and obstacles arising from Japanese land use policies concerning forestry and hunting.

The management of abandoned Satoyama which is the Japanese name for socio-ecological production landscape has become a difficult problem for biodiversity conservation in Japan. In order to conserve Satoyama and regional biodiversity, restoration of the relationships with local people is important. This study aims to discuss how we can sustain local people’s interaction with Satoyama in the present time. The study site Mt. Omine, which can be described as a typical Satoyama landscape, is located in Fukutsu city, Fukuoka, Japan. We investigated changes in the relationships between local people and Mt. Omine and the ecological condition of the abandoned forest on Mt. Omine. We found that ecosystem services provided from Mt. Omine declined in association with the reduction in use of the forest. In the abandoned forest, Moso-bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) has expanded and dense bamboo thickets have formed. However, new collaborative management has been started in order to implement city plans for the environment. The collaborative management project is trying to obtain ecosystem services through discussing how to utilize Satoyama and conducting workshops. The result of the workshops implies that the values of Mt. Omine for the present generation of local people are different from the past; however, people could obtain ecosystem services and conserve biodiversity through the management which is conducted in the same way as in the past. In addition, the process of restoring Satoyama could provide opportunities for local people to realize the values and functions of the surrounding natural environment. Therefore, the stakeholders of Satoyama restoration should explore its values in the present situation and learn from the past methods and wisdom in the relationship between people and Satoyama.

This chapter assesses the processes and patterns to be found in the Japanese community’s engagement with geoparks. It is based on trends identified by the authors over the past 15 years and longer, but is a commentary based on the activities of actual communities rather than surveys of tourists. The themes covered are the threads that make up the current community interest in geoconservation, rural decline and revitalization, globally important agricultural and other forms of heritage conservation (geoparks, GIAHS and cultural heritage, Satoyama), and geotourism in Japan. These themes help us identify the impact of geoparks on the community, and the Japanese community’s engagement with them.

Whereas the underuse of resources due to the tragedy of anticommons is well known, resource underuse due to demand loss has received little attention. In this paper, I examined the governance to regenerate underused natural resources by a case study on semi-natural grassland, called “Uenohara,” in Fujiwara District located in a Japanese mountain village. Uenohara served as local commons, providing roofs, fertilizer, forage, and food to local residents until the 1950s. However, changes in social conditions abolished its utility, and vegetation succession with a decline in biodiversity followed. Under these circumstances, Forest College Seisui comprising urban residents regenerated the traditional landscape of Uenohara through thatch cropping, controlled burning, and other activities in collaboration with local participants. The new governance, which regenerated underused resources, was characterized by (1) diversification and expansion of participants, (2) role sharing and organic structure, and (3) shifts in benefits. In addition, this study showed that three factors are important for solving underuse problems: (1) manage for use, (2) placeness of the object, and (3) succession of knowledge. In future, more case studies and creation of a theoretical framework are needed to achieve practical solutions.

To reframe the imperfect review processes of nation-scale actions on area-based conservation through protected area (PA) networks, we first created novel infrastructure to visualize nation-level biodiversity information in Japan. We then assessed the performance of the existing PA network relative to land exploitation pressure and evaluated conservation effectiveness of PA expansion for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Zonation software was used to spatially prioritize conservation areas to minimize biodiversity loss and the extinction risk for 8077 Japanese vascular plant and vertebrate species under constraints of the existing PA network and land use. The spatial pattern of the identified priority areas, which were considered candidate areas for expansion of the current PA network, was influenced by land-use types according to the mask layers of non-PAs, and low-, middle-, and high-ranked PAs. The current PA network reduced the aggregate extinction risk of multiple species by 36.6%. Indeed, the proportion of built-up areas in the existing PAs was generally smaller than that in the areas surrounding PAs. Notably, high-ranked PAs effectively restricted the built-up pressure (0.04% every 10 years), whereas low-ranked PAs in national park and wild-life protection areas did not (1.8% every 10 years). Conservation effects were predicted to substantially improve by expansion of high-ranked (legally strict) PAs into remote non-PAs without population/socioeconomic activities, or expansion of medium-ranked PAs into satoyama which have traditionally been used for agriculture and forestry, and urban areas. A 30% land conservation target was predicted to decrease extinction risk by 74.1% when PA expansion was implemented across remote areas, satoyama, and urban areas; moreover, PA connectivity almost doubled compared with the existing PA network. In contrast, a conventional scenario showed that placing national parks in state-owned and non-populated areas would reduce extinction risk by only 4.0%. Conservation prioritization analyses demonstrated the effectiveness of using a comprehensive conservation approach that reconciles land-sparing protection and land-sharing conservation in other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in satoyama and urban green spaces. Our results revealed that complementary inclusion of various PA interventions related to their governance and land-use planning plays a critical role in effectively preventing biodiversity loss and makes it more feasible to achieve ambitious conservation targets.

This study evaluates people’s preferences regarding the proximity of their residence to agricultural urban green infrastructure (UGI), such as agricultural land and satoyama, and discusses the availability of these types of land as UGI. UGI is vital for reducing the negative environmental impacts of urban areas, as these impacts are too large to ignore. In this study, we conducted an online survey and a choice experiment to investigate people’s perceptions regarding the proximity of their residence to agricultural UGI (AUGI). The respondents of the choice experiment were 802 inhabitants of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, which has rich agricultural resources. To examine explicitly the spatial autocorrelation of people’s preferences, in this study, we used the spatial econometrics method. The main empirical findings are that people prefer agricultural land far away from their residence—more than 1000 m, not within 1000 m—which reflects the not-in-my-backyard phenomenon. Meanwhile, people’s preferences regarding proximity to satoyama are complicated and their preferences are positively spatially autocorrelated. The results indicate that policymakers and urban planners should manage and provide AUGI far away from residential areas, otherwise, they must address people’s avoidance of neighboring AUGI.

As sustainable management of production landscapes and seascapes is increasingly becoming important for global conservation of biodiversity, understanding people dimensions holds key to successful conservation projects. The “Indicators of Resilience in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes” (the Indicators) had been developed to capture the multifaceted nature of landscapes and human interactions with them.. Although the Indicators had been used in many projects around the world, they had not been used before and after project interventions to determine project impacts. The information from the assessment workshops conducted in Ecuador, India and Seychelles were analyzed to determine the effectivity of the Indicators in project evaluation and monitoring. We then explored how information derived from the use of the Indicators can help project proponents understand the impact of the projects. The results show that the Indicators can be effectively used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of projects being implemented by obtaining input and feedback from stakeholders involved and/or affected by project interventions. We conclude that the Indicators serve as an effective tool for community-based assessment for projects and the overall status of resilience of landscapes and seascapes. We emphasize that qualitative information in discussion among participants of assessments using the Indicators hold rich contents that can be used to better understand the project impact and community needs; thus the project proponents should use the Indicators to obtain and learn from such information, rather than the numerical results which the Indicators also give.

Approximately 40–50% of Japan’s total land area is made up of satoyama (areas between mountain foothills and arable flat lands), where people have engaged in agricultural and forestry work since ancient times. Human activities have played a large part in shaping the natural environments of satoyama, giving rise to ecosystem services and enriching the lives of those who live there (Takeuchi, Ecol Res 25:891–897, 2010; Duraiappah et al. Satoyama–Satoumi ecosystems and human Well-being: socio-ecological production landscapes of Japan. United Nations University Press, Tokyo, 2012). However, in recent years, depopulation coupled with an increasingly low birth rate and aging populations in areas with satoyama has led to more and more agricultural land and afforestation areas being left untended. This in turn has led to the degradation of landscapes and ecosystem services such as production, environmental control and inherited traditional cultures, and in some cases rural settlements are collapsing as a result. In order to break this vicious cycle of the deterioration of satoyama environments, securing suitable human resources is vital. This requires a form of revitalized nature, which is sustained through the activities of humans to encourage regional regeneration and sustainable development, despite the atrophy of local communities. However, while nobody would argue against the importance of human resources of this kind, putting in place the frameworks necessary for developing these human resources is no easy matter. This chapter discusses the frameworks that have been put in place for training human resources who are responsible for bringing about regional regeneration and reforms in satoyama environments located on the Noto Peninsula, as well as the processes by which these have been put into practice. In addition, this chapter introduces trials that have been made to utilize the know-how from Noto in developing human resources for rice terraces in Ifugao, the Philippines.

Tokyo is well known for its modern urban landscapes, but in the suburbs and the broader metropolitan area, “islands” of traditional rural landscapes still survive, although under increasing pressure from urbanization. The present study aims to introduce the traditional Japanese satoyama landscapes and to examine not only the vital role they played in the development of Japanese rural communities but also their continued relevance in the contemporary context of global environmental change. The first part of the study, based on extensive literature review, explores various definitions of satoyama and satoyama landscapes, and identifies their key features and the range of ecosystem services and benefits these multi-functional landscapes used to provide to Japanese rural communities. After briefly exploring the historical context of satoyama development, the study examines the demographic, socio-economic, and cultural processes that led to the decline of satoyama during the past decades. The dominant forces identified are the process of suburbanization, on the one hand, and the abandonment of rural land management on the other. The second part of the study focuses on recent approaches to the conservation and revival of satoyama landscapes: first, the grassroots citizen movements for the management and alternative use of satoyama landscapes; second, the national strategies and regional policies adopted so far to revitalize these multifunctional rural spaces. The study uses examples from the western fringe of the Tokyo metropolitan area, where a network of satoyama landscapes survive and are locally preserved. These are communities where a combination of local policies and citizen involvement has resulted in the successful revival of local satoyama landscapes, and where alternative uses (recreation, environmental education, etc.) are promoted: positive examples with the potential for implementation in other areas. Conservation and revival of satoyama landscapes pose major challenges in the years to come. In the countryside, efforts to address the decline of satoyama landscapes need to be coordinated with broader strategies to revive rural communities throughout Japan. In the context of major urban concentrations, surviving satoyama landscapes represent strategical resources that could have a vital contribution to mitigating the impacts of climate change or natural disasters, making their conservation an urgent priority for sustainable development in the twenty-first century. The study stresses the need for increased public awareness and citizen involvement in satoyama conservation. At the broader level, a long-term vision and an integrated strategy, on the one hand, and cooperation at various levels, on the other, are key to satoyama landscapes’ revival in the future.

The “Noto's Satoyama and Satoumi” in Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan is a system of Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS) mosaics interconnected with highly productive coastal areas that have been formed and maintained through long-term human influence, which supports not only its diverse and traditional agriculture, forestry and fisheries, but also sustains local livelihoods and conserves its flourishing biodiversity. Since the designation of Noto as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in 2011, there have been active developments of conservation and revitalization efforts amongst the local governments, and communities, as well as pouring interest from the academia, international community and private sector. The paper will discuss the developments of Noto's GIAHS through examining several case studies of recent conservation and revitalization efforts of new initiatives and those building on existing schemes. The report will be based on li...

In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that devastated part of northeastern Japan in March 2011, proposals for reconstruction and rehabilitation are still subjects of debate. The claim by many climate scientists that large-scale extreme events can be expected in the future, with similar catastrophic effects in coastal areas, suggests the need for long-term planning that aims at building resilience, the ability for socio-ecological systems to withstand and recover quickly from natural disasters, and continue to develop. We hypothesize that ecosystems and socio-economic resilience will provide affected communities with flexible barriers against future disasters and greater protection in the long run than will hard/engineering solutions such as high seawalls aimed at ensuring only physical security. Building social/ecological resilience in the Tohoku region will increase general security and is anticipated also to contribute to an enhanced quality of life now and for generations to come. This paper argues that building resilience in the affected area requires a transformation to sustainable agriculture, forestry and fisheries and we describe how the links between satoyama and satoumi, traditional rural territorial and coastal landscapes in Japan, can contribute to this revitalization and to strengthening the relationship between local residents and the landscape in the affected communities. Decision makers at local, regional and national levels need to take a holistic approach based on sustainability science to understand the inter-relationships between these landscapes and ecosystems to develop a robust rebuilding plan for the affected communities. Moreover, this paper suggests that building resilient communities in Japan that demonstrate the strategic benefits of satoyama and satoumi linkages can be a model for building resilient rural and urban communities throughout the world.

The Satoyama Agriculture Development Tools (SADT) is a widely used set of measures used across the globe to assess the sustainability of agriculture land management. While the SADT only use three dimensions: environmental, economic, and social factors, a fourth dimension, namely, institutional factors, is considered important to understand the authority and ability to facilitate sustainable development in a comprehensive, harmonious, and balanced manner. This study adds an institutional dimension to the SADT framework to evaluate the sustainability of agriculture land management in Magetan Regency, Indonesia. Specifically, we compare the perceptions of farmers and government officials regarding current agriculture land management by conducting a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. The results reveal that there are gaps between the perceptions of farmers and government officials, especially regarding the environmental and socio-economic dimensions of land management. Government officials tend to believe that the environment, including keystone species, is well protected while farmers disagree. The Satoyama Evaluation shows that Sarangan Village is viewed as “Satoyama Like” from the point of view of government officials but appears to be “In Transition” based on farmer perceptions. Adding an institutional factor provides fruitful information on the perception gap between farmers and government officials in terms of local government conflict management performance.

Numerous studies have looked at sustainable tourism as the key to balancing environmental conservation and development in agricultural heritage sites. A microcosm of the traditional rural productive landscape, the Noto Satoyama Satoumi landscape has been designated as a pilot site for the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) in Japan. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of green tourism, focusing on the GIAHS program. The secondary objective is to explore the features of green tourism in Japan. First, the historic development and current state of green tourism in Japan is reviewed. The case in study is a typical green tourism project concerning an organization of farmers in the Noto Peninsula—the Shunran-no-Sato group. The question of how to develop green tourism in the context of the GIAHS project and considering the sustainable development of rural society and its farming systems by increasing incomes of rural households, is investigated. The study combined literature review and in-depth interviews with farm inn owners to investigate tourism development in the depopulated rural areas of Japan, examine its challenges, and present this information to international readers.

This chapter illustrates typical landscape types extracted by principal component analysis and cluster analysis. It also discusses the distribution patterns and characteristics of these landscape types and examines the relationship between land use and population changes. The following seven landscape types were extracted: urban landscape, urban paddy field mixed landscape, paddy field landscape, other field landscape, paddy field satoyama landscape, other field satoyama landscape, and nature landscape. Then, through the combination analysis of land use and population changes in recent years, shrinking, compacting, stability, scattering, and expanding tendencies are observed. Not only in Nagoya but also in the periphery of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, a mosaicked structure of the above tendencies was clearly observed, with satoyama landscape types most dramatically confronting the crisis of disappearance.

Landscape and urban planning is increasingly shaped by maturing conditions of economic stagnation and upward demographic shifts. Planners must grapple with the challenges that maturation brings, while opportunistically directing the “slow lane” of low-growth trajectories towards more sustainable progress. New directions demand new concepts and approaches, and super-aging and economically faltering Japan provides valuable lessons. We describe how concepts and practices maligned in high-growth modernity are being reinvented in the low-growth present. Focusing on urban agriculture and woodland management, we show that restoration of working urban greenspaces provides a strategy for planners to direct the slow lane towards urban sustainability.

Today, Japan strives to preserve some of its rural Satoyama landscapes in a sustainable way in order to ensure the survival of some well-functioning rural ecosystems in the face of continuing urbanization on the one hand and the neglect of such landscapes on the other. In the Lake Biwa watershed area in Shiga Prefecture, Satoyama landscapes comprise woodlands, grasslands, dry and wet fields, residential areas, and the lakeshore. The area today faces two major challenges: first, how to use local natural resources in a sustainable way to avoid further neglect or destruction of Satoyama landscapes; and second, how to reorganize the management of Satoyama forest and lakeshore resources. The results of our investigation showed how solutions to the above issues were found in the context of lakeshore projects aimed at restoring reed (Phragmites communis) communities, which are important component of the Lake Biwa Satoyama landscape. Since 2002, four such projects have been successfully undertaken through the efficient use of local forest resources, mainly wood and bamboo, in wave dissipation structures and jetties which facilitate the expansion of reed communities. Management was reorganized and now consists of stakeholders which include the original Satoyama management communities, governmental bodies, resident and nonresident citizens, and nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations. The projects are a unique attempt to revive Satoyama watershed landscapes, and may serve as models in other watershed areas.

Recently, many communities are taking practical steps to conserve Satochi. Satochi are rural areas composed of Satoyama (domestic woodlands and farmlands). There are many issues involved in the conservation of the environment, requiring collaboration among different citizen activities groups. This study examines issues related to communication with stakeholders who participate in Satochi conservation activities,based on a case study of voluntary association A in a rural community near to an urban area. Human resources and technical information must be secured for the practice of the diverse activities involved in managing Satochi. However,during practical phases such as getting a landowner's assent and work assignment, a communications gap arising from different senses of worth and interests among stakeholders can bring activities to a standstill. We need to spend an adequate amount of time to resolve the communication-gap issues among the stakeholders in order to undertake diverse activities. Then following three aspects are necessary to build up communications. 1) Forge new partnerships among the stakeholders at the initial stage, 2)Share common values backed up with experience, 3)Build up a relationship founded on the trust.

Conservation education (CE) is an important component of environmental education. Its goal is to teach the theory and practice of preservation and restoration of biodiversity affected by human activities so that people can increase their awareness of conservation issues and change their attitudes and behavior to promote environmental conservation. This paper describes two successful case studies to highlight trends in CE in Japan. One case is a project implemented to create “agricultural wetlands” that resulted in the establishment of a Ramsar Convention site comprised of a restored wetland and its adjacent rice paddy in a rural area near Sendai City in northern Japan. Rice paddy fields are a major component of Satoyama , which are traditional agricultural ecosystems in Japan and occupy 40% of the undeveloped landscape in Japan ( Ministry of the Environment Government of Japan, 2007 . Third National Biodiversity Strategy of Japan. Ministry of the Environment Government of Japan, Tokyo). Restoration of Satoyama and wetlands by local citizens is a key component of CE practices in Japan, where practical, hands-on, community-based learning is important. The second CE project, geared toward university students and citizens in Yokohama, restored degraded dragonfly ponds and created butterfly biotope in the second largest city in Japan. Restoration of habitat that is centered around highly visible, popular species such as dragonflies and butterflies also benefits other, less prominent species that share these habitats, yet allows residents to easily monitor the benefits of the project.

This study's objective was to find ways to conserve rice terraces while revitalizing the area based on cooperation of all parties involved. In the studied area, residents affirmed favoring renting fields to outsiders. Furthermore, an NPO whose main objective was the conservation of satoyama (cultural landscape) organized rice farming events in the area to raise public interest. Visitors mentioned varied enthusiasm for such projects depending on the time needed and the easiness of access to the terraces. Revitalization of the area while conserving rice terraces could be possible based on cooperation benefiting all parties with the NPO at the center.

‘ Satochi/Satoyama ordinances ’ have recently been frequently enacted. However, many local government entities have implemented legal systems enacting ordinances which designate green spaces or agricultural land which are to be preserved. This paper attempts to clarify the document characteristics of the ordinances designating conservation areas in the Greater Tokyo Area. We found that descriptions of these ordinances were classified into three groups, which were selection of target sites, designation as a conservation area and maintenance of a conservation area. We also found that multiple methods, which secure the implementation of those rules, were prescribed. These methods for assuring implementation were classified into two ways, procuring the land and maintenance. Most of the conservation ordinances had not been enacted for the direct purpose of conservation of secondary nature. However, many ordinances described not only procuring but also maintaining, which is essential for conserving secondary nature. We classified the conservation ordinances into three types based on their detail descriptions from the point of view of Satochi landscapes conservation. We suggest that the effect of ordinances on the conservation of Satochi landscapes should be evaluated for each type. And, this study covers only ordinance documents. Clarification of the state of implementation of these ordinances is also needed.

The concept of agricultural heritage emphasizes synergies between heritage andagriculture to explain the role of heritage tourism activities in globally importantagricultural sites. The study determined the tourism applications of globallyimportant agricultural heritage systems in Japan. The study used the descriptiveanalyticdesign including documentaryanalysis. The resultsshowedpracticalexampleof tourismanddevelopmentinSatoyamaasatool forconservationandrurallivelihooddiversification.The study concludes that GIAHS providesaparticipatingapproachthatallowslocalpeopletodeterminetheirmainconcernsandexpectations based on what tourism developmentpolicies should form.Keywords: Ecology, heritage tourism, Satoyama, agricultural heritage, descriptive design, Japan

Japanese call rural landscapes ‘satoyama.’ ‘Sato’ means village and ‘yama’ means hill or forest. Satoyama in the past produced much of the food, wood for fuel, timber, and water for communities. However many satoyama have rapidly deteriorated due to industrialization and urbanization. It was in the 1990s that people in general and scientists began to recognize the multiple benefits of satoyama landscapes in Japan. This led to the proliferation of satoyama conservation groups across Japan at the turn of the century. However, it is difficult for local action groups to rehabilitate devastated farmlands and forests through their own efforts alone. It requires policy measures to encourage citizen engagement in satoyama conservation programs. In this paper the author addresses governance issues in rural landscape conservation, referring to the case of the satoyama conservation program in the Kanagawa region.

Socio-ecological production landscapes such as Japan’s Satoyama have been rapidly declining in many countries because of various factors, including increased rural–urban migration, rapidly aging population, depopulation, land use conversion, and abandonment of traditional agricultural cultivation. In this chapter, current conditions and trends in paddy-dominated landscapes in Asia are reviewed, ways and means of restoring ecosystems and enhancing resilience against various changes are explored, and governance models for efficient, equitable, and sustainable management of ecosystem services across a range of stakeholders are identified.

This chapter aims to analyze public perception in Japan of rural landscapes, known as Satoyama, and to investigate the possible future role of Satoyama in relationship to the development of a low carbon society in Japan. The data used were from the survey “The Top 100 Japanese Rural Landscapes” conducted by one of the biggest newspaper companies in Japan in 2008 and an additional questionnaire survey conducted in 2010.

京都府丹後半島の上世屋・五十河地区を対象に, 明治期から今日までの里山の経年的変容過程を5万分の1地形図, 森林簿等を用いて明らかにした。まず土地利用や植生の変化を把握し, 変化の要因となった社会的な背景を検討した。里山林については樹種・林齢階級別の分布と空間パターンを明らかにするとともに, 1900年前後～1996年の里山の変容パターンを分析した。その結果, 社会的インパクトが小規模な面積単位ごとに異なった頻度や大きさで発生し, 複雑な林相分布を生みだしたことが明らかになった。また, 経年的な変容に基づき里山ランドスケープを捉えると, 1900～1930年頃, 1930～1960年頃, 1960年頃～ の3つに類型区分された。

This assessment explores the Japanese concepts of satoyama and satoumi (land and coastal), as possible strategies for sustainable management and governance of common urban ecological resources. Satoyama and satoumi are described as landscape types, and management approaches to land and coastal areas that build on a mosaic composition of ecosystem types and their inherent interlinkages. The management practices and the rich biodiversity of the landscapes are thus mutually interdependent. It is acknowledged in the assessment that local governments play a critical role for the management of urban ecosystems and conservation of biodiversity, which is especially important in the face of the unprecedented urban growth currently ongoing globally. This assessment provides an overview of the urbanization trends in Japan, with related challenges to ecosystem provisioning, and the opportunities for sustainable management that a satoyama and satoumi approach can present. Some international examples of ecosystem management that in different ways can inspire transformation of governance structures in Japan to support urban satoyama and satoumi are highlighted. Open image in new window

Existing institutions are often designed to address issues related to specific ecosystem services, not taking into account interactions and trade-offs among different ecosystem services. This chapter illustrates the effectiveness of a nested institutional approach for managing a bundle of ecosystem services, taking into account complex interactions among multiple uses, user groups and values of services, as well as the existence of multiple property regimes. It starts by providing an overview of the concept and features of common goods and services, followed by the discussions on a concept of the new “commons” introduced by the Japan Satoyama-Satoumi Assessment in 2010, a system of co-management of ecosystem services and biodiversity within private and public land.

Satoyama refers to an indigenous agricultural system of Japan that evolved through long-term interaction between human beings and their local environments. As in many indigenous agricultural systems, it is characterized by integrated landscapes comprised of diverse uses including, but not limited to, paddy fields, farmland, managed and secondary woodland, grasslands, irrigation ponds and canals, and human settlements, all located in close proximity to one another. In environmental terms, this land use variety translates into “biodiversity,” a benefit that synergistically aids both the human inhabitants and the nature it consists of. Further benefits include sustainability, supplemental income, building materials and food, adjusting local microclimate, flood prevention, and culture preservation. Satoyama landscapes, like other systems based on indigenous knowledge around the world, have suffered a period of decline. Efforts are being taken in Japan to revive and conserve these systems and the indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage they represent, and international initiatives (e.g., the Satoyama Initiative) have begun to collect and distribute relevant information on these systems, such as management techniques and cultural value, in hopes of aiding biodiversity-focused land use and the associated human benefits everywhere.

Conservationists worldwide have long been interested in rural landscapes (McNeely & Keeton, 1995; McNeely, 1995; Miller & Hobbs, 2002; Washitani, 2001; Yokohari et al., 2005), which can be characterized as semi-natural areas that are neither pristinely natural nor urban, maintained by appropriate level of human interventions. A great portion of the world’s biodiversity is found in these landscapes (Pimentel et al., 1992). Such landscapes have gained an international attention as Satoyama, and an international partnership has been established in 2010 to promote sustainable use of human-influenced natural environment through the Satoyama Initiative (Convention on Biological Diversity Decision X/32). Japanese archipelago is one of the 34 Biodiversity Hotspots of the world (Mittermeier et al., 2004), and its biodiversity owe much to the quality of the human-influenced natural environment. Rural landscapes are an important conservation challenge in Japan because they are being lost rapidly. The challenge is that the traditional conservation strategy of “setting aside” will not work because humans play important roles in maintaining biodiversity on such landscapes (e.g., Farina, 1995; McNeely, 1995; Melnick, 1983; Nakagoshi, 1995; Natori et al., 2005; Washitani, 2001). Conservation in rural environments faces difficulties also because the public tends to associate nature conservation with pristine, untouched nature (Miller & Hobbs, 2002). The conservation of rural environments would require approaches different from the traditional conservation strategies employed for pristine natural areas. Many have suggested that the consideration of the sociocultural dimension is crucial to the success of the conservation of rural environments in particular, and the conservation of biodiversity in general (e.g., Miller & Hobbs, 2002; Phillips, 1995; Pimentel et al., 1992; Saunders, 1990; Yokohari et al., 1994). Naveh (2000; 2001) has explicitly included humans in his theoretical development of a holistic approach to landscape studies. Born and Sonzogni (1995) and Margerum and Born (1995) have articulated a more pragmatic means to deal with environmental problems in the framework of integrated environmental management. Trauger (1999) calls for a shift from a traditional discipline-based approach to a problembased approach. Accordingly, transdisciplinary research is being advocated in recent years

Japanese satoyama landscapes are currently undergoing profound changes. In order to maintain their traditional form, it is necessary to draw up a comprehensive conservation strategy. In terms of planning theory, the strategic content can be divided into two parts. The first part is the subject of quantitative and qualitative management and conservation of satoyama landscapes. As described in Chapter 4, a decrease in biodiversity and the disappearance of rare species have been caused by a loss of the management of satoyama landscapes. Especially problematic are the satoyama coppice woodlands, where the relationship with humans has been noticeably lost.