Managing Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes for Sustainable Communities in Asia

This book presents up-to-date analyses of community-based approaches to the sustainable resource management of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) in areas where a harmonious relationship between the natural environment and the people who inhabit it is essential to ensure community and environmental well-being as well as to build resilience in the ecosystems that support this well-being. This chapter introduces the key concepts and approaches, objectives, and organization of this book.

Using a case of the Sekisei Lagoon, Okinawa Prefecture, the southeastern tip of Japanese archipelago, this chapter discussed the interrelationships among the sectoral policy interventions by various marine-related ministries, and the whole structure of the integrated ocean policy. First, we developed the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) Schematic, which summarized the main ecosystem structures, functions, use types, and the stakeholders relating to the Sekisei Lagoon. Then, sectoral policy interventions by various ministries were overlaid onto the SES schematic to graphically show their interrelationships. We found that the ecosystem structure and functions used by one sector is closely connected to other structures and functions, which are then used by other sectors. In other words, all the stakeholders in the social system are closely interlinked at the ecological system level. Secondly, all in all, sectoral policy interventions by various ministries are covering almost all part of the Sekisei Lagoon SES, and therefore, the total coordination of the sectoral policy interventions and the creation of the synergy effects are required. In this process, the cabinet office and the local government will play the important roles. Finally, this SES schematic can be used as a boundary object to facilitate the knowledge exchanges among various stakeholders including the policy makers, practitioners, and researchers, to share the common understandings of the current situation, and to cocreate the policy interventions for the sustainable uses of Sekisei Lagoon.

Invasive alien species management requires public participation to overcome a lack of human and financial resources in management; however, little is known about the demand for public participation in invasive alien species management. To address this knowledge gap, the present study evaluated demand for management of invasive carp, which is one of the worst but publicity invasive species worldwide. A choice experiment survey was conducted in Amami Oshima Island, Japan to quantify tourists’ demand for participating in invasive carp removal in nature-based tourism, and to evaluate the impact of ecological information provision on their preference. The results show most tourists would avoid participating in carp removal activities as a tour option without any financial discounts; however, over 35.2% of tourists were willing to work for carp removal, based on their own motivations. We also found that ecological information encouraged tourists to participate in tours that included carp removal activities. Incorporation of invasive alien species management in nature-based tourism can enhance the economic benefits for local tourism industries. Our findings indicate that tourists could play an important role in invasive alien species management by compensating for a lack of human and financial resources in management.

Envisioning urban sustainability demands to embrace divergent values of various stakeholders. Implementation of policies realizing city’s future visions needs support from a wide range of general public. Hence, merits of participatory approach to backcasting scenario-making have been noted. Although experimenting such approach should be more encouraged, it remains to be seen whether lay citizens can generate their scenarios with required level of rationale and soundness. This chapter addresses this important, but yet unexplored concern by taking two potentially contrasting perspectives. One is “divergence” found in processes where citizens express their pluralistic interests and preferences in an unconstrained manner. The other is “convergence” found in where such a diversified plurality is circumscribed and composed to engender in outcomes some form of converged context. A trade-off relationship may arise between these two and the chapter seeks if any balance can be upheld. To explore such question, a participatory workshop was held in Toyama city, Japan where a handful numbers of citizens envisioned in two separate groups their desirable future via backcasting city’s sustainable features. In analyses, outcomes of both groups’ scenarios were compared and also index of consistency-based text structures endogenous to the scenarios was quantitatively gauged by computational simulation technique. Findings suggest that while a broad spectrum of socioeconomic and ecological elements was incorporated, they were yet founded upon a fairly good degree of logically coherent means-end based structures. The chapter then considers the meaning of such a balance for backcasting scenario-making with implications for further research agenda and future policy-making.

This chapter attempts to (a) identify the drivers of biodiversity degradation of the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, (b) present an alternative understanding on the measures for sustainable utilisation and conservation of resources and (c) suggest actions and policy alternatives to reverse the process of degradation and to move towards transformative harmonious human–nature interactions. While it is documented that the size of the Sundarbans of Bangladesh reduced and several floral and faunal species of the forest have been facing threat of extinction, the causes of continuous and unabated loss of the resources of this forest region have not been rigorously demonstrated. By challenging the mainstream approaches, the chapter theoretically and empirically exhibits that the exclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in the conservation and management process has contributed to the losses of biological diversity and suggests that the IPLCs have been practising several unique production methods based upon their traditional knowledge which can significantly contribute to the sustainable management of resources through symbiotic human–nature relationships. Following multiple evidence base (MEB) approaches, it is found that human sociality-based conservation practice positively impacts on resilient indicators and helps achieve Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Socio-ecological resilience is vital for the long-term sustainability of communities in production landscapes and seascapes, but community members often find it difficult to understand and assess their own resilience in the face of changes that affect them over time due to economic and natural drivers, demographic changes, and market forces among others, due to the complexity of the concept of resilience and the many factors influencing the landscape or seascape. This chapter provides an overview of a project and its resilience assessment process using an indicator-based approach, which has been implemented under the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI). In this project, a set of 20 indicators were identified to capture different aspects of resilience in SEPLS, and examples are included from various contexts around the world, with the purpose of identifying lessons learned and good practices for resilience assessment. These indicators have now been used by communities in many countries, often with the guidance of project implementers, with the goal of assessing, considering, and monitoring their landscape or seascape’s circumstances, identifying important issues, and ultimately improving their resilience. While this particular approach is limited in that it cannot be used for comparison of different landscapes and seascapes, as it relies on community members’ individual perceptions, it is found useful to understand multiple aspects of resilience and changes over time within a landscape or seascape.

The relevance of traditional land-use systems in Asia is under threat from externally influenced drivers such as the use of modern agricultural technologies, urbanization, rapid industrialization, overexploitation, and underutilization. The impacts of these changes in land use are contributing to a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) in social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS). Societal actors operating from multiple scales create and implement place-based solutions in SEPLS in response to landscape-specific challenges and opportunities for achieving biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. This study aims to identify and demonstrate the abundance of place-based solutions for solving challenges to sustainable use and management of natural resources in SEPLS, and to better inform the existing suite of conservation and restoration solutions. We review a set of 88 case studies from The International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) in the South, East and Southeast Asian regions using a societal-based solution scanning approach to systematically identify these solutions for conservation and restoration at local scales and to categorize them by solution type. Societal actors demonstrate preferences for solution types to reversing the loss of BES in SEPLS while embracing a mix of all solution types across ecosystems. Institutional and governance solutions are the most common type across Asia. Technological solutions are preferred in East Asia, while knowledge and cognitive solutions are preferred in Southeast Asia. Economic and incentive-based solutions are found most often in South Asia as livelihood investments for local residents, and to balance trade-offs among food production and biodiversity conservation. Sharing the knowledge of various place-based solution types in different social-ecological contexts helps improve more purposeful and deliberate design of SEPLS for multiple benefits.

This chapter contributes to improve an understanding of the effectiveness of different biodiversity science–policy interfaces (SPIs), which play a vital role in navigating policies and actions with sound evidence base. The single comprehensive study that was found to exist, assessed SPIs in terms of their ‘features’—goals, structure, process, outputs and outcomes. We conducted a renewed systematic review of 96 SPI studies in terms of these features, but separating outcomes, as a proxy for effectiveness, from other features. Outcomes were considered in terms of their perceived credibility, relevance and legitimacy. SPI studies were found to focus mostly on global scale SPIs, followed by national and regional scale SPIs and few at subnational or local scale. The global emphasis is largely explained by the numerous studies that focused on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Regionally, the vast majority of studies were European, with a severe shortage of studies, and possibly SPIs themselves, in especially the developing world. Communication at the science–policy interface was found to occur mostly between academia and governments, who were also found to initiate most communication. Certain themes emerged across the different features of effective SPIs, including capacity building, trust building, adaptability and continuity. For inclusive, meaningful and continuous participation in biodiversity SPIs, continuous, scientifically sound and adaptable processes are required. Effective, interdisciplinary SPIs and timely and relevant inputs for policymakers are required to ensure more dynamic, iterative and collaborative interactions between policymakers and other actors.

While Chaps. 2–5 covered specific case studies of landscapes and seascapes in Japan (Chaps. 2–4) and Bangladesh (Chap. 5), Chaps. 6–8 consisted of a series of review articles on sustainable management approaches relating to land/seascapes that explored lessons learned from assessing resilience in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) (Chap. 6), solutions for sustainable management of SEPLS in Asia (Chap. 7), and the effectiveness of biodiversity science–policy interfaces (SPIs) from local to global scales (Chap. 8). These chapters are summarized here according to their objectives, materials/study sites, methods/tools, spatial scales, and key actors. Then, the implications for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework are discussed using key leverage points of transformations toward sustainability identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment: (1) visions of a good life; (2) total consumption and waste; (3) values and action; (4) inequalities; (5) justice and inclusion in conservation; (6) externalities and telecoupling; (7) technology, innovation, and investment; and (8) education and knowledge generation and sharing.