Satoyama-Satoumi Ecosystems and Human Well-Being - UNU-IAS ...

Satoyama-Satoumi Ecosystems and Human Well-being | 15
Ecosystem concepts common
to satoyama and satoumi
Satoyama and satoumi landscapes provide
three key ecosystem services that may be
conceptualised as: provisioning, regulating,
and cultural.
Provisioning services are those resources
supplied by satoyama and satoumi to human
communities. Satoyama provisioning services
include timber for construction; fuel, in the
form of wood and charcoal; and food, both
wild game, rice, and edible species such as
mushrooms. Satoumi provisioning services
include seafood and salt.
Regulating services in satoyama include functions
such as climate control, water quality
control, wildlife habitat regulation, and
disaster control. Thus, they are traditional
mainstays for the sustainable supply of many
provisioning services.
Similarly, satoumi areas centered on tideland
also provide regulating services in coastal
water environments through removal of nutrients
such as nitrogen and phosphorus. In
addition, diverse biological communities in
satoumi such as sea grass beds are equipped
with high carbon dioxide fixation capabilities
and provide climate control services.
sioning services (timber, charcoal, organic
fertilisers, agricultural production), regulating
services (water regulation and purification,
soil retention, disaster management),
and cultural services (sightseeing, spiritual
values, eco-tourism). Also considered are
changes in nature conservation policies, promotion
of recycling agriculture with organic
farming at its core, resource utilisation by
tourism-related policies, and how generally
these factors affect human well-being.
Summary
Satoyama and satoumi are Japanese concepts
for traditional land and coastal management
practices that have allowed the effective use
and maintenance of these landscapes by the
Japanese people. As used in this current
study, we define them as a dynamic mosaic of
managed socio-ecological systems producing a
bundle of ecosystem services for human wellbeing.
Of critical importance for this study is the
decline in both types of landscape since the
end of World War II. Subsequent chapters
will detail the root causes of this decline and
possible courses of action.
Finally, cultural services provided by satoyama
and satoumi are embedded in the
very foundation of Japanese society and
provide the basis for traditional satoyama/
satoumi landscape practices, such as how rice
is grown, forests maintained and fishing undertaken.
Indeed, it is the myriad of practices
with respect to satoyama and satoumi that to
a large extent comprise and define traditional
Japanese culture.
In assessing changes in biodiversity and ecosystem
services in the past half century and
their causes, the JSSA focuses on biodiversity
(natural forests and artificial forests), provi-