Proceedings

Sustainable Planning Instruments and Biodiversity Conservation
is not a depreciation of their capacity to contribute
to habitat conservation, but an acknowledgement
of the distinction between hunting and what is
generally considered to be the rubric of ecotourism
(Isaacs, 2000, p. 62).
As Isaacs clearly states above, consumptive use such
as hunting and fishing is not included in ecotourism.
Tisdell (2003, p. 84) also states that “in general,
ecotourism has been associated with non-consumptive
passive form of wildlife-based tourism,” and Butcher
(2006) describes “ecotourism based development upon
the non-consumption of natural resources.” Kawata
(2008, p. 18) reviewed several definitions of ecotourism
and concluded that it seems that definitions by societies
other than Japan tend to limit ecotourism activities to
non-consumptive ones, whereas definitions by societies
in Japan tend to include consumptive activities.
2.4 Non-Consumptive Use and Its Problems
Until recently, the concern of inappropriate use of the
natural environment has mainly been over consumptive
use issues. One of the examples is the destruction of
wilderness, and ecotourism prevents such activities.
However, there is a possibility that ecotourism causes
excess use by the ecotourists which is beyond the
carrying capacity of the ecotour site. Anyway, the
problem is the degradation of the environmental quality
of the wilderness area caused by over-use. As the
solution, control of usage is essential, and ecotourism is a
promising method. Occasionally, institutional measures
such as access limitation or economic instruments such
as admission charge are used.
Recently, the problem of secondary nature degradation
has worsened. Surprisingly, one of the main reasons
is the under-use of secondary nature. For a deeper
understanding of the issue, it is necessary to introduce
the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis of 1978 by
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protection
conservation
Figure 1.
CLASSIFICATION OF LANDSCAPE
wilderness area
secondary nature
holy place
borrowed landscape
J. H. Connell, which states that biodiversity reaches its
maximum when the disturbance by human beings is
intermediate (Connell, 1978). As this hypothesis suggests,
moderate intervention will create and sustain higher
biodiversity in secondary nature, and the reduction of
intervention will result in the degradation of the quality
of the natural environment.
As we have seen above, reduction of consumptive use
leads to the problem of under-use. In the case of Japan,
forests, storage reservoirs and some wild animals are
typical examples, of which wild animals have caused
severe issues in absence of natural predators (Kawata,
2009a). Moreover, Kawata (2007) points out that underuse
of wild animals may lead to the following two
problems.
Recently, consumptive use has shown a
decrease whereas non-consumptive use has
witnessed an increase. This shift can induce two
problems in the management of game animals in a
scenario encompassing the decline in consumptive
use, increase in non-consumptive use and absence
of predators. [..] The first problem is that as
this shift occurs, the person who utilizes game
animals to gain benefits (user) and the person who
suffers damage (victim) may not be the same. [..]
The second problem is that the utilization of game
animals as beneficial animals will not alleviate
the damage they cause as pests (Kawata, 2007,
pp. 349–350).
An outline of the aforesaid is presented in Figure 1.
Because of over-consumptive use, precious species of
animals and plants have been destroyed in the wilderness
area and regional resources have been depleted in
secondary nature. Ecotourism and green tourism have
been planned to prevent the occurrence of these issues.
On the other hand, consumptive under-use of secondary
rural landscape
urban landscape
cultural landscape
eco tourism
green tourism
over-use:
excess
consumptive
use
COUNTERMEASURES
consumptive
tourism
under-use:
under
consumptive
use
CAUSES OF THE PROBLEMS
nature has brought uncontrolled regional resources,
which result in the reduction of biodiversity and other
issues. However, in case of a wilderness area, under-use
issues will not be revealed because it is desirable for this
area to remove any effect of human beings.
3 Consumptive Tourism
3.1 The Reason for Decline in Consumptive Use
The reason why we need to promote consumptive tourism
is just as we discussed above: reduction of the negative
influence of consumptive use on secondary nature. This
negative influence may result in a negative impact on
human society. For example, if we abandon agricultural
activities, the multi-functionality of agricultural lands
may be lost and biodiversity may decrease, all of which
is a loss for human society.
Then, although we know it will have negative impacts
on human society, what is the reason for the decline of
consumptive use? Here we discuss two topics. Firstly, it
is concerned with the fact that secondary nature is a kind
of public good, as it is well-recognized in social sciences.
Public goods have two characteristics: non-rivalness and
non-excludability. Non-rivalness means that consumption
by one person will not reduce the consumption of another
person. Non-excludability means that it is impossible to
exclude those who refuse to pay for use.
A number of people may understand that, as the use
of secondary nature decreases, the quality of secondary
nature will also decrease. However, even if everyone
concerned understands this concept well, the use of
secondary nature will decrease. This is because once a
person engages in agricultural activities at a cost, others
enjoy benefits generated from this secondary nature
without bearing any cost. In short, the so-called free
ride problems occur. Once consumptive use has started
to diminish, because of the free ride problem, most of
the people may refuse to take actions for stopping this
diminishment.
Nonetheless, the description above does not explain
why consumptive use starts to diminish. To explain
this, we pose the following hypothesis: in short, the use
of secondary nature is also under the influence of the
Petty-Clark’s law. This empirical rule states that as the
national income level improves, the weight shifts from
the primary industry to secondary and tertiary industry.
It was stated in “The Conditions of Economic Progress”
by C. Clark in 1940 and confirmed by S. S. Kuznets
in “Modern Economic Growth” in 1996. The original
idea appeared in “Political Arithmetick” by W. Petty
in 1690.
Use of agricultural lands and artificial forests is
included in the use of secondary nature, all of which
is classified as activities in the primary industry.
Based on the Petty-Clark’s law, the primary industry
Consumptive Tourism and Conservation of Natural Resources
weakens as the national income increases; it follows
that agricultural lands and artificial forests will not
be maintained in time. Human beings have influence
on the natural environment through hunting activities,
which may maintain population size of game ungulates
at low level. Once hunting has been abandoned, such
influences diminish, resulting in the increase of
ungulates; consequently, the rural landscape, where
ungulates reside, will change. As we have already
seen, if predators do not exist, it may result in a drastic
deterioration of the rural landscape.
Above we suggested that the Petty-Clark’s law may
explain the reason for the consumptive use diminishment
and pointed out the free ride problem because of the failure
to stop consumptive use diminishment. Consumptive
tourism is necessary because, as we will examine in
the next section, it seems to be an effective method to
prevent the diminishment of consumptive use.
3.2 Validity of Consumptive Tourism
In what follows, we will discuss the effectiveness of
consumptive tourism for sustaining consumptive use.
We suggested the Petty-Clark’s law to explain the reason
for consumptive use diminishment, but this law is an
empirical rule and not the norm. It means that human
society need not advance in the direction this law
suggests; otherwise some issues concerning consumptive
use diminishment will occur. In short, at least in the
context of consumptive use, we need not emphasize the
Petty-Clark’s law.
However, then we have some doubt: whether
it is possible to put the brakes on consumptive
use diminishment through the implementation of
consumptive tourism. For this doubt, we have the
following suggestion: even if industries shift from
primary to secondary and tertiary, we need to consume
a certain amount of products from the primary industry.
Therefore, the point is if there is profit from producing
agricultural products and/or hunting game animals to
provide meat, and other satisfactory outcomes, as long
as these activities are as profitable as other industries,
it must be possible to maintain consumptive use.
Consumptive tourism can be regarded as a system which
produces these benefits.
In addition, sometimes an exceptional case may
occur. For example, Kawata (2009b) points out based
on the data of 19 European countries that game hunting,
which is one of consumptive uses, has increased when
the per capita GDP is between 10 000 and 20 000 USD,
but once the per capita GDP crosses 20 000 USD, two
groups come to the fore. In one group, the number of
hunters continues to increase, whereas in the other
group, the number of hunters decreases. It suggests that
for several reasons, there will be exceptional situations
of the Petty-Clark’s law.
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