Satoumi: Re‐connecting people to nature for sustainable use and conservation of coastal zones

Abstract

1. In addition to the management of marine protected areas, the management of nonprotected areas is integral to sustainable use and conservation of coastal zones.2. The human-nature connection has drawn increasing attention in the Western society because the disconnect from nature is a root cause of ecological crises and unsustainability. Re-connecting is a promising avenue.3. We propose satoumi creation as an approach for the sustainable use and conservation of coastal zones by re-connecting people to nature. Satoumi is a Japanese term describing a desirable state of coastal zones with enhanced biodiversity and productivity realized by active human intervention.4. Although satoumi is promising, previous discussions have been narrowly focused on ecosystems. We reconsidered satoumi from a social-ecological system (SES) perspective to elucidate the full spectrum of its key features. The human-nature connection is an integral part of satoumi. Satoumi engenders relational values in addition to instrumental and intrinsic values. 5. Satoumi as a state is one thing and its creation another. We cannot merely transplant a successful satoumi to other locations. Furthermore, because coastal SESs are complex, systemic transformation into satoumi requires identifying deep leverage points. We propose a certain marine education at schools that could function as a deep leverage point. The education corresponds to the three realms of deep leverage for sustainability transformation: re-structure, re-connect and re-think. K E Y W O R D S education for sustainable development, human-nature connection, leverage points, marine education, relational values, satoumi

Multilevel Management System for Coastal Areas by Network Governance

“…In addition, individuals who live outside the area and those who support activities while outside the area are also important players in management. For this reason, the value of the relationship that connects these individuals with Satoumi and the mechanism to realize it is crucial [19].…”

Sustainability through landscapes: natural parks, satoyama, and permaculture in Japan

“…The perspective of landscape sustainability offers a place-based, relational thinking of human-nature interactions (Hanssen 2001;MacKenzie 2004;Berque 2013;Wu 2013;Stenseke 2018;West et al 2018;Bieling et al 2020). Many studies that adopted this perspective propose landscapes as entry points to leverage sustainability transformation from place-based instances of sustainable human-nature relations (Gu and Subramanian 2014;Uehara et al 2019;Riechers et al 2020aRiechers et al , 2020b. Among these, Riechers et al (2020a) show how human-nature relations play a critical role in the evolution of landscape and their sustainable landscape management.…”

“…Inversely, reviving a sense of connectedness might contribute to maintain the diversity and complexity of landscapes (Riechers et al 2020b). This sense of connectedness is also at the core of the study of Uehara et al (2019), which suggests that Japan's cultural seascape of satoumi could serve as a place to enhance people's relations to nature, engender relational values, and in return maintain the seascape biodiversity. Gu and Subramanian (2014) adopt the term of 'socio-ecological production landscapes' to refer more broadly to cultural landscapes shaped by mutually beneficial relations between human and nature.…”

Winners and Losers in Energy Transition: Study Case of Wood Biomass Power-Plants Implementation in France

“…Second, participative workshops with local actors should be organized to identify shared values and vision of the territory with the aim to favor the emergence of the key condition No2 (Table 4) [59][60][61], i.e., developing more sustainable management based on a common vision of the social-ecological system (it corresponds to the policymaking key point named "Become sustainable in all dimensions" in the European Commission report on Bioeconomy (2018) [1]. For the purpose of our case study, during the workshops we organized, we identified that many actors (regional parks, residents, hunters, foresters, shepherds, etc.)…”

“…• Identify in a participatory workshop, ecosystem services or goods provided by forest for which all actors commonly agree[59][60][61].…”