Sustainable and Traditional Environmental Conservation in Asia

This book articulates the traditional Japanese concept of conservation, called Satoyama, for effective management of nature’s goods and services at a community–ecosystem interface in the climate milieu. The term Satoyama refers to socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes, which are mosaics of diverse land uses and ecosystems that have long been shaped through sustainable human interactions with nature. This multilevel study of conservation science, therefore, serves an interdisciplinary academia, consistent with conventions on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development, to establish links between conservation priorities and development objectives. In this book, the Satoyama is introduced as a rights-based neo-economic conservation paradigm for production-linked sustainable development, supplemented with case studies from Asia. The International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative was established at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010 to protect and revitalise Satoyama. However, even after a decade, this panacea for sustainability remains unfulfilled for practitioners and policy planners in the global south. Satoyama have been disappearing as a result of irresponsible consumption of natural resources and drastically changing agro-farming practices, threatening wildlife inhabiting those areas as well as the life and livelihood of marginal communities in the vicinity. In consideration of the global pandemic crisis, the present monograph aims for introspection within a traditional sustainable practice of Asia to augment community resilience and preparedness.