The writer’s compelling analysis aside, the links alone make the piece worthwhile (see, for example, Antony Boys’ pioneering and thorough analysis of the relationship between agricultural productivity and energy scarcity written in 2000 – a paper that long ago helped shape this blog’s theses).

But what is especially interesting – vis-á-vis Satoyama Spirit’s notion of Japan’s eventual return to a resilient lifestyle based on harmony with nature – are the as-yet-unread-by-me views of Eisuke Ishikawa, a prominent author who writes about the Edo Period. The Our World 2.0 article says:

Under present trends, the food supply problem will evolve and significant difficulties will emerge. Boys himself refers to the work of Eisuke Ishikawa, a writer on the Edo Period economy, who talks about the state of Japan in 2050 (“2050 is the Edo Period”, Kodansha, 1998) and essentially describes something like a “slow crash” — dwindling imports, falling exports, economic and population decline. (While there is no English translation of this book, you can read similar works by Ishikawa on the Japan for Sustainability website.)

Ishikawa’s work (at least those translated into English, care of JFS’s above link) are undoubtedly on my short-list of anticipated readings. Hopefully, they will provide the impetus for a future post (or posts!).

For all of its promise, however, I would argue that its worth is really as a “bridge concept” – an advance to be sure – but nonetheless just a stepping stone on our longer path toward a greater awareness of our proper relationship to Nature. To arrive where we really need to go we must expand our awareness in ways that are not easy for those of us embedded in the modern world. Toward that end, I am offering the following (lengthy) email dialogue in the hope that it might contribute to progress on our individual and collective journeys.

The thread begins here, with a post I made on a Great Transitions Initiative thread discussing “Premises of a New Economy”. The concept of ecosystems services had been presented as an important contribution and I offered my critique of the term:

28 October 2011

“As this is the time to give candid feedback I’m going to go ahead and provide my own. I have a quibble with the term “ecosystem services.” Of course, I understand its utility in this discussion as it represents a marked improvement over the status quo failure to recognize value in (or even recognize at all!) that which we cannot monetize.

Nonetheless, I believe the term falls short in that it perpetuates elusive aspects of old paradigm thinking we’re needing to move beyond by continuing to frame the environment as an object that exists for human benefit.

So long as we maintain the story that we’re separate from Nature – and that it is here to serve us – we’re not seeing the roots of our dilemma, and nothing we create or innovate will be adequate to the task of finding authentic sustainability. We can mitigate, we can extend, but we will not solve, as we’ll be tragically attempting to grow solutions on inherently illusory roots.

Rather than go into it here, I offer to anyone interested the following brief web article (I wrote) published earlier this year on the UN University site, Our World 2.0: “To Serve the Ecosystems that Serve Us“.

As [the previous commenter] properly pointed out, adjustments are a necessary component of a paradigm shift, and using the term ecosystem services is certainly an incremental step in the right direction. I offer the above not necessarily as a vote for banishing the use of this term, but in the spirit of further expanding this group’s capacities to find solutions genuinely adequate to our task.

One commenter responded as follows:

At one level it’s easy to agree: if we ‘sell’ sustainability only on the basis of profit, sooner or later the sales pitch will fail. This is no matter whether the ‘profit’ is in ecosystem services or social responsibility or whatever.

I’m still trying to get my head around ecosystem services as currently applied/ used, so I forwarded your mail to a group working with urban sustainability on an ES basis. They reply:

“What is the message? That the ecosystem services approach is wrong, or not enough?

“Contrary to what it says, ecosystem services approaches often strive to incorporate ‘aesthetics, complexity, integrity, cultural wisdom’ so that they don’t end up as externalities. If not they certainly don’t aim to replace those values but rather complement them. Of course quantifying ‘soft values’ is not easy and one has to be very careful when trying to elicit total values of natural systems rather than marginal changes in them.

“The text also says that the values of the satoyama landscapes are the result of ‘co-creation’ through the activities of ancient cultures. My guess is that this co-creation was to a large extent a result of historic demands for certain ecosystem services from that landscape.

“I would be interested to know more about the particular aspects of satoyama culture that could help us ‘discover the forgotten secret to a harmonious existence and, indeed, a meaningful life’. Maybe there are insights that can be implemented in today’s society.”

There is another Japanese word we might take inspiration from, at least if I’ve understood it correctly: mottainai, or (something like) contentment, enjoying ‘what is’ rather than hankering for ‘what is not’, moderation/frugality… Anyone know Japanese?

Finally, I wrote the following:

Elaborating further, with your colleague’s questions and concerns in mind, my concern with the term “ecosystem services” is that while it – importantly – takes the very necessary step of incorporating previously ignored externalities (indeed, explicitly including at times intangibles such as aesthetics and culture), it nonetheless does so under the assumption that the value of something is derived from the recognized service it provides. It still applies, or implies, a monetary value, akin to an actuary assigning value. It becomes a convenient abstraction but in doing so insulates one from the recognition that we exist inextricably within a complex whole whose value transcends the sum of the parts. Necessarily, it cannot take everything into account, because not everything is perceived to provide a service. In a world of valued parts, who speaks for those parts left out of the ES value proposition?

In other words, it fails to go far enough in that it doesn’t start from an assumption of implicit value of all of Nature, recognized as providing a service or not.  As such, it still leaves open the possibility that what isn’t factored into – and recognized by – the ecosystem services equation is not of value because it isn’t seen or understood. Those parts remains outside, marginalized, and are thereby at risk for conscious or unconscious devaluation, with unrecognized consequences, thereby perpetuating the problem of misunderstood cause-and-effect relationships.

Having such a worldview of parts with relative values leads us, by logical extension, to seeing the value of the world as simply the sum of its component parts. It is an extension of a mechanized worldview, a dead universe comprised of dead matter, whose value is discerned on the basis of our human constructs. This narrow vantage point of modernity remains ubiquitous but is obsolete and begs to be recognized sooner than later if we are to recover our right relationship to the Earth from which we’ve sprung. We need what might be called an ecological consciousness.

While ES is moving us, crucially, in the right direction, and is thus necessary…my point is that it should not be mistaken as being sufficient, as it can’t ultimately get us where we need to go, which is the recognition that we humans are not separate from nature, but embedded as one with Nature, and that being human does not entitle us to exploit the environment – any part of it – for our benefit. Our relationship to Nature becomes participatory rather than exploitive, given to stewardship rather than entitled, indeed reverential rather than purely rational. One with rather than one over.

The key aspect of satoyama culture – the “forgotten secret” – your friend inquires about is this very consciousness of oneness, of reciprocity, of the inherent sanctity of Nature, and the respect this gives rise to when participating with this understanding. It is ancient, and was left behind in our rush to apply the scientific method of separating the world into conceptual silos. Indigenous cultures still have a deep, intrinsic understanding of this. In the West and in industrialized cultures, we have forgotten it to our peril, and in forgetting it we have created institutions and value systems that prioritize and value some things over others and fail to see we’re inextricably part of a vast systemic web of balance and cyclical harmony where all things contribute and nothing is wasted, where exploitive behavior has unavoidable, if unseen, cause-and-effect relationships, many of which defy easy recognition or rectification. Thus, we’ve become highly out of balance and haven’t understood why. We use our highly-developed rational minds to see the symptoms and attempt to create ways to rebalance and adjust, technical fixes to attempt to restore or enhance or mitigate, but without an underlying recognition that more of the same application of our rational minds isn’t what is ultimately needed.

I’m not advocating losing the rational mind or its attributes…not at all. These are hard-won evolutionary attributes with profound value. Rather, I am saying that we need to expand our individual and collective identities to move from “me” to “we”. Ultimately, this is the Great Transition I believe we’re all bound to be making.

The Japanese term “mottainai” is wonderful, and speaks directly to the qualities of life that can flow from this “just enough” attitude toward Mother Earth.

But what I hadn’t anticipated until recently is the possibility of Japan shutting down all of its nuclear reactors within months. Yet it is a real possibility, and if it does happen it will propel Japan far ahead of other industrialized countries in transitioning to a more harmonious relationship with nature.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan was recently quoted as seeing the country as a nuclear-free nation. But unlike similar pronouncements from Germany, which pledges to be nuclear-free by 2022, Japan may become nuclear-free literally within a year.

That would be quite a feat for a country that only five months ago relied on nuclear plants for about 30% of its electrical power.

By some measures, the country is already two thirds of the way to becoming nuclear-free. Thirty eight of the country’s 54 reactors are currently shut down, and there are no dates set for their return to service.

Aside from the irretrievably damaged reactors at the Fukushima power plant, reactors have been shut down across Japan for maintenance checks. The only problem is once the nuclear plants are shut down, none have been restarted as local governments have balked against their reopening.

By law, all Japanese reactors must be temporarily shut down for maintenance every 13 months. All of currently operating reactors have maintenance scheduled by next spring. As a result, if the present pattern of indefinite shutdowns after maintenance inspections continues, Japan could effectively be nuclear-free by next spring.

In the meantime, it is painful to watch the day-to-day suffering of everyone involved (e.g., here and here) in the still-unfolding Fukushima nightmare as widespread and growing contamination continues to be revealed, along with varying degrees of malfeasance (a serious example here). The struggle in Japan between those desperate to maintain the nuclear status quo (certain industries, certain government agencies and certain academicians, etc.) and those who are calling for fundamental change and a return to more sustainable power generation mirrors in many ways the emergent conflicts between the old and new paradigm seen elsewhere in the world.

What is interesting to observe is how this struggle in Japan is playing out within the government power structures and between the government and the public. Top-down calls for setsuden, or power conservation, are being impressively embraced by the mainstream, while certain branches of the government, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries (MAFF), are engaged in promising and highly constructive endeavors, like promoting the revitalization of satoyama, or managed socio-ecological systems.

Here is an example of a mainstream unique-to-Japan view that goes beyond simple acceptance and gaman (gritting one’s teeth) and speaks to a marked and growing yearning for a long-lost simplicity:

Mitsuharu Taniyama, 73, the owner of a small insurance business, has directed his staff to dim the lights at their office on the second floor of a small building in Yokohama.

“As you can see, our office is surrounded by windows, so after dark people walking outside would notice if it was all lit up inside here,” Mr. Taniyama said. “Now I would feel guilty.”

Like some Japanese of his generation, Mr. Taniyama said the current national campaign reminded him of restrictions on the use of lights during World War II. To avoid becoming the targets of nighttime air raids by American warplanes, families huddled around a single light bulb while making sure that no light was visible from the outside.

Behind the current enthusiasm for conservation, Mr. Taniyama also saw a rethinking of postwar Japan’s single-minded focus on economic growth. Many, he believed, were ready to renounce nuclear power even if that meant “time travel to the lifestyle that Japan had when it lost the war to America.”

Toward that end, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries has been partnering with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in support of Japan’s sustainable agricultural systems, designating two sites in Japan for inclusion in a growing worldwide initiative, the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), whose aim is to “boost food and livelihood security and agri-’cultural’ survival.” These two select sites, Sado Island (Niigata Prefecture) and Nodo Peninsula (Ishikawa Prefecture), were recently featured in an inspiring article, well worth reading, in the UN University’s OurWorld 2.0 web magazine.

While Japan’s internal struggles may be emblematic of similar struggles everywhere between old paradigm thinking and more evolved ways of being in the world that are gradually emerging into awareness and acceptance, I am particularly heartened by the possibility that Japan may set a critical example by exiting the nuclear power generation business well in advance of other industrialized countries, and if they succeed in doing so it will surely be a result of a continually evolving cooperation between the government, industry, and the public in making energy conservation, environmental safety and ecological harmony top priorities while ensuring the culture’s wellbeing.

In the midst of – and to some degree a result of – the enormous challenges facing the country, Japan’s satoyama spirit is showing clear and promising signs of renewed vigor across the sectors and strata of society.

When I began musing about the revitalization of satoyama culture it was not at all clear how we might get “from here to there”, given the inertia and entrenchment of our current paradigm of separation, but if there is any silver lining to be discerned from the horrible dislocations of Japan’s still-unfolding tragedy, perhaps it is that the Japanese people are not letting this crisis go to waste in terms of using it as an opportunity for reflection. Many observers are recognizing that Japan is undergoing a profound transformation – starting even before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster tore its societal fabric – and now the potential for real change across seemingly disparate sectors is being revealed in increasingly practical terms.

For years I have been following one of Japan’s small but influential organizations through their newsletters and website. Japan for Sustainability has always taken a leading role in showcasing the many ways – from industry to education – that the country is creatively responding to the realities of finite resources and the need for conservation and environmental sustainability.

In keeping with Japan’s current and beneficial self-reflective zeitgeist, this month the JFS website goes deeper than usual with a thoughtful article, Coexisting with Nature: Reflections after the Devastating 2011 Earthquake in Japan, written by JFS’s founder, Junko Edahiro. In it she contemplates how her country is being called to reexamine its modern assumptions about controlling nature and asks whether it is time to consider alternative ways of being in and relating to the natural world – alternatives that, from this blog’s perspective, closely resonate with the values and ethics of Japan’s ancient traditions of satoyama culture and spirit.

The following are extended excerpts of Edahiro-san’s reflections written after her recent visit to the Tohoku region:

The experience of personally seeing damaged sites and hearing what had happened provoked a lot of thoughts, one of which was about humanity’s “coexistence with nature.” Being a land of frequent earthquakes, Japan has experienced many huge tsunamis in the past. Typhoons also hit it as many as 10 times a year sometimes. As it is located in the monsoon climate zone and nearly 70 percent of the land is covered with steep mountain forests, the country often experiences natural disasters such as floods and landslides caused by heavy rains.

Ishinomaki had a solid embankment built along the shore. The city and its residents believed that it would provide sufficient protection against a tsunami, but this time the tsunami was much higher than the embankment and it devastated the area, leaving behind massive damage. I keenly felt the weakness of humans and human- made things in the face of natural threats like earthquakes and tsunamis.

We often use the expression “coexistence with nature.” It’s often found in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of companies, and it definitely becomes a topic when discussing town-building activities. After seeing the situation in Ishinomaki, however, I began to think the expression is used merely superficially and is too optimistic. I think we refer to coexistence with nature when we establish a natural environment around us as something we can appreciate, which would never attack us, as if it were a miniature garden.

Most Japanese towns, including Ishinomaki, were planned and built based on the idea of combating threats from nature with technology. In this case it was to establish a solid embankment that could withstand a tsunami, but at Ishinomaki the embankment was destroyed because the tsunami was much bigger than people using modern technology had predicted. What do we need to do now? Is a more fortified and higher embankment the solution? The city of Kamaishi in Iwate was also badly damaged as the tsunami surged and overflowed its embankment. It had built a huge one after learning lessons from the earthquake and tsunami in Chile in 1960, but it was still useless.

The city of Miyako in Iwate also suffered considerable damage from the tsunami, but in contrast the people from the city’s Aneyoshi region were all found safe. This region was once destroyed almost completely when it was hit by the Meiji Sanriku Tsunami in 1896 and the Showa Sanriku Tsunami in 1933. The number of survivors from these tsunamis was said to be two and four, respectively. There is a stone tsunami marker erected on a mountain path about 500 meters away from the shore, on which warnings are inscribed to be passed on to descendants to remember the importance of having houses on a hill. People from the region have kept in their mind the warning on the marker: “The tsunami reached here.” “Do not build houses below this point.” “Be cautious even after years have passed.” Every house in the region is built on sites above the marker, so no damage to people and houses was reported here.

Open floodplains used to be found in many monsoon regions in Asia. Although heavy typhoon rains cause flooding and overflowing rivers, they also contribute to bringing nutrients from upstream, which in turn help boost crop harvests. I learned that people in the old days didn’t try to stop flooding. They left spaces open for flooding on the floodplain in case of any overflow and avoided living there. People were adjusting their own activities to natural rhythms. As the population has continued to grow and people thinking that they can build houses anywhere they want as long as they pay for them, they began building houses on flood plains and ended up suffering from greater damage caused by typhoons and flooding. For people living by a river with a high risk of flooding, it is now normal to expect engineered high embankments to contain the enormous threats from nature.

“All life, including human beings, is sacred and kept alive by everything in the universe.” This is an eastern idea. The concept means that we live in a web woven of all that exists, both animate and inanimate. The ancient Chinese philosophies of Laozi and Zhuangzi include the basic concepts of “naturalness” and “non-action,” suggesting that instead of trying to manipulate or resist nature, fitting ourselves into the natural world is the most appropriate attitude.

A woman who was evacuated to a local temple and now takes care of dozens of evacuees including elderly people at the shelter said, “I love the sea. The tsunami hit and swept my house away, but it can’t be helped. Television broadcasts reported about people who felt betrayed by the sea or blame it on this disaster, but I have never felt like that. I live close to the sea because I love it, so I don’t blame it. I’ll live by the sea again, although I’m thinking about living somewhere uphill next time.” She reminded me of the concepts of non-action and naturalness. “Naturalness” here is a mode of being in accordance with the ways of nature. To gain such naturalness, Laozi and Zhuangzi preached that non-action is important. In their idea, the opposite of non-action is “artificiality,” attempts by people to put something natural under their control. Examples of artificiality here are trying to block tsunamis or flooding with engineering technologies.

Should humanity regard nature as an object that needs to be suppressed and controlled, or just let it go and go along with its natural oscillations? The earthquake and tsunami disaster has given us an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between humanity and nature and how we should perceive it. People in the disaster areas, including those in Ishinomaki, have started discussing and working on reconstruction plans. Some towns might choose to build higher and stronger seawalls, while others might decide to pass on the tough lessons from the tsunami disaster this time to future generations by telling them that we should not live too close to the water’s edge because it is the realm of nature. There is no single and ultimately correct answer. Yet I strongly hope that future city planning is developed with longer time perspectives to enhance resilience, not just short-term efficiencies, and that planning and reconstruction in the affected areas are carried out using the hard lessons learned from this disaster.

By Junko Edahiro, Japan for Sustainability

It is exciting and gratifying to see the concepts of satoyama and satoumi being highlighted for their potential to provide a sustainable, resilient, long-term basis for a rich and dynamic culture and thriving relationship with the natural world – not only for Japan’s rebuilding strategy but also for the world.

Japan is uniquely positioned to act as a “proof of concept” for other developed countries in finding ways to remember and draw into the present long forgotten ways of living in harmony with nature – and in the process reconnecting with those tangible and intangible qualities of interconnectedness that provide true meaning to our lives and nourish our parched spirits.

The spontaneous acts of compassion and service that arise in the immediate aftermath of great disruptions to our daily (and oft-separate) lives – from the simple act of opening one’s home to passersby walking home after the earthquake, to outpourings of love and concern from strangers across the world – are profound demonstrations that at our most human core, relationships of dependence and interdependence are natural and understood, particularly by the heart. And now increasingly by science. Across disciplines – from ecology to economics, quantum physics to the social sciences – diverse examples of connection and community are rapidly becoming recognized, and valued.

Until they were eclipsed by the rise of industry, Japan’s long traditions of satoyama and satoumi flourished as expressions of a spiritual ethic of interconnectedness that was intrinsic to the ancient worldview. Now, as our modern industrial “age of separation” cracks under the pressures of its own unavoidable contradictions, we are being pushed and pulled to find a new way of being in the world. Satoyama and satoumi are ancient in origin but their intrinsic wisdom is as vital and fresh as life itself, ever renewing and innovative, and totally adequate to the task of serving as the foundation for a promising way forward.

As this article says, the concepts of satoyama and satoumi are no panacea, but they do provide a set of eminently practical values and principles that are, ultimately, priceless for their universal promise and applicability.

May everyone inspired by this article go far in supporting and promulgating local and global expressions of satoyama and satoumi, both for Japan’s sake and the world’s.

March 23, 2011

Tight Web Saves Cut-Off Japanese Villages

By MARTIN FACKLER

However, events and other articles have overtaken my relaxed timeline for completing my draft post and I want to share some of these recent developments right away. But first, here is a preview of my draft to provide context for what follows:

Not so long ago, Japan’s economic power and drive for success gave rise to a famous book called “Japan as Number One,” a promise the country came close to but never quite succeeded in fulfilling. Now, however, Japan once again has what it takes to lead the developed world, this time by setting the example of how a developed country can return to sustainability. This time, Japan can be number one not by old paradigm standards of power and money but by the new paradigm’s demands to live in harmony with nature and each other, for there is in fact no difference. Indigenous wisdom knows that we are nature, and we are all connected as one integral whole. Japan lost sight of this truth for a dozen decades or so as they adopted an outside perspective, but down deep, they never entirely forgot it.

Keeping in mind the title of my draft I’ve been lazily composing in recent weeks, imagine my surprise when I discovered last night an article in the Japan Times about a recent symposium in Tokyo titled “Japan as Number One Revisited.” More than ten experts, from professor emeritus of Harvard Ezra Vogel – who authored the original best-seller, “Japan as Number One” in 1979 – to former Prime Minister Nakasone, participated in a discussion about Japan’s direction in coming decades.

I had high hopes I’d find mention of Japan’s fledgling international leadership in revitalizing satoyama landscapes (since Nagoya’s COP10 biodiversity conference just ended a few days ago) but the upshot was simply that despite downward trends, the panel concluded the country still retains strong points in geriatric health, food culture and technological prowess. Well then. Is that all? I think Japan has much more important things than those to contribute.

Meanwhile, I’m discovering my bullish prognostications on Japan are finding anecdotal support albeit in unlikely places. For example, take yesterday’s “Dreaming of a new Edo era” opinion piece written by a French economist in advance of this week’s Group of 20 meeting in Seoul. The author laments Japan’s resigned acceptance of its decline in world stature and supports his argument with an example that, to my mind, instead contains hints of promise:

More strikingly, stagnation has found its promoters in Japan itself. A leading public intellectual Naoki Inose, who is also Tokyo’s vice governor, has declared that “the era of growth is over.” When Japan was threatened by Western imperialism, he says, the country had to open up (in 1868) and modernize. This process has been completed. Japan is now ready to reconnect with its own tradition of social harmony and zero growth.

Referring to the 1600-1868 period, Inose calls this future the New Edo era: “A smaller population will enjoy the sufficient wealth that has been accumulated, and, from now on, it will invest its creativity in refining the culture.” The first Edo collapsed when the United States Navy opened up the Japanese market with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s “black ships” in 1853.

It isn’t surprising that Inose’s assertions come with a whiff of nationalism, and that will remain a danger during whatever transition occurs. One thing we can count on is that issues and arguments in coming years will not be black or white, but will instead be a multi-hued reflections of society’s complex fabric of light and shadow. Competing interests and forces – and their ambivalent aspirations and fears – will come to the surface and must be reconciled. It will take wise discrimination and critical thinking to sort through them and respond constructively, rather than succumb to prejudice and reactivity.

Another perspective is provided by long-time Japan resident, Roger Pulvers, in his new Japan Times article, “Color me upbeat despite the pessimism now sweeping the land.” He feels that despite clear reasons for pessimism – ambitious China next door, dependence on the US military, deflation, and the loss of societal fight, hustle, and hunger for success – the future of Japan isn’t necessarily dark. I quote at length as he mirrors many of the underlying ideas of this blog:

Yet I remain an optimist, though these days I often feel like that weird guy in a cinema with a big grin on his face watching a horror movie — while everyone else is scared out of their wits.

Where do I get this optimism from? The answer lies in two qualities of Japanese life that, I believe, will see the country through the present morass.

One is austerity. Japanese are not averse to austerity, and indeed it is considered a virtue — practically a goal in itself. Despite the gross excesses of Japanese consumerism seen in the 1980s — on balance, a very short span of time for an outburst of national greed — Japanese people remain as they have traditionally been, quite at home with less. Paucity itself and the stark absence of adornment have always been at the heart of this culture, from the less-is-more nature of the tea ceremony and the ceramic arts to the sleek minimalism of much contemporary architecture and design. Being satisfied with little is a core feature of the Japanese lifestyle.

There has been, for instance, a marked and well-documented decline in interest in cars, particularly among the young. They are just not buying them like they used to, and for them this is a deprivation of choice. Japanese people don’t mind giving up things. Maybe at some date in the future they will feel able to afford these things, maybe not. The deprivation doesn’t faze or frighten them. There is no inalienable right of consumption.

Another feature of Japanese life that remains intact despite the emergence into the public consciousness of a kakusa shakai (class-structured or economically inequitable society) is people’s basic civility.

…

As Japanese in their teens and early 20s go out into the world of the second decade of the century, I see no impediment to optimism if they energize, as entrepreneurship, their native ethos of austerity in the direction of resource conservation, and if they apply their shared civility to foster universal welfare and tolerance for the rights of others.

In the coming years, both China and the United States may face implosive socio-economic problems on a grand scale, and both countries may turn inward to concentrate on putting their own houses in order. Both countries, too, could profit greatly from adopting Japanese social civility and economic austerity — not as obligations imposed by force of law from above, but as virtues firmly grounded in the soil from which all else grows.

Thank you, Roger. This last sentence bears repeating [italics mine]: “Both countries, too, could profit greatly from adopting Japanese social civility and economic austerity — not as obligations imposed by force of law from above, but as virtues firmly grounded in the soil from which all else grows.” Beautifully stated.

Finally, I think it is interesting, if not somehow telling, that for all its woes, Japan remains attractive to the world’s young people. Check out this week’s headline, “Youths want to move to Japan, Singapore“, summarizing a recent Gallup study. Who knew? Surely it isn’t the promise of wealth or lifetime employment they find attractive. Could it perhaps be something more subtle and elusive beckoning our younger generation?

The International Satoyama Initiative formally launched at this week’s COP10 Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, Japan, provides an important boost to preserving traditional forest and farmland (“satoyama”), and seaside (“satoumi”) ecological production landscapes around the world and restoring a balanced and sustainable harmony between humans and the natural environment.

But is the proposed cure for satoyama’s current degenerative state – assigning such biodiverse landscapes value in direct proportion to their “ecosystem services” provided to humans – adequate to the task? Or does viewing nature in such a calculated way – and justifying its preservation for the “services” provided – simply perpetuate obsolete, if widely-held, myths of human separation from nature and nature existing for our benefit?

By recognizing the value of “ecosystem services,” it’s hoped society will be motivated toward their protection and preservation. To be sure, satoyama and satoumi environments the world over are in real danger of being lost, diminishing both biological and cultural diversity, so any efforts toward properly recognizing their value are much needed. And it can be argued that we must start where we are, and where we are as a society is we perceive value in that which we can quantify and monetize, so let’s start there. But can we afford to rely upon such a constricted view of the world?

Undoubtedly, Einstein was correct in saying that we cannot ultimately solve problems at the same level of consciousness at which they were created. As such, we can’t revitalize endangered satoyama landscapes and culture by applying “more of the same” of our contemporary worldview of separation from nature and each other. By relying upon the calculus of economics to ascertain value we implicitly relegate other more abstract but critically important intangibles to the margins. Intangibles such as aesthetics, complexity, integrity, cultural wisdom, and the like end up becoming unappreciated externalities. Failing to comprehend the whole, such a fragmented and distorted worldview fosters the very societal and personal ills which have led to satoyama’s, and the world’s, current predicament.

Better, then, that we retrospect (“look again”) at the origins of satoyama itself, at the roots of the ancient culture which birthed satoyama in the first place. For in doing so we will discover the forgotten secret to a harmonious existence and, indeed, a meaningful life: When we recognize our true, embedded relationship with nature, we value it and treat it like we want to be treated ourselves. With respect, love, cooperation, reciprocity…in short, a gift culture.

It is clear that indigenous cultures didn’t happen upon satoyama landscapes and populate them. They co-created them, working collaboratively with nature’s gifts and each other to slowly craft sustainable lifeways spanning generations. Their underlying worldview of embeddedness in nature, of oneness with the environment, is clearly what undergirded and made possible the establishment and evolution of these original satoyama socio-ecological landscapes.

Significantly, the Satoyama Initiative recognizes that proper maintenance of such rich biodiverse landscapes requires a “crucial human touch.” When young people flee rural environs for more fast-paced lives in the cities, for example, the carefully managed satoyama landscapes, and the culture that sustains them, become neglected and biodiversity suffers, perhaps counter-intuitively to those who might assume humans inevitably foul their environment.

This required “human touch” is stewardship in action. It cannot be harsh and exploitative. Rather, it is gentle and respectful, reflecting an ethic of giving, concern, mutuality, reciprocity and respect, for the past, present, and future, which flows between us and our natural environment, and between all members of the ever-widening circles of our community.

It is time to move beyond the obsolete term “ecosystem services” and instead put the emphasis on service – on stewardship and giving back – on living by the Golden Rule of treating others, including nature itself, as we would like to be treated. For in the end, it is both a spiritual insight and a scientific fact that when it comes to relationships, whether with our neighbor or with nature, what we do to another we do to ourselves.