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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Peer-reviewed publication

Building resilience with common capital

In Japan, Satoyama landscapes have been rapidly declining due to various factors including increased rural–urban migration, rapidly aging population, depopulation, land-use conversion and the abandonment of traditional agricultural cultivation. The loss of collective management of Satoyama and Satoumi landscapes may be termed a loss of the “commons.” Critical to the success of a more integrated and holistic approach to ecosystems management is the creation of a new “commons,” understood both as a system of co-management of ecosystem services and biodiversity within private, communal, and public land; and as a single system to produce a bundle of ecosystem services that exhibit both public and private properties, and for direct and indirect use by society with a long-term perspective. The new “commons” could provide the basis for sustainable development in both developing and developed countries. The series of workshops explored ways and means of enhancing resilience of communities to climate and ecosystems change by identifying new governance systems overseeing the management of the New Commons, supply of ecosystem services and enhancement of socio-ecological resilience against climate and ecosystem changes in an efficient and equitable manner across a range of stakeholders.