November 2018, 34 students payed a visit to the field in Osaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. Osaki is long known as a pioneer of payment for ecosystem services (PES) in Japan and as a leader in community-based management focusing on holistic approaches to wetland conservation and biodiversity conservation in agriculture. We learned from nature conservationists, local government officials, farmers and other actors/stakeholders about how one community came together to develop a now globally recognized model of community-based ecosystem management, wetland conservation and rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems, including post-disaster rehabilitation.
How to conserve healthy ecosystems is one challenge but how to rehabilitate degraded ecosystems – those either degraded by adverse human activities or through natural disasters, or a combination of those, is also a critical challenge for future sustainability. Through this visit, we learned to approach integrated ecologically, culturally, socially and historically relevant solutions towards the complex challenges our global community faces.
Osaki City, Miyagi Prefecture is about 400 kilometers north of Tokyo. While in Osaki we visited several sites, among them are the UN designated Ramsar Site Kabukuri Wetlands and the Surrounding Rice Paddies, and the more recently UN designated FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) Site Osaki Kodo.
For information on FAO GIAHS and the UN Ramsar Convention and designated Ramsar Sites, please refer to the following links:
Receiving a lecture
Visiting a traditional house
Visiting a traditional house
Enjoying bird-watching
