The first in a planned series of international forums to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 1st Asian Conference on Biocultural Diversity was held on 4 October 2017 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, titled “Biocultural diversity & satoyama: Efforts towards societies in harmony with nature around the world”. The forum was organized by the IPSI Secretariat and the Operating Unit Ishikawa/Kanazawa (OUIK) at UNU-IAS, along with the Ishikawa Prefecture and Kanazawa City governments, and the Hokkoku Shimbun newspaper. It was also held back-to-back with the Twelfth Meeting of the IPSI Steering Committee (SC-12), and a number of additional events were also organized to give IPSI’s Steering Committee members and local experts opportunities to exchange knowledge on SEPLS including Japan’s satoyama and satoumilandscapes and seascapes.

The Forum featured keynote speeches by Prof. Takakazu Yumoto of Kyoto University and IPSI Steering Committee Chair Prof. Alfred Oteng-Yeboah of the Ghana National Biodiversity Committee. SEPLS case studies from India and Eastern Europe were then given by Steering Committee members Dr. Anil Kumar and Dr. Senka Barudanovic, and a panel followed with all of the above experts as well as Ms. Evonne Yiu and moderated by Mr. Tsunao Watanabe, both from UNU-IAS OUIK.

The organizers also provided the Steering Committee with a lecture on biocultural diversity in the area by Prof. Koji Nakamura of Kanazawa University, and an excursion to a number of satoyamaand satoumi sites on the Noto Peninsula, as well as a welcome reception hosted by Ishikawa Prefecture. The IPSI Secretariat would like to thank our colleagues and friends at all of the co-organizers, as well as all of the IPSI Steering Committee members who made the events a great success.