In many countries, people and nature have co-evolved over many centuries to create systems of ecological and socio-economic landscape management that sustain high natural and cultural value. The Japanese use the terms ‘Satoyama and Satoumi’ to delineate these systems in inland and coastal contexts respectively, while in Europe we might call them ‘social-ecological systems of high nature value’, or simply ‘cultural landscapes’. The IPSI partnership was established following the Earth Summit in Nagoya in 2010, to promote exchange and understanding of the value and the need to protect and enhance these ‘Social-Ecological Production Systems’, across the globe. In 2014 the OECD supported a first conference in Japan on the Satoyama concept and associated initiatives to promote better understanding of people-nature relations.

Globally, these interlinked and co-dependent systems are under threat of decline and disappearance in the face of competition from often larger-scale, less culturally sensitive industrial agricultural and forestry systems and processes. These are typically systems in which food or timber production is focused upon low-cost and/or high output commodity supply into national or international markets which do not recognise or reward nature-culture interactions. Consumers may be unaware of the conditions of production applying to products from these systems, and current price signals generally fail to reflect wider societal concerns about the external costs that such systems may generate, damaging environmental and social and community values. Such systems also tend to afford little importance to the longstanding knowledge of traditional producers, concerning local environmental and social assets and the need to sustain them. Instead they emphasise short-term economic returns at the expense of longer-term resilience, in their market behaviour, growth and development.

Looking ahead, the societal imperative to recognise planetary boundaries and find more effective ways to promote and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals is keenly appreciated by governments around the globe. Researchers, practitioners and policy makers who have worked with Satoyama and cultural landscape management understand that where these systems are nurtured and sustained, they can offer multiple benefits to consumers, producers and citizens now and for the future. The conference organisers have been involved in recent work investigating these topics.[1]

[1] See :  www.ieep-pegasus.eu  and www.oecd.org/tad/crp/DWYER.pdf