 Battleground |
| The Hirabari "satoyama" is a miniecosystem and green oasis in Nagoya and the focus of a struggle between developers and local citizens who see its preservation as a test case for biodiversity preservation. COURTESY OF THE HIRABARI SATOYAMA CONSERVANCY
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OSAKA — Home to a biologically diverse "satoyama" ecosystem, a Nagoya land tract is at the center of a struggle between the owners who want to develop it and local citizens who want it preserved to demonstrate environmental responsibility.
Nagoya will host a U.N. biodiversity conference in October, and the central government at that time will push its "Satoyama Initiative" to promote protection worldwide of natural habitats from urbanization. Thus if the site comes under development, this would be a major embarrassment.
Satoyama, literally "livable mountain," traditionally refers to forested areas among small farm communities that help in the sustainable management of ecosystem diversity.
Under the satoyama method, farmers cut and plant trees in a way that maintains a rich forest environment, and the paddies they created as a result provided habitats for birds, frogs, fish and other life. But with the rapid postwar modernization, many so-called satoyama sites have been lost to development.
The Nagoya plot, known as the Hirabari satoyama, is a roughly 5-hectare miniature ecosystem in Tenbaku Ward. With four small unpolluted lakes, a wetland, three terraced rice paddies, and a broadleaf forest with plum and persimmon trees, it is one of the last such sites in the city.
"Between 1999 and 2005, Nagoya set aside 420 hectares of greenery, while 1,643 hectares were lost, often to development, during that same period," said Nobuko Fujioka, a member of the Hirabari Satoyama Conservancy, which is trying to save the Tenbaku Ward site from development.
"While there are laws for protecting national parks and wilderness areas, it's tough to protect an ordinary living mountain," she said.
Surveys carried out last year by the Japanese Society of Limnology revealed one of the lakes thrives with Japanese rice fish, which are on the Environment Ministry's red list of endangered species.
Despite a campaign that netted over 30,000 signatures, and the support of Academy Award-winning "anime" animation director Hayao Miyazaki to save the Hirabari tract from the bulldozers, the city and the owners failed to agree on a price that would have turned the land over to Nagoya for preservation.
Mayor Takashi Kawamura, who had campaigned to preserve the land as a symbol of the U.N. COP10 biodiversity conference this October and withheld permission while negotiations continued, reversed his stance in late December for reasons that are still unclear, and for which activists say they may pursue in court later this year.
But even after he granted approval, Kawamura warned that developing the site would embarrass Nagoya and Japan in the eyes of the world at COP10, which is expected draw 7,000 U.N. delegates, nongovernmental organizations and international media.
The embarrassment will be particularly acute because Tokyo is pushing the traditional woodland-rural landscape management — the Satoyama Initiative — as a model for global preservation of biological diversity.
"Can we allow Nagoya to be shamed by Hirabari's development? The Environment Ministry has stated that, at COP10, Japan will present the Satoyama Initiative. Yet we in Nagoya are going to exploit Hirabari," Kawamura told reporters in mid-February.
"There is nothing more shameful than this, not only for Nagoya but also for Japan," he said.
Read full story at Japan Times here.
