Makoto Inoue

Forestry resources, which once belonged to all villagers, were brought under state and private ownership during the Meiji period. However, after the Second World War, reckless deforestation took place for the sake of economic recovery, which resulted in sound forestry management becoming impossible due to the slump in the forestry sector.

I want to propose that forests be utilized and preserved by everyone without leaving everything to forest owners. In this sense, movements to protect community forest by urban people and forest volunteers give us a hint. This is based on the concept of commons.

Commons normally mean community land but my version of commons goes beyond the form of ownership. Irrespective of whether ownership is private or public, if resources are cooperatively managed and utilized, that is a commons. More specifically, it includes not only the system of cooperatively managing and utilizing resources, but also the resources which are being managed.

A rural village common is more easily understood by the image of a common, a place to collect thatching materials and a community forest. In the common, people cooperatively managed firewood and edible wild plant resources by deciding when they could be collected, the quantity that could be taken and the type of farming tools that could be used. In addition, penalties were established for violations. That was done in order to utilize resources in a sustainable way and to minimize waste.

Traditional Japanese commons collapsed rapidly but I would like in the future to utilize the cooperative management method. It is impossible to revive a previous type of common but I wonder whether it might not be possible to create a new model applicable to the present age.

There is not just one answer. The approach is different between a rural village, where the tradition of a common forest is still practiced, and Satoyama, secondary forests full of a diversity of life located near cities. One thing that can be said here is that the new approach should not be confined to the local people but should rather be expanded to encompass those who have an interest such as NPOs, urban people, scholars and local governments. This is new commons formed by a variety of interested people.

In Tadami, Fukushima Prefecture, a forest processing cooperative association established a corporation by encouraging urban people to become its shareholders and purchased from a farmer about 130 hectares of land which had been left to grow wild. The land is now open to the public. People can acquire the right to camp and collecting mushrooms and edible wild plants for an annual fee of 10,000 yen. They can also pay to have ownership of the trees.

In Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture, urban people are taking part not only in volunteer hill-burning activities but there is also a movement for them to purchase the meat of brown cows directly from growers. These are actual examples of new types of commons.

However, the situation in Southeast Asia is different from that of Japan. As in Japan, resources traditionally used to belong to the “people” but they were at the mercy of surging waves of development during the colonial era and the post-independence period. Many tropical forests were as a result laid to waste.

From the 1990s on, various countries introduced approaches to forestry management involving citizens' participation. At first glance, this appears to be a commons-like approach but, in many cases, they are nothing more than a form of community participation under the guidance of government. Governments control economically beneficial forests but leave ruined forests to citizens. There are movements occurring in various areas aimed at reviving rights to life and lifestyle. It will take a little more time to cultivate new commons.