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The third activity held in July was an excursion to Suzu City to try making flying fish broth called agodashi. Agodashi is a Japanese soup stock (dashi) made out of dried flying fish, which are made from fresh flying fish that had been simmered or grilled and then dried. In Suzu, agodashi is made by catching small flying fish at the outer cove, grilling them over locally produced charcoal and drying. The activity-filled day included (1) agodashi making, (2) learning about the shichirin, a small charcoal stove made of diatomite for grilling the flying fish, and (3) and learning how to make tools for catching the fish. The children learned about the cycle of food: how the fish caught in Suzu throughout the day are turned into an essential ingredient in Noto’s local cuisine called agodashi using locally made tools and materials, and deliciously eaten by the local people. They also visited the SDGs Lab at the Noto School, Kanazawa University and learned about the 17 goals and 169 targets for a sustainable society. It seems to have become an opportunity for the children to understand the SDGs better after they learned that their usual activities in the forests are connected to the SDGs.

On July 4, 2019, a garden cleaning workshop was held at Shinrensha Temple. This event was organised by Dr. Ivars (Researcher at OUIK), Dr. Mamadowa (Associate Professor, International Organization of Kanazawa University) and Dr. Iida (Collaborative Research Center for Environmental Research in the Sea of ​​Japan, Kanazawa University). 

This time, 14 exchange students from Kazan Federal University, Russia participated to learn about Kanazawa’s culture and history while strolling through the Higashi Chaya district and cleaning the garden. At the end of the event, a tea ceremony was held in front of the garden which they had just cleaned. 

One of the students commented “While cleaning the garden, I was able to take a closer look at it, which  made me admire it even more”. 

In May 2019, the Maruyama Group, which conducts local educational activities in Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture, in cooperation with the Mii Elementary School, started an environmental education project called the Feast Project of the Mii SDGs. OUIK supports such educational activities that use the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) site, Noto’s Satoyama and Satoumi, to aim for a sustainable future.

Although lumped together as a single designation called Noto’s Satoyama and Satoumi, there are many kinds of traditional area-specific cultures within it. Hoping that activities such as this one by Mii Elementary School will be also conducted in other regions of Noto, we are working together with local communities to create a platform for enabling interactions between the satoyama and satoumi.

For a year, the project aims to provide a way to learn about local nature and traditions, and their connectedness, through the process of making a feast based on the picture book Let’s Make a Harvest Feast! Getting out of the classroom to listen to the stories of local people and work with friends to make a feast fosters the children’s creative thinking, sense of pride for the local community and sense of appreciation for nature in the satoyama, by making them go through the process of thinking and doing things for themselves.

The first activity of the project held in May involved harvesting the wild vegetable, bracken, in Maruyama at Mii, Wajima City and pickling it in salt. Since it was the first time for many of the students to pick wild plants, they were given plenty of hints by the local people and Yuki Hagino of the Team Maruyama as they looked down and searched hard. Where and when do brackens grow? What kind of plants and animals live alongside it? In their remaining time, the children also made bamboo-leaf boats and enjoyed their day of learning.

During the first week of April, 13 researchers from around the world met in East London, South Africa to publish a book on urban biocultural diversity.

The workshop was organized and sponsored by the professors of the University of Rhodes in South Africa. The book is composed of different chapters, where the thirteen collaborators prepared each of the individual chapters prior to the workshop. 

OUIK Research Associate Dr. Juan Pastor Ivars is one of the collaborators of the book and his chapter is about the biocultural diversity of Japanese cities. To do this, he evaluates the figure of the Japanese garden, its ontology, aesthetics, ecology and focuses on the gardens of Kanazawa. In particular, he presents examples of how to rebuild the relationship between people and nature through Japanese gardens.

The program of the workshop included the individualized reading of each of the chapters, their subsequent discussion and excursions to the area. In one of the excursions, the workshop team visited the Xhosa ethnic group and their representatives explained the deep relationships they have with the nature of their surroundings through rituals. In another visit was the museum of Steve Biko, anti-apartheid activist leader of the black consciousness movement.

This workshop demonstrated the importance of interpersonal links at a global level in order to promote the concept of biocultural diversity, as well as create an academic body for its implementation and governance. The book is scheduled to be published early next year — details of the book and participants below.

Book Outline: (from organizers)
The primary aim of the book is to display and celebrate the diversity of biocultural ways in which urban residents view, interact, engage and give meaning to urban nature. By offering alternative views, visions uses of and relationships with urban nature that offers a wider perspective and balance to the global world.

Participants
Africa
•Michelle Cocks. Professor. Rhodes University (South Africa); Charlie Shackleton. Professor. Rhodes University (South Africa); Lindsey Walsh, Duncan Haynes: Researchers Rhodes University (South Africa)
•Natasha Louise Constant. Chair on Biodiversity Value and Change. University of Venda(South Africa)
•Joseph Adedeji. Senior Lecturer. Akure Federal University of Technology (Nigeria)

America
•Lorien Nesbitt. Assistant Professor. University of British Columbia – Vancouver (Canada)
•Heather McMilen. State of Hawaiʿi Division of Forestry & Wildlife (USA)
•Juliana Merçon. Researcher. University of Veracruz (Mexico)
•Zachary Garcia. Graduate Teaching Fellow. Yale University (USA)
•Brazil- Guilherme Crus de Mendonca. Researcher. Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Asia
•Juan Pastor. Research Associate. UNU-IAS OUIK. (Japan)

Europe 
•Birgit Elands. Assistant Professor. Wageningen University. (Netherlands)
•Katie Vierikko. Researcher. Environmental Policy Centre, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). (Finland)
•Viveca Mellegård. GRAID Researcher. Stockholm Resilience Centre University of Stockholm( Sweden)

2019/3/31

Maintaining a garden is laborious work. In particular, gardens such as Senda Family Garden, which has a large pond that draws water from canals, require regular pond cleaning in addition to the usual weeding and caring of trees. This entails difficult and heavy manual labor. Half a year had passed since the last cleaning workshop, and mud had accumulated once more at the bottom of the pond.
Around 15 people, including local residents, students, local government officials and tourists from other countries, participated in the workshop. They went inside the drained pond and shoveled out the buildup of mud at the bottom.
After cleaning, they had tea in the house and learned about the history and construction of the garden from the owners, Noriko Senda and Nobuhiro Ishino. The garden is a type of Japanese garden with a central pond and strolling paths around it, and was made in 1894 by former Kaga Domain retainer, Norifumi Senda. They said that the level of techniques of gardeners used throughout the garden would be hard to find these days. All the participants were absorbed in listening to the extraordinary talk.
This kind of volunteer cleanup work was originally carried out mainly by the Landscape Policy Division staff of Kanazawa City. Juan Pastor-Evars, an OUIK researcher, joined from 2017 and promoted a practical immersion program that includes Japanese traditional tea ceremonies and workshops for learning about the garden history and management after the cleanup, with the aim of developing the work into an ecotourism activity. This can potentially be used more extensively as a new garden management system as well, that benefits owners by redistributing the heavy labor.

2019/03/23, Kanazawa

On March 23rd (Saturday), OUIK, the Kanazawa City, and the Kanazawa Junior Chamber of Commerce held a study session together and made a joint declaration regarding the promotion of SDGs in Kanazawa City. During the declaration ceremony, Kanazawa City Mayor Yoshiyoshi Yamano explained the key areas of Kanazawa’s SDGs initiative, branded as “IMAGINE KANAZAWA.” Following this, Kazuyoshi Nakaizumi, the president of the Junior Chamber International Kanazawa (JCI), spoke about the initiatives of the organization, including the outcomes of the JCI Kanazawa Conference.

Watanabe, the director of OUIK, introduced the concepts of “biodiversity” and “green infrastructure,” which have been advocated by OUIK and discussed in the 5th Dialogue, highlighting their strong alignment with the integrated approach of SDGs concerning environment, economy, and society.

Following the declaration ceremony, a comprehensive symposium on SDGs Ishikawa/Kanazawa took place, featuring a panel session where Toshihiro Takasaki, the Planning and Coordination Division Chief of the Urban Policy Bureau, provided insights on the future direction for advancing SDGs in Kanazawa City. The comprehensive symposium also received numerous positive suggestions from participants. Moving forward, the three parties, along with all citizens of Kanazawa, hope to advance the IMAGINE KANAZAWA initiative envisioning Kanazawa in 2030.

An international symposium exploring the concept of green infrastructure in urban landscapes was held in Kanazawa, which in 2018 marked 50 years since its Ordinance on the Preservation of the Traditional Environment (Currently Ordinance on urban planning with beautiful landscape in Kanazawa) entered into force. Green infrastructure refers to land use planning that aims to achieve sustainable development by reassessing nature from a multifunctionality perspective. Because of this ordinance, the vegetated slopes, canals, riverfronts, temples, traditional gardens and other unique elements integrated with the city’s landscape and scenery have been conserved and restored. This symposium invited experts from various fields in and outside Japan to participate in a discourse on whether Kanazawa’s urban landscape could be redefined as green infrastructure.

In Part 1, titled “Understanding Green Infrastructure”, examples of green infrastructure around the world were introduced. Various viewpoints were presented — for example, that utilizing existing canals, parking lots, and other infrastructure is an important part of building livable cities, and that green infrastructure should be defined by each region.

In Part 2, research and initiatives related to green infrastructure, mainly in Kanazawa, were presented on the symposium’s theme. In a report from the perspectives of disaster risk reduction, the environment, and economy, the unique potential of green infrastructure in Kanazawa was discussed, with unusual benefits connected to crime deterrence and education being described. In a presentation on the need for sustainable conservation efforts and collaborative management, it was proposed that sustainable conservation could be realized in conjunction with Goals 11, 15, and 17 of the SDGs.

Part 3 was held as a roundtable in which attendees discussed the use of urban landscapes as green infrastructure. Lots of views were expressed, including comparisons between green and gray infrastructure, the advantages of substituting the words “nature protection/conservation” with green infrastructure, and that visualizing the multifunctional benefits of green infrastructure is critical to deepening our understanding of it.

As ideas were shared, we at OUIK felt that this symposium was a tangible first step in disseminating from Kanazawa a theoretical framework on urban planning and green infrastructure that will allow communities worldwide to advance sustainable development in a unified way.

2019/3/4, Seoul

The East Asia Agricultural Heritage Conference, which brings together researchers, municipalities, and practitioners from China, South Korea, and Japan who are involved in Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), is celebrating its 6th edition this year. This year, the conference will be held from May 20 to 22 in Hadong County, South Korea, which is recognized for its traditional tea cultivation.

Ahead of the event, the 11th working group meeting was held in Seoul, where experts from China, South Korea, and Japan, as well as representatives from Hadong County, gathered to discuss the intended outcomes of the conference, proposals for subcommittees, and field visits.

Additionally, on the day before the conference, an international symposium titled “Conservation and Utilization of Agricultural, Forestry, and Fisheries Heritage” was held at the initiative of the South Korean side. At this symposium, Akira Nagata, Senior Program Coordinator from the United Nations University, presented the current status of Japan’s GIAHS, and Mikiko Nagai, Secretary-General of UNU-IAS OUIK, shared examples of environmental education from the Noto GIAHS during a panel discussion.

In April 2018, OUIK hosted Biocultural walking workshop proposed by Stockholm Resilience Center and IR3S, the University of Tokyo. Prominent international researchers from different continents joined the workshop to experience how biocultural resources could be understood, elaborated and promoted under the current changes occurring urban and rural areas in Japan.

Here is observation by  Viveca Mellegård, Stockholm Resilience Center.  「Reinvigorating creative solutions to save people and planet: A walking workshop through biocultural landscapes in western Japan」