Share
2021 Volume 57 Issue 1 Pages 27-28
Kei Kajisa
Aoyama Gakuin University
Community has been regarded as a convenient institutional device for the mobilization of rural labor for successful irrigation management. The main message of this presentation is that the use of community is not a panacea and government and market should also play an important role. An emerging issue in irrigation management in the course of economic development is how to achieve smooth substitution of capital for labor under an increasing labor scarcity in the agricultural sector. The community cannot achieve this substitution properly because externalities in irrigation services increase in a complicated manner when farmers exit from farming, and, thus, they cannot maintain community mechanisms. I will discuss the issue, relying on the experiences in Japan, China, and India. First, I will explore the role of government for the adoption of labor saving technologies. I will also focus on the role of market which may also contribute to this end by achieving the enlargement of farm size through land transactions. Second, given the increasing role of the government, we will discuss the possibility of “government failure” which tend to appear in the form of the excessive support for agricultural sector. Third, we will shed light on the new issues which need government’s active involvements: the depletion of groundwater and the introduction of volumetric irrigation water pricing. Since these new issues were not common among the DCs when they were at the similar stage of economic development, the governments of the contemporary LDCs need more administrative capacity than the governments of the DCs uses to do for irrigation management.
Tadayoshi Masuda
Kindai University
Recent studies have taken notice of ‘community’ as an important player where and when market mechanism or government intervention fails or is careless. Especially considering regional resources and environmental management, community activities often work toward a socially optimal state in a framework of ‘interactive governance.’
Today’s presentation shows a case of interactive water & fish resource governance in the Laguna Lake Watershed, Philippines, named “Yama ng Lawa (Blessings of the Lake).” Yaman ng Lawa is a series of community initiatives/activities for the watershed resource and environmental sustainability, including garbage collection & recycling, local food production and consumption, and fish resource management. Though the trigger was a series of community forums held in 2012 and 2013 supported and organized by an international research project (RIHN-LakeHEAD), it was an adaptive co-management system that the local community needed. The local fish folks from the lakeshore barangays (villages) established the ‘Yankaw Fish Garden (fish shelter)’ in the lake and started an ‘Illegal Fishing Monitoring and Guarding System (fishing ground patrol).’ They had local knowledge and an idea for fish species recovery. They also recognized ‘illegal fishing’ but did not have any means to cope with the cases. The lake and its lakeshore are their living and working places, and they had strong motivations to secure them as well as fairness. Recognizing their activities, Calamba City, the local government, made a budget for rewarding their patrol operation and rebuilding the headquarters. The LLDA or Laguna Lake Development Authority, the national-level agency, plans to introduce the Yaman ng Lawa scheme to other lakeshore municipalities.
Community-based activities could work toward a socially optimal state with market mechanism as well as government intervention. Communities should have a unique role in the interactive governance framework, especially for regional resource and environmental management. Further socioeconomic studies of ‘community’ are needed and should be one of ARAFE’s mission.
Katsuya Tanaka
Shiga University
Agriculture in the rural villages of Japan has contributed to the provision of multifunctionality through community-level collective actions. The harmony of people’s activities and nature is now widely recognized as Satoyama. However, in recent years many of these villages are in danger of decline due to aging and depopulation. To maintain multifunctionality from agriculture, the government has implemented an agri-environmental payment scheme since 2007. From our spatial econometric analysis, we find that the level of community assembly (Yoriai) is a significant and positive inducement on the adoption of payment and promoting conservation practices. Such a connection of people within the community is important not only for agriculture but also for the facilitation of rural activities, but it is becoming more difficult to maintain these activities due to regional decline. In several EU member states and UK, new payment schemes called payment by results (PbR) are underway. Farmers adopting the PbR (known as pay for success or PFS in Japan) receive a payment if specific environmental outcomes are achieved (e.g., number of native plant species and birds nesting on farmland). It is worth noting that there are many examples of coordinated efforts by external stakeholders for better farming practices and more efficient monitoring of the outcomes. Japan’s rice farming is highly compatible with the PbR because it conserves many species through flood irrigation practices. In addition, it is expected that the promotion of this policy will lead to increased collaboration with external stakeholders and the development of rural areas. It could be a new direction of agri-environmental policy toward the maintenance of multifunctionality and rural development in Japan.
