Abstract
This paper is a case study of Sakihama Hamlet in Kasumigaura City, Ibaraki Prefecture which clarifies how residents manage the shore space of Lake Kasumigaura that has become part of an environmental revitalization project.
In the area in which reeds grow in Sakihama village, the residents gather the reeds, fish, and trap birds. The residents use the space so that they can continue to get these resources smoothly and consistently. The place where they fish and trap roughly corresponds to the area where the reeds grow. Sustainable use of space is referred to as Space Management in this paper.
There are three main features of this Space Management. Firstly, the Space Management of the Yoshi-ba evolved out of it daily use over generations. Secondly, the reason this Space Management has continued is that the residents have been able to constantly catch sufficient prey. Thirdly, when the residents set their fishing and trapping equipment in the Yoshi-ba, environmentalists believe that they don’t pay special attention to managing Yoshi-ba or think about conservation.
The Space Management clarified by this investigation is different from the natural management of the environmental revitalization project from the following perspective. The feature of nature management is that one resource (reeds) is an object of management, and that nature management and the use of nature are independent. However Space Management maintains two or more resources as a result of maintaining a suitable space for each resource. When thinking about the policy for environmental management, it is necessary to understand such forms of local natural management, because it does not possible to go ahead with environmental management without the cooperation of the residents.
