Abstract
Satoyama is a term applied to dynamic mosaics of socio-ecological production landscapes maintained through long-term human management, where people support each other to enhance their use of natural resources and play an important role in sustaining biodiversity. Such landscapes are often characterized by bartering or sharing provisioning services such as various forest and agricultural products within and beyond their communities. The objective of this study is to quantitatively investigate how such sharing mechanisms work and how they contribute to human well-being in Japan. We conducted web-questionnaire survey and found that people share diverse agricultural products grown in their own farmlands and the amount of such products with non-market transaction was significantly higher in Noto Peninsula than other regions. The result suggested that self-production and sharing network substantially contribute to human wellbeing by enriching food species diversity and social relation. However, urbanization and globalization in recent decades have weakened such personal connections and sharing mechanisms. Balancing market and non-market transaction of food provisioning services across different scales would be one of the key challenges to build localized models of sustainable society in harmony with nature.
