Proposal of Selective Paddy Field Reclamation as Large-Scale Disaster Restoration Method

Abstract

Efforts undertaken to restore villages that were damaged due to tsunami over wide areas following the Great East Japan Earthquake were characterized by large-scale local measures such as relocation of villages to higher land and reorganization of land use. The restoration project diverted broad areas of farmland to development sites. If viewed as a spatial change of land use, it is merely the relocation of residential land to avoid tsunami damage. When farmland is used for a different purpose, it is necessary to preserve the land and/or give land in compensation. However, such measures were not taken in this case. The primary reason for this lapse is the maintenance of the policy of controlling the new paddy field reclamation and the lack of perspective while managing land use in the entire region. In this paper, we propose “selective paddy field reclamation” where the reclamation of fields is allowed only in cases where specified conditions for disaster restoration are satisfied to preserve farmland resources and effectively manage land use.