Waterside Environmental Management that Considers Sustainability and Survivability in Urban Areas

Abstract

The concept of sustainability has given rise to questions about what it is supposed to mean: the sustainability of what, for whom, for how long, and why ? For instance, in one case sustainability can be achieved in a region that is composed of an urban area and a rural area as a whole, but residents in the rural area may be in danger of not only risking their sustainability but also their lives through floods and ecological destruction at the waterside.
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) has been widely used as an evaluation tool for public policymaking. However, although CBA is adequate to evaluate the efficiency of the policy in question, it does not take into account the equity issues and sustainability aspects of that policy. Therefore, multicriteria methods which include participatory multicriteria methods have been proposed to evaluate certain policies.
In this paper, we focus on sustainability, survivability and participation along the adaptive waterside environmental management process which is briefly shown by the following process: the differences in both areas are clarified by a social survey, then these results are evaluated with the aid of a multicriteria analysis and if there are conflicts between areas a conflicts analysis is executed. A social survey of the valuation of a waterside environment and daily life is first conducted among the residents in both areas, i.e., upper river and down river areas, along the Kamo river in Kyoto City. Accordingly, residents in both areas can participate in providing information for the planning process by a social survey. By analyzing the results, elements of both sustainability and survivability for both areas are derived. Thus, we can take into account sustainability and survivability that include different kinds of elements in the waterside environmental management.

JEL Classification: D61, H43, Q56