This paper aims to figure out the ideal subsidy policy for farmers in multiple regions of different traits in order to assure the sustainable development of the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). Although SLCP implemented as a national forest governance project since 1999 has reforested an area of roughly 8 million ha over the past decade, uncertainty also surrounds the sustainability of both farmers’ participation and government’s subsidy policy. In order to analyze the cost benefit of SLCP, this study probes into both the survey data of Yuxi City in Yunnan Province, Nanchong City in Sichuan Province and Da’an City in Jilin Province in 2014 and 2015, and government’s statistical information. The current subsidy policy is of two unified standards divided by Southern and Northern regions and some beforehand studies argue subsidy amount could be divided by opportunity cost. However, this analysis shows that if the subsidy amount is divided by net private benefit, the proper subsidy amount should be on the decrease in sequence of Da’an, Nanchong, and Yuxi, which is in contrast to both the sequence of current subsidy policy and beforehand studies. Since improper subsidy policy could not stimulate regions of high demand and is a waste to regions of low demand, this paper argues that in order to maintain the sustainable development of SLCP, it is necessary to subdivide regions of subsidy policy.

In this research, awareness questionnaire surveys of residents in Iida City and Konan City were conducted to analyze the expectations and evaluations of the situation regarding the structural regeneration of regional communities through renewable energy, and to clarify the situation and intention regarding the choices of participation in renewable energy.The survey findings were as follows.

(1) The expectations regarding structural regeneration of regional communities through renewable energy among residents in both cities were higher than the national average. In the evaluations of the situation, although the evaluations of participation by the stakeholders were comparatively high, the evaluations of others were not so high.

(2) The intention to support renewable energy was high in both cities; however, the intention to participate in renewable energy was not high. Although the installations of photovoltaic power generation systems and low-energy houses were active, civic investment and purchase of renewable energy, as well as participation in the planning process and civic activities, were not so high.The results showed there was still room for improvement in both cities and that the local governments in the two cities should encourage participation by residents in renewable energy.

Humans have been increasingly altering the global nitrogen (N) cycle through consumption of food, energy, fibre and other non-food products. This alteration negatively affects human and ecosystem health. An N footprint is an indicator to quantify direct and indirect N loads to the environment induced by resource consumption. Despite their importance to the anthropogenic N loads, especially on urbanized areas, non-food products are not yet incorporated into the existing N footprint model for consumers’ decision-making (N-Calculator) that considers only food and energy. In order to understand the effect of waste reduction on N loads, household solid waste in Kawasaki City in Japan during 1985–2014 was assessed using N content for each type of waste. The direct N loads of household solid waste had reduced from 1.28 kg N/capita in 1990 and 1.27 kg N/capita in 2003 to 0.70 kg N/capita in 2014. This reduction was primarily due to decrease of food and paper waste through residents’ actions in cooperation with municipal guidance. Considering increased proportions of fabric waste, a further target for reduction is suggested to be clothing and apparels. These findings provide a first step for incorporating non-food goods into the N-Calculator accounting.

Renewable energy (RE) has been regarded as a key to work on climate change mitigation and energy security issue. Thus, many country have support scheme for RE including Japan. RE is much more smaller and de-centralized than conventional energy resources and expected to stimulate regional economy in prefecture or municipality level. In this paper, we estimated the value added brought by the deployment of RE in Nagano prefecture in Japan. The estimation model is based on the tool developed by IFaS, but customized to handle Japanese taxation system.From the estimation results, it is revealed that RE business has large potential to stimulate the regional economy, while the potential can be very small if the business is done by an enterprise not based in the region. To make RE stimulate the regional economy, policy and institutional support for local player to have the ownership of RE business done in the region.