IPSI Collaborative Activity Proposal Form
The following form is for use when submitting proposed IPSI Collaborative Activities for consideration by the IPSISteering Committee. See the Collaborative Activity Guidelines on p. 3 for more information.
Please return the completed form to the IPSI Secretariat (isi@unu.edu).
IPSI Collaborative Activities are the activities that shall be undertaken by more than one IPSI member
and constitute an important part of IPSI activities with the purpose of fostering collaboration within theIPSI membership and implementing the IPSI Strategy and Plan of Action. The IPSI CollaborativeActivities shall be developed and implemented with the endorsement of the Steering Committee inaccordance with the Collaborative Activity Guidelines. Resource mobilization for IPSI collaborative
activities shall be the responsibility of the implementing members in principle. – IPSI Operational
Guidelines, Chapter 5.4
Date of Application:

22.04.20

Project title:
New Futures for Satoyama - innovation in policy and practice to sustain cultural landscapes
Collaborating organizations (IPSI members):（*Please underline the leading organization)
The Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI), UNU-IAS Tokyo, University of Natural Resources andLife Sciences (BOKU)
Other contributing organization(s) (including IPSI non-members):
Kyoto University, Gakushin Women’s College, NIBIO, Korean Rural Economics Institute (KREI), University ofFrankfurt, AgroParisTech, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, University of Waterloo, University of Bern,
CREA National Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Scotland’s Rural University College (SRUC), USDA ARS
Expected term (e.g. 1 January 2014 – 31 December 2015):
Covid-19 dependent: If as initially planned 2-4th September 2020, if needs to be rescheduled, April 2021
IPSI strategic objective(s) addressed (tick all that apply; see p. 3 for more details):
X

1. Increase knowledge and understanding of SEPLS
2. Address direct and underlying causes responsible for the decline or loss of SEPLS

X

3. Enhance benefits from SEPLS

X

4. Enhance human, institutional and sustainable financial capacities

Continued on next page.
Description of the activity:
Please provide as much information as possible on:• Background• Activities (including site locations if applicable)• Expected outcomes• Actors and task sharing• How the activity relates to the IPSI Strategy and IPSI Plan of Action• Resources, funding• Monitoring and reporting
1

BACKGROUND
In many countries, people and nature have co-evolved over many centuries to create systems of ecological andsocio-economic landscape management that sustain high natural and cultural value. The Japanese use the terms‘Satoyama and Satoumi’ to delineate these systems in inland and coastal contexts respectively, while in Europe
we might call them ‘social-ecological systems of high nature value’, or simply ‘cultural landscapes’. The IPSI
partnership was established following the Earth Summit in Nagoya in 2010, to promote exchange andunderstanding of the value and the need to protect and enhance these ‘Social-Ecological Production Systems’,
across the globe. In 2014 the OECD supported a first conference in Japan on the Satoyama concept andassociated initiatives to promote better understanding of people-nature relations.
Globally, these interlinked and co-dependent systems are under threat of decline and disappearance in the faceof competition from often larger-scale, less culturally sensitive industrial agricultural and forestry systems andprocesses. These are typically systems in which food or timber production is focused upon low-cost and/or highoutput commodity supply into national or international markets which do not recognise or reward natureculture interactions. Consumers may be unaware of the conditions of production applying to products fromthese systems, and current price signals generally fail to reflect wider societal concerns about the external costs
that such systems may generate, damaging environmental and social and community values. Such systems also
tend to afford little importance to the longstanding knowledge of traditional producers, concerning local
environmental and social assets and the need to sustain them. Instead they emphasise short-term economic
returns at the expense of longer-term resilience, in their market behaviour, growth and development.
Looking ahead, the societal imperative to recognise planetary boundaries and find more effective ways topromote and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals is keenly appreciated by governments around theglobe. Researchers, practitioners and policy makers who have worked with Satoyama and cultural landscapemanagement understand that where these systems are nurtured and sustained, they can offer multiple benefits
to consumers, producers and citizens now and for the future. The conference organisers have been involved inrecent work investigating these topics.1
AIMS AND RELEVANCE TO IPSI STRATEEGY / PLAN OF ACTION
The aim of the conference will be to promote knowledge exchange, networking and learning among policy andpractice communities operating at local level and within supply chains and sectors operating nationally andinternationally. It will showcase ideas and experience in how best to sustain and achieve resilience withincultural landscapes, strengthening positive nature-culture interlinkages and recognising the added value tosociety that these systems offer. Messages from research, policy and practice will be differentiated and targeted
to national and international governance, to key commercial players in agri-food and forest product markets,and to local communities and actors, through careful design of the conference programme. Sessions presenting
cases from Europe, Asia and perhaps other continents will be interspersed with discussion opportunities andpanel debate, to help identify key points of commonality and difference. A short summary of key conference
findings will be produced and circulated widely among delegates and key international organisations including
FAO, IUCN, OECD, the European Commission and the World Bank. A special edition of an appropriate
international journal will be secured, in order to distil and promote the most interesting research and practicefindings arising from work presented at the conference.
ACTIVTIESThe conference will take place over 48 hours, beginning with an evening plenary session to set out the topics tobe covered. Day one will offer a mix of research and practice presentations, and a mid-afternoon reflection on1

See : www.ieep-pegasus.eu and www.oecd.org/tad/crp/DWYER.pdf

2current challenges and how they can be overcome, spanning market-led and policy-led lessons from nationaland more local experiences. A pre-dinner panel debate will develop some of the challenges and potential
solutions further at international level. Dinner will aim to showcase food and drink produced commercially from
cultural landscapes across the UK.
The second day will include a further session of presentations followed by a pre-lunch plenary in which key
messages from all the sessions so far will be brought together and discussed, as a precursor to developing theconference summary document. Two field trips will be built into the final afternoon to enable delegates to see
first-hand, innovative and positive examples of sustaining cultural landscapes close to the conference venue, insouth-west England.
Interspersed with the plenary sessions on the first full day of conference, parallel sessions with full papers anddiscussion papers will be organised around 3 key themes: knowledge and innovation in people-naturemanagement; culture and well-being in people-nature management; and governance challenges and options forSEPLs. There will be 2 parallel sessions each of 90 minutes, with 3 papers and time for discussion among andbetween presenters and delegates, in each session. This format allows the opportunity particularly for juniorresearchers (PhD and Post-Doctoral), also key practitioners and policy makers, to take an active role in theconference who would not otherwise feel able to present in plenary to the full gathering. A moderator for eachtheme will ensure that conclusions from each parallel session are fed back to the discussions in plenary, on thesecond day of the conference. Contributors to these sessions would not be OECD funded but recruited throughtargeted calls among suitable networks in the UK and across Europe.
OUTPUTS AND OUTCOMES
The conference will provide a platform to showcase concerns, challenges and solutions for sustaining culturallandscape management and the positive connections between people and nature in these situations. It will
enable delegates to learn from experiences in practice, in policy and market development, about the mostsuccessful ways to sustain these important systems.
The presentations and summary discussions from the conference will be made publicly available online via
suitable web-hosts including academic and policy sites (notably www.ccri.ac.uk).
The summary document from the conference will be promoted via networks and events in Europe and Asia,
through partners, sponsors and/or collaborators in the conference including e.g. IPSI, OECD, EiPAgri, IUCN,
Council of Europe and the FAO’s GIAHS initiative, as well as within academic networks spanning disciplines fromagricultural economics and agri-food marketing, to geography, environmental and ecological science andlandscape planning and management.
We will enter discussion with editors of a small number of international journals concerning the scope for open
access publication of key papers from the conference. The organisers have already received approaches fromseveral such journal editors, seeking exactly this type of outcome for their recent research on similar themes(e.g. following publication of PEGASUS brief papers in the January edition of Eurochoices). Our aim would be to
publish a special edition in 2021 containing keynotes, selected papers from the parallel sessions and theconference summary, as well as a short editorial by the organisers and key sponsors.
VENUE AND LOGISTICS
The conference will be hosted in south-west England by the University of Gloucestershire’s Countryside andCommunity Research Institute, a partner member of IPSI, and a leading European centre of applied research
excellence in agri-food and rural policy and practice. A small number of other UK, EU and Asian collaboratorsand sponsors will be involved in conference planning, sponsorship and dissemination/communication activities
before, during and after the event: current discussions include IPSI / UNU Tokyo; IASC / IFPRI; and the Uplands3Alliance / EFNCP / UKNPAs. The venue for the conference will be the Royal Agricultural University’s main
campus in Gloucestershire which offers good conferencing facilities and high quality rural surroundings
The venue is well-connected to national and international transport hubs – close to Birmingham and Heathrow
airports and on the national mainline railway – but at the same time, embedded within a diverse rural area
demonstrating many examples of cultural landscape challenge and opportunity.
Field trips will aim to visit contrasting examples of initiatives tackling the reversal of decline or disappearance invaluable cultural landscapes including marginal and more productive situations where the twin threats ofintensification and industrial agriculture on the one hand, and marginalisation and abandonment on the other,have been experienced and are being addressed through initiatives in practice, combining policy and market
levers.
FUNDING
The conference is being funded under the OECD Co-operative Research Programme (CRP): Biological Resource
Management for Sustainable Agricultural systems, whose financial support has made it possible for the invited
speakers from OECD countries to participate in the conference. A total of 26,210 € has been allocated as travel
costs. A further 3,050 € has been provided towards publication of the conference proceedings.
CALL-OUT: We are looking to include speakers from non-OECD member countries (e.g. China, India etc). If youwould like to participate and are able to source travel costs, please get in touch through the contact details
above.

Please attach additional pages as necessary.

IPSI Secretariat use only4