Kyohei Matsushita

Co-design of national-scale future scenarios in Japan to predict and assess natural capital and ecosystem services

Although the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has revealed that the development of scenarios is crucial for helping decision makers identify the potential impact of different policy options, there is a lack of reported scenario approach studies in Asia. A new 5-year research project (PANCES) has been developed for predicting and assessing the natural capital and ecosystem services in Japan using an integrated social–ecological system approach via the participation of 15 research institutions and more than 100 researchers. PANCES conducts the development of national-scale future scenarios for exploring potential changes in natural capital and ecosystem services, as well as human well-being, up to 2050 using key direct and indirect drivers including climate change, depopulation, and super-aging, as well as globalization and technological innovation. The Delphi method is employed to generate key drivers that determine different future pathways. Based on the two drivers for scenario axes identified by the Delphi survey and extensive discussion with project members and policy makers, four future scenarios are created, “Natural capital-based compact society”, “Natural capital-based dispersed society”, “Produced capital-based compact society”, and “Produced capital-based dispersed society”, respectively, in addition to the business-as-usual scenario. This study describes a novel approach for collectively designing national-scale future scenarios with qualitative storylines and a visual illustration of the developed scenarios in Japan.

Shadow Value of Ecosystem Resilience in Complex Natural Land as a Wild Pollinator Habitat

&NA; This article investigates the shadow value of resilience in complex natural lands acting as wild pollinator habitats. We capture the linkage between pollination services in crop production and habitat conditions in the surrounding natural land with a bioeconomic model. Our case study is buckwheat, which is produced in the hilly and mountainous region of central Japan and is greatly dependent on diverse fauna for pollination services. We model the mechanism of regime shifts in ecosystems consisting of buckwheat fields and the surrounding natural land with a threshold estimation model. We then find that the forest around the crop fields, which serves as a habitat for wild pollinators, is a determinant of an ecological threshold that causes regime shifts. We calculate the shadow value of resilience provided by forest habitat around a unit of buckwheat field to be

Pollution from the electric power sector in Japan and efficient pollution reduction

9,796, implying that the total value of resilience in complex natural land amounts to half of the stock price of buckwheat land. This overlooked value gives us useful insights on the sustainable use of ecosystems, including both pollinator‐mediated crop fields and habitats for pollinators.