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Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan

Agricultural land accounts for 37% of the world’s terrestrial area, and the multiple functions of agroecosystems—providing food, soil and water retention, and various cultural services—are of great importance for sustainable land management. To ensure that multifunctionality, payment for ecosystem s...

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Autores principales: Shoyama, Kikuko, Nishi, Maiko, Hashimoto, Shizuka, Saito, Osamu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8860944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34232344
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01497-4
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author Shoyama, Kikuko
Nishi, Maiko
Hashimoto, Shizuka
Saito, Osamu
author_facet Shoyama, Kikuko
Nishi, Maiko
Hashimoto, Shizuka
Saito, Osamu
author_sort Shoyama, Kikuko
collection PubMed
description Agricultural land accounts for 37% of the world’s terrestrial area, and the multiple functions of agroecosystems—providing food, soil and water retention, and various cultural services—are of great importance for sustainable land management. To ensure that multifunctionality, payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have been developed for heterogeneous agroecosystems. However, the effects of the schemes have not been fully measured because, in most cases, they have been implemented as action-oriented programs rather than outcome-based payments. This study examines the effect of a community-based PES (CB-PES) program on the prevention of farmland abandonment to assess the agricultural outcomes of PES implementation in hilly and mountainous areas in Japan. We interviewed farmers in enrolled communities, mapped enrolled plots, and analyzed agricultural census data on the socioeconomic characteristics and farmland management conditions of 12,261 farmers in 960 agricultural communities in a typical hilly and mountainous area of Noto Peninsula in northern Japan. The results confirm that direct payments are effective in enhancing community management and in preventing additional farmland abandonment. In addition, we found that several socioeconomic and environmental factors at both the community and farmer levels—including geographical conditions, collective management activities, absence of successors, farm scale, and off-farm income dependency—simultaneously affected the farmland abandonment process. Specifically, collective practices within and between communities is a significant factor in preventing farmland abandonment more than collaboration with outsiders. Considering the depopulation and aging of rural communities throughout Japan, intercommunity enrollment could improve the effectiveness of CB-PES by upscaling the current payment scheme to maintain community functions.
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spelling pubmed-88609442022-02-23 Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan Shoyama, Kikuko Nishi, Maiko Hashimoto, Shizuka Saito, Osamu Environ Manage Article Agricultural land accounts for 37% of the world’s terrestrial area, and the multiple functions of agroecosystems—providing food, soil and water retention, and various cultural services—are of great importance for sustainable land management. To ensure that multifunctionality, payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have been developed for heterogeneous agroecosystems. However, the effects of the schemes have not been fully measured because, in most cases, they have been implemented as action-oriented programs rather than outcome-based payments. This study examines the effect of a community-based PES (CB-PES) program on the prevention of farmland abandonment to assess the agricultural outcomes of PES implementation in hilly and mountainous areas in Japan. We interviewed farmers in enrolled communities, mapped enrolled plots, and analyzed agricultural census data on the socioeconomic characteristics and farmland management conditions of 12,261 farmers in 960 agricultural communities in a typical hilly and mountainous area of Noto Peninsula in northern Japan. The results confirm that direct payments are effective in enhancing community management and in preventing additional farmland abandonment. In addition, we found that several socioeconomic and environmental factors at both the community and farmer levels—including geographical conditions, collective management activities, absence of successors, farm scale, and off-farm income dependency—simultaneously affected the farmland abandonment process. Specifically, collective practices within and between communities is a significant factor in preventing farmland abandonment more than collaboration with outsiders. Considering the depopulation and aging of rural communities throughout Japan, intercommunity enrollment could improve the effectiveness of CB-PES by upscaling the current payment scheme to maintain community functions. Springer US 2021-07-07 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8860944/ /pubmed/34232344 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01497-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Shoyama, Kikuko
Nishi, Maiko
Hashimoto, Shizuka
Saito, Osamu
Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title_full Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title_fullStr Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title_full_unstemmed Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title_short Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan
title_sort outcome-based assessment of the payment for mountain agriculture: a community-based approach to countering land abandonment in japan
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8860944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34232344
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01497-4
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