Abstract
After World War II, Japan’s policy makers believed that common forests were underutilized because of their legal status and organization method under customary iriai-type ownership and that modern ownership in the form of group ownership, such as forest producers’ cooperatives, or as individual, separate ownership, would improve the situation. Thus, the Common Forests Modernization Act of 1966 was enacted, following successive modernization policies since the Meiji Restoration in 1868. We evaluated the impacts of the past modernization policies on the management of common forests by statistically comparing the performance of modernized and non-modernized 19,690 common forests based on the World Census of Agriculture and Forestry 2000. The performance measures for comparison included planting, weeding, thinning, and harvesting activities. We found less modernized, customary holdings are more active in tending activities such as weeding and thinning, while modernized holdings may have an advantage in harvesting and timber sales.
Highlights
Twenty one percent of private forests and seven percent of public forests of the world are managed by communities and indigenous people. (FAO, 2010, p. 122–126) In the past, Japanese governments have tried to intervene in customary common forests for different purposes
We evaluated the impacts of the series of the modernization policies in the past 150 years in Japan on the management of common forests by comparing the performance of modernized and non-modernized forests based on the The World Census of Agriculture and Forestry 2000, the data of which were for the year 2000.2 The performance measures for comparison included planting, weeding, thinning, and harvesting activities and timber sales performance
By controlling sizes, agricultural regions, and regional advancement in modernization, in our cross-tabulation analyses, we identified a potential advantage for modernized common forest, i.e., harvesting and timber sales activity
Summary
Common forests constitute a significant portion of forest management worldwide. Twenty one percent of private forests and seven percent of public forests of the world are managed by communities and indigenous people. (FAO, 2010, p. 122–126) In the past, Japanese governments have tried to intervene in customary (iriai-type) common forests for different purposes. Since modernization is a complex and controversial concept, some readers may find the use of term “modern” or “modernization” in this manuscript somewhat inappropriate This manuscript defines “modernization” as the transformation of the right of common into other types of right (e.g., individual ownership, membership of a cooperative, or ownership by the municipality), in line with the definition used by Japanese statistics officials. Takahashi et al: Impacts of 150 Years of Modernization Policies on the Management of Common Forests in Japan: A Statistical Analysis of Micro Census Data. In this manuscript, we use terms such as “customary forest holding,” “non-modernized forest,” and “iriai forest” (Japanese name for “customary use”) interchangeably, and we consider both “non-customary” and “modernized” the same type of forestry holdings (i.e., those that do not have “customary” characteristics)
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