Enlivening Ecosystems with Human Hands: Building Satoumi Through Coral Reef Culture

Abstract

In Shiraho Village on Ishigaki Island in southwestern Okinawa, WWF-Japan and the local community created collaborative conservation during over a decade of work. At the outset, these two groups had very different ideas about how to address regional issues. WWF, a nature conservation organization, considers the preservation of precious coral reefs worldwide to be a top priority. Shiraho villagers, having experienced regional conflicts because of a thwarted airport development on top of their coral reef, emphasized cultural inheritance and community regeneration as their priorities. In this chapter, we consider the ways that socionatures of “satoumi” and “coral reef culture,” which represent intertwined and interdependent nature ideologies, helped to further collaborative conservation in the context of these differing priorities. We first discuss the socionatural context in Shiraho that underlies the emergence and development of coral reef culture specifically at WWF. We then outline a few projects that are associated with the concept of coral reef culture and retrospectively address the 16-year endeavor of WWF’s collaborative conservation projects in Shiraho. In doing so, we illustrate how the circumstances of a socionature’s rise are critical to whether it resonates for conservation aims, even as a socionature’s interpretations can, at times, be incommensurate. Finally, we return to the question of whether the development of socionatures are likely to further conservation aims more broadly.