Abstract
Present trends of urbanization are accompanied by increasing demographic and economic shrinkage of rural regions. In countries such as Japan, these rural regions trail behind metropolitan counterparts according to GDP, the conventional measure used to guide governmental policies. Yet, past research suggests that these regions may be undervalued. Further, the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI), largely only used at the national level, may be able to capture aspects previously missed. As such, our study attempts to highlight the wealth of rural regions by comparing the inclusive wealth of Sado Island and Japan between 1990 and 2014. Minor methodological modifications were made according to data availability at the local level and to improve the accuracy of human capital estimations. Results captured the ongoing shrinkage of Sado and demonstrate the distinct potential of the IWI as a stock measure. Sado’s per capita wealth was about 10% lower than the national averages, but its natural capital was about threefold national averages. Supplementary estimations of the natural capital of fisheries and cultivated forests suggest that inclusion of additional factors in the evaluation would further increase the relative valuation of rural regions. We discuss implications of our estimations for wellbeing, and conclude with a critical appraisal of the IWI calculation towards policy implementation of the index.
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Abbreviations
- FAO:
-
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- IWI:
-
Inclusive wealth index
- IWR:
-
Inclusive wealth report
- GDP:
-
Gross domestic product
- GIAHS:
-
Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site
- GPI:
-
Genuine progress indicator
- GRP:
-
Gross regional product
- MAFF:
-
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan
- MIC:
-
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan
- MOE:
-
Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan
- NTFB:
-
Non-timber forest benefits
- OECD:
-
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- PIM:
-
Perpetual inventory method
- UN DESA:
-
United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs
- UNEP:
-
United Nations Environment Programme
- UNU-IHDP:
-
United Nations University/International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change
- USD:
-
United States Dollar
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to recognize the generous support of Sado City and kind cooperation of Sado Agricultural Cooperative, Hamochi Agricultural Cooperative, Niigata Prefecture Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Division of Conservation, Niigata Prefecture Department for Sado Regional Promotion, Niigata Prefecture Sado Area Fishery Adjustment Committee and Niigata Prefecture Fisheries Oceanography Research Institute. We also appreciated the thoughtful contributions of Giles Bruno Sioen and Alexandros Gasparatos.
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This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow (Grant Number 16J04155), SOMPO JAPAN Nipponkoa ENVIRONMENT FOUNDATION, JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 15KT0027), and the environment research and technology development fund [S15 predicting and assessing natural capital and ecosystem services (PANCES)] of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.
Handled by Dr. Shizuka Hashimoto, Kyoto University, Japan.
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Yoshida, Y., Matsuda, H., Fukushi, K. et al. Assessing local-scale inclusive wealth: a case study of Sado Island, Japan. Sustain Sci 13, 1399–1414 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0540-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0540-y