RIHN researchers and projects also publish a variety of individual volumes on specific themes.
This book discusses imaginary future generations and how current decision-making will influence those future generations. Markets and democracies focus on the present and therefore tend to make us forget that we are living in the present, with ancestors preceding and descendants succeeding us. Markets are excellent devices to equate supply and demand in the short term, but not for allocating resources between current and future generations, since future generations do not exist yet. Democracy is also not “applicable” for future generations, since citizens vote for candidates who will serve members of their, i.e., the current, generation. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the authors discusses imaginary future generations and future ministries in the context of current decision-making in fields such as the environment, urban management, forestry, water management, and finance. The idea of imaginary future generations comes from the Native American Iroquois, who had strong norms that compelled them to incorporate the interests of people seven generations ahead when making decisions.
The Eco-DRR project has been exploring how local people in the Lake Biwa area used to cope with natural disasters and benefit from various ecosystem services, informing us the traditional way of Eco-DRR (ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction). In the Satoyama area around Lake Biwa, we can see the intrinsic connections among mountains, rivers and the lake and the local culture nurtured through the long history of connections between people and nature. The film entitled “Mountains, water and people” was filmed by Mikhail Lylov, an international film director through interviewing and discussing with the local people, in which the project members joined as well. This brochure provides a detailed introduction of the film.
Sander van der Leeuw, who has recently been appointed Honorary Fellow of Research Institute of Humanity and Nature, adopts the concept of ‘social sustainability’ in the title of his new volume. He examines how the modern world has been caught in a socioeconomic dynamic that has generated the conundrum of sustainability. Combining the methods of social science and complex systems science, he explores how western, developed nations have globalized their world view and how that view has led to the sustainability challenges we are now facing. Its central theme is the coevolution of cognition, demography, social organization, technology, and environmental impact. Beginning with the earliest human societies, van der Leeuw links the distant past with the present in order to demonstrate how the information and communications technology revolution is undermining many of the institutional pillars on which contemporary societies have been constructed. An original view of social evolution as the history of human information-processing, his book shows how the past offers insight into the present and can help us deal with the future.
Sander van der Leeuw is Foundation Professor in the Schools of Sustainability and Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, and has served for RIHN’s External Research Evaluation Committee for many years. Trained as an archaeologist and historian, he specializes in long-term interactions between humans and their environments and pioneers the application of the complex adaptive systems approach to socio-environmental challenges, technology, and innovation. Van der Leeuw is the author and editor of eighteen books. In 2012 he was awarded the “Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation” prize by the United Nations Environment Program.
This book is the final compilation of the RIHN research project “Creation and Sustainable Governance of New Commons through Formation of Integrated Local Environmental Knowledge (ILEK Project)”. )Based on the case studies from local communities of the world and utilizing novel concepts including integrated local environmental knowledge (ILEK), residential research, and bilateral knowledge translation, this book endeavors to synthesize new transdisciplinary knowledge co-creation processes to promote societal transformations to achieve sustainable and equitable futures.
This book aims to document the fishing gears and methods used in an estuary, with New Washington-Batan estuaries, Aklan, Philippines. It illustrates the physical processes in the estuary that influence the choice and success of fishing methods, how fish biology and behaviour affect fishing gear efficiency, and how to conduct field work related to capture fisheries. It also provides information on the possible ecological and social implications on the use of each gear.
This book introduces the equipment for investigating the acoustic resource amount in shallow coastal areas. It covers everything from hardware to software of a simple type weighing fish finder system using a commercially available fish finder and it is recommended for those who want to start investigating acoustic resources in shallow water at low cost.
This text book to study fishes is originally published in Japanese for undergraduate students of School of Marine Science and Technology, Tokai University. The translation has done on selected chapters for worldwide users. This publication is supported by Area-capability Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature and School of Marine Science and Technology, Tokai University.
This poster includes color photographs of 240 market fishes from Panay Island, the Philippines.
This book provides 911 color photographs of 597 fish species belonging to 132 families from Panay Island on the basis of voucher specimens. At least 19 of the 597 species in this book represent the first record of the species from Philippine waters, and several unidentified species expressed as “sp.” are probably undescribed species that need further study. Each species account includes family name, scientific name, English name, morphological features, distribution, habitat, size, and comments on taxonomy, nomenclature, comparisons, and market information.
Field surveys on small-scale fisheries in Rayong, Thailand have been conducted since December 2012. Information on actual condition in small-scale fisheries is compiled on a field guides. The field guides is useful in making guideline of management plans for not only Rayong coastal fisheries but also small-scale fisheries in tropical region.
AC project members at RIHN and Tokai University contributed to this guidebook to introduce the attractive nature and culture of Hazu area in Mikawa bay from each member’s unique perspectives. This field guidebook should be a good use of travel to Hazu area, shell gathering and environment studies.
This book introduces our research on coastal area in Higashi-Hazu. Topics include comprehensive essence such as remains, ports, fisheries, elemental analysis, plankton, seaweeds, shrimp & crabs, fishes, dolphins, environmental studies, active learnings and regional development. This book should attract not only people who live in Hazu, but also those who visit Hazu, and even who do not know Hazu to the natural environment and social culture in Hazu.
In 2015 the CRP(Center for Research Promotion) published Humanity and Nature in the Japanese Archipelago, an English language illustrated volume based on research conducted at RIHN between 2000-2009 and originally published in Japanese in The Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Studies (2010). Working with several authors of the original texts as well as a number of current RIHN researchers and a skilled team of scientific illustrators and artists, the original entries were brought into a single narrative describing key themes in the study of long-term human-environmental change in Japan. The volume includes a core section on the Jomon period in Japan, a fascinating segment of human and environmental history about which there is precious little written in English for a non-specialist audience.
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