• Energy Research

Abstract Sustainable management and informed policy making at the sub-national level requires an understanding of regional resource base regeneration and the demand it places on wider geographical areas. Ecological Footprint is one of the most widely used and accepted ecological accounting methodologies and available for calculating multiple consumption categories such as food, housing and transportation. Japan's 47 prefectures are diverse in their urbanization and ageing situations and provide an opportunity for understanding the relationship between regional socioeconomic and demographic factors and Ecological Footprint outcomes. To assess potential environmental impacts and planning implications of future urbanization and ageing, we analyzed the existing relationships between the proportion of urban and elderly populations and incomes, and the total and categorical Ecological Footprint per capita. We used a standard top-down scaling methodology to quantify the Ecological Footprint of prefectures, that included three steps: 1) acquiring national level data of Ecological Footprints, 2) applying environmental extended multi-regional input-output model to derive Ecological Footprint values by economic sector, and 3) scaling down Ecological Footprints to the prefecture level with household expenditure survey and other data sources. We show that Ecological Footprint per capita varies considerable among prefectures, being highest in Tokyo (5.24 global hectare) and lowest in Yamanashi (4.06 global hectare). Prefectures with a higher proportion of urban and elderly population had high total and food Ecological Footprint per capita. Prefectures with higher income per capita also had higher total and food Ecological Footprint per capita. Lower Ecological Footprints of less urbanized prefectures provide an argument for economic decentralization. Policy makers in ageing regions should consider supporting local food activities with elderly populations, as processed food dominates majority part of the food Ecological Footprint.

Can shrinking cities harness population decline to improve their sustainability by repurposing land use, for example, for localizing food production? Whether such a transition is feasible depends on the pre-shrinkage state of urban agricultural land use, including ongoing trends in local land use change. This study examined agricultural land use from 2007–2017 in Kyoto City, Japan. Kyoto is on the brink of a large projected population decline (~190,000 or ~13% until 2040) and serves as a representative for a large number of regional Japanese cities in a similar situation. Analysis was based on a public 2007 land use data set, aerial and satellite imagery and ground truthing. Results showed a decline of 209 ha or 10% in agricultural land use over ten years, but also highlight the diversity of ongoing agricultural land use types not captured by standard categories. The main post-agricultural land uses were residential (40%) and vacant land (28%). These results have implications for planning and policy. Kyoto City is currently not set to benefit from the projected shrinking process through localizing food production, despite a tradition of vegetable production. Future research should analyze drivers of change for observed agricultural land use.

As society becomes increasingly urbanized, children are becoming much less likely to experience nature. This progressive disengagement from the natural world, often termed the ‘extinction of experience’, has been viewed both as a key public health issue and one of the most fundamental obstacles to halting global environmental degradation. School education has an important role in mitigating and reversing the ongoing extinction of experience. Here, we examine the role of several factors that determine the implementation intensities of nature-based education by science teachers in the classrooms of both primary and secondary schools. We performed a large-scale questionnaire survey comprising 363 elementary and 259 lower-secondary schoolteachers. Several factors predicted the implementation intensity of nature-based education in schools. The most important predictor was teachers’ levels of nature-relatedness, with nature-orientated teachers being more likely to provide nature-based education in their classes. Levels of teachers’ ecological knowledge, frequency of childhood nature experiences, and greenness within the school were also positively associated with the implementation intensity of education. Our results suggest that, to promote nature-based education in schools, it is important to increase schoolteachers’ nature-relatedness and ecological knowledge, as well as to provide more green spaces within schools.