New developments
Appearance of the forests for people’
As discussed above, NF management implemented an improvement plan in 1978 for the following 20-year period. However, this ended in failure; with some 3.8 trillion yen in accumulated debt, the NF were declared bankrupt by the Board of Audit in 1996. A number of criticisms were directed at the plan, most notably that it had reduced national forest management issues to simply one of cost (Arinaga, 1997; Kasahara, Kouda & Shioya, 2008; Noguchi, 1999).
The Radical Reform management plan commenced in 1998. In return for using 2.8 trillion yen of taxpayers’ money to pay-off the accumulated debt, the NF were declared as forests for people. Under this new concept, the national forest policy changed direction towards a new ‘collaboration and cooperation’ system with goals of: (i) further promoting cooperation with private forests in forest development and forestry production; (ii) creating and improving a
Transition of forest tourism policies Ti system for developing diverse activities, such as citizen-led forest development projects, corporate social action programmes and forest environment education programmes; and (iii) increasing cooperation with citizens in forest conservation management activities, such as patrolling the forest. Since 2004, this has been regarded as a model project that focuses on shared management of NF by the FA, local municipalities, local resident organizations and non-profit organizations. This collaboration set out to achieve a balance between nature conservation and forest development within the wide expanses of NF (ca. 10,000 ha), and was an attempt to implement a new form of national forest management within the forests for people concept. In addition, as a facilitation body, forest interaction promotion centres were installed in nine locations to support citizen-led activities and environment education programmes.
Overview of forest park reform measures
Following the radical reform referred to above, national forest tourism policy was acknowledged as a model framework toward actualizing ‘forests for people’. Existing recreation areas and their surroundings were actively promoted as places for citizens to voluntarily undertake forestry activities, and for school and social education programmes. However, a variety of factors contributed to management challenges, such as the economic and population decline of rural areas and the rise of new tourism in the 1990s, the large number of ageing and unused facilities and the unstructured nature of management organizations in many areas. The FA therefore established the Committee on Forest Parks in National Forests in 2004 and, in the following year, the Forest Park Reform Measures (Reform Measures) were introduced.
The Committee addressed several problems in recreation forests, including: decreasing business opportunities owing to low economic growth and the diversification of leisure activities; quantitative saturation from the increased number of similar facilities in private forests; decreasing appeal owing to aging facilities; and stagnation in large-scale facility development, such as ski areas. Meanwhile, various activities responding to public interests, such as guided tours with interpretive materials, became necessary. In addition, awareness about nature conservation in response to environmental degradation and the need for biodiversity conservation was increasing. Consequently, the Committee concluded that contributions should be made toward the solution of global environmental issues that are also policy issues for the government and that public participation in the forest management approach should stimulate efforts to actualize the ‘forests for people’ concept. As a future measure, a policy change from quantitative sufficiency to qualitative improvement that suits user needs was proposed as the overall concept with the primary implementation goals to: (i) review the settings for forest parks; (ii) examine new zoning measures to allow for different recreational opportunities; (iii) promote cooperation with local municipalities and citizensin management and operation projects; and (iv), improve activity programmes and information provision and promote safety measures.
The greatest progress made from a national perspective was the review of forest parks. Between 2005 and 2012, about 13 percent of existing projects and 5 percent of the areas were discontinued, most of which were related to large-scale facilities such as ski areas. To promote cooperation in management and operation, the Council was revised to improve its function by including members from the local municipality, businesses and citizens’ groups at the core and a new agreement with the District Forest Offices was made. Diverse partnerships occurred in many locations, allowing for unique management, but the degree of success varied from region to region owing to economic conditions and extensive amalgamation of municipalities.
