At first, I was confused due to this month topic, which is about Environmental Conservation through traditional knowledge. As a foreigner who is staying in Japan, I only knew that Japan has high technology development but I didn't know about traditional environmental knowledge in Japan for environmental conservation. Beforehand, I thought that Japan could conserve their nature by their high-end technology without traditional knowledge. But I was wrong.  Japan also has its different side, traditional and rural area that has traditional environmental knowledge on nature conservation.

In Japan, place where nature meets human life, is called Satoyama. So, there are many Satoyamas in Japan, which are located in the countryside, border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land. In the Satoyama areas, people have been developing sustainable system by mixing agriculture, farming fish, and forestry. By doing this sustainable system, Satoyama?s residents can maintain biodiversity and conserve nature.

Because Satoyama areas in Japan can successfully apply their traditional environmental knowledge, global initiative called The Satoyama Initiative has been established at 2010. This Initiative has purpose of realizing ?societies in harmony with nature? and has been implemented in various societies, governments, and indigenous people.  This Initiative also has International partnership which is located in capital of Japan, Tokyo for building partnership all around the world that is involving many sectors..

Satoyama is only one of many concepts of traditional knowledge all around the world and the most important thing is how to keep it works. Many of those similar concepts apart of Japan have been extinct due to lack of traditional knowledge preservation and sometimes modernization makes it disappear. Hope now and in the future, people can live together with nature forever for greener earth. 

You can also check how the life in Satoyama via this link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pII_2VbgheI