In the south basin of Lake Biwa, Shiga, Japan, overgrown aquatic weeds (submerged macrophytes) impede cruising boats and cause unpleasant odors and undesirable waste when washed ashore. To address this socio-ecological problem, Shiga Prefectural Government implemented a public program to remove overgrown weeds and compost them ashore to conserve the lake environment, while coastal inhabitants and occasional volunteers remove weeds from the beaches to maintain the quality of the living environment. However, these effects are limited because of disjointed social networks. We applied an adaptive and abductive approach to develop community capability to jointly address this problem by sharing academic knowledge with local actors and empowering them. The initial multifaceted reviews, including interviews and postal questionnaire surveys, revealed that the agro-economic value of composted weeds declined in historical and socio-psychological contexts and that most of the unengaged public relied on local governments to address environmental problems. These findings were synthesized and assessed with workshop participants, including local inhabitants, governmental agents, businesspeople, social entrepreneurs, and research experts, to unearth the best solution. The workshops resulted in the development of an e-point system, calledBiwa Point, to promote and acknowledge voluntary environmental conservation activities, including beach cleaning. It may contribute to enhancing the socio-ecological capability of communities. Additionally, ethical issues, such as publication of inconvenient truths, undesired interpretation by the researchers, and social constraints in research methods, arose through our research practice.

This study aims to evaluate the agricultural reliance on insect pollination in Japan. Pollination services, especially bees, are vital ecosystem services for agricultural productivity, so recent declines in pollinators triggered the circulation of monetary valuation of pollination services. We measured the welfare loss in each crop category taking into account the response of the consumers, and we found that the contribution of insect pollination to the production of apples, melons, and Japanese pears, which were the top three crops, were 98.5 billion, 48.9 billion, and 35.8 billion JPY, respectively.

Biodiversity loss has been one of the most serious environmental issues on local and global scales. Enhancing people’s pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) to conserve biodiversity is crucial. Nature experiences are limited for urban residents, although nature experiences in childhood have been focused on as a key factor promoting PEBs. Therefore, we consider the role of urban parks in improving PEBs for urban residents towards sustainable cities and communities (Sustainable Development Goal 11). This study aims to elucidate the relationships among urban park use, PEBs, environmental attitudes, nature experiences in childhood, affective connections, community attachment, and ecosystem services by structural equation modeling, using survey data (n = 638) we collected from real urban park users in Osaka (Japan) in 2024. We have obtained three significant findings. First, urban park use for enjoying nature could promote PEBs, while nature experiences in childhood do not directly affect PEBs. Second, the effects of urban park use on PEBs begin to work when the frequency of urban park use exceeds around 2.2 days per week. Third, the perception of ecosystem services does not promote PEBs. We provide discussions concerning policy measures to increase urban park use based on the results. Note that the collected data may be potentially biased toward frequent park users.