doi: 10.3850/S1793924012001150

Linking Mountain Community Practices to Sediment-Related Disaster Risk Reduction in Reihoku, Japan

Kumiko Fujita^a, Rajib Shaw^b and Yukiko Takeuchi^c Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. ^akumiko.fujita@gmail.com ^bbshaw@global.mbox.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp ^cy.takeuchi@fw7.ecs.kyoto-u.ac.jp

ABSTRACT

Japan has been suffered from frequent sediment-related disasters in mountains such as landslide, collapse and debris flow because of both primary causes such as steep mountains and vulnerable geology and provoking causes such as torrential rains, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Now the mountain surrounding environment is changing rapidly. Social changes, such as aging and decreasing population make it difficult to treat forest properly and forest function of mitigating forest disasters is declining. In addition, because of climate change, occurrence of localized torrential rain is increasing, and big scale local floods and droughts will be occurred. Though structural measures had been emphasized, it changed as international trend changed. Major changes in international activities after 1990 are from structural measures to non-structural measures, from disaster response to disaster risk management, increase of community-based disaster preparedness approaches, and including perspectives of disaster risk reduction in development. This paper discuss how these environmental changes link to the people’s practices. The research field is focused on Reihoku area in Japan, because the area is a typical mountain area with frequent sediment-related disasters, decreasing population and high rate of old population. In this research, community practices are analyzed based on questionnaire survey to suggest possible community-based disaster risk reduction.

Keywords: Disaster risk reduction, Community practices, Social changes, Climate change, Landslide.

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