The latest news digest by the website Urbanicity includes a mention of the efforts of the city of Yokohama in relation to environmental stewardship for the conservation of biodiverse habitats:
The city of Yokohama, the capital of ICLEI Member Kanagawa Prefecture, has developed new tax mechanisms and participative approaches to conserve privately-owned green areas and their important biodiversity.
To preserve precious green areas for its citizens, the city has introduced a new tax system, with the revenue used to conserve privately-owned green areas and their biodiversity. Citizens, corporations and developers are all encourage[d] to take part. Tax reductions are offered mainly to farmlands in urbanized areas on the condition that these farmlands cannot be developed or resold. This is particularly successful at tackling the problem of elderly famers selling off their land, either because they have no heirs able to carry on the farm or due to falling incomes.
Despite various conservation measures, nearly 100 hectares of forests and farmland are lost in the city every year due to development, and the green coverage rate fell from 35 percent in 2004 to 29.8 percent in 2009. The development of concrete river walls, fewer open water channels and increasingly isolated green areas have caused dramatic changes in habitats for animal species.
Japan’s second largest city, and one of its most important ports, Yokohama has a population of 3.7 million inhabitants. The city’s continued growth and the necessary urban development has put pressure on its mountainous forest regions and farmland.
Conserving farmland has multiple advantages, including disaster prevention, beautification of the landscape and it can help urban food security by maintaining agriculture in suburban areas.
You can read more about the project at ICLEI’s website, including a further case study from Kumamoto City on ‘Using natural systems for groundwater conservation: mineral water from the tap’.
