国際農業開発学実習 (Practice in International Agricultural Development)

The International Program in Agricultural Development Studies (IPADS), the University of Tokyo (UTokyo), and the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn started a joint initiative in 2015. For one of the courses implemented every year, IPADS invites graduate students from ZEF to study in Japan by conducting both lectures and field works with UTokyo students. IPADS has given this course to the students of Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences as “Practice in International Agricultural Development” since the 2020 academic year. The purpose of this course is to enhance the students’ ability to tackle agricultural and environmental problems interdisciplinary for contributing to sustainable development.

This academic year, the course addresses students from all disciplines from ZEF and Graduate Schools of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and Frontier Sciences (the University of Tokyo) that will visit Hokkaido (Japan) to gain different perspectives from researchers, fishermen, and companies in order to train in problem-solving with many stakeholders. Before this fieldwork, lectures held by researchers of ZEF, IPADS, and the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science Global Leadership Initiative (GPSS-GLI) prepare the students for the fieldwork and enable a lively discussion of observations and findings in Hokkaido.

The fieldwork will focus on the following two issues:
1. Seaweed bed restoration: Seaweed bed depletion, so-called barren ground, is a serious problem in the coastal areas of Japan and all over the world. Ones of the causes for the barren ground are elevated seawater temperature by global warming, grazing by sea urchins and fishes, and lack of nutrients from terrestrial areas. The IPADS research group has focused on the lack of iron and developed a seaweed bed restoration method with iron fertilizer. The students will visit the first field test area of this method in Mashike, in the northwestern part of Hokkaido, and observe the relationship between paddy fields and the coastal environment. Additionally, the students will conduct interviews with representatives of the fisheries cooperatives and the local government.
2. Common Pool Resource Management: Fisheries is considered to be one of the typical cases of Common Pool Resources, which often result in the “tragedy of commons”. To avoid this tragedy, the establishment of property rights was often argued as the only solution. However, Japan has had a strong tradition of co-management or community-based management without establishing private or state ownership. The lecture will focus on the role played by institutions, rules and norms set by the Fisheries Cooperative Association to manage the fisheries in a sustainable manner using the theories from institutional economics, especially that of E. Ostrom. Further, the students will be asked to conduct interviews and participant observations with the fishermen in the Fisheries Cooperative Association to understand the institutions set by these fishermen.