Sustainable Community Co-development Through Collaboration of Science and Society: Comparison of Success and Failure Cases on Tsushima Island

Abstract

This chapter examines how science can co-produce with local communities and what kind of roles it can play for local revitalization in one of the border islands of Japan, Tsushima (Nagasaki Prefecture). Currently, depopulation, declining birthrate, and aging population are accelerating in local regions all over Japan, and the management and survival of local communities is becoming “unsustainable.” Therefore, it has become a major issue on how to build a sustainable local community around Japan, and various efforts have already been made everywhere. Under these circumstances, the case of Tsushima is a practical case study of transdisciplinary research to develop a sustainable local community. This is also one of the Future Earth research which is based on the “co-design, co-production, and co-delivery between science and society.” This chapter will introduce two cases in Tsushima islands, and then, from the perspective of TD research, emphasize the importance of the role of coordinator, social sensitivity to local needs and realities, priority, problem framing, and scale setting.