Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts an analysis of the various key terms related to environmental tourism and protection by examining critical concepts and practices. By referring to a key term in Japan, satoyama, this paper aims to provide useful outcomes to the clarification of human mobility in natural settings.

Paper long abstract:

Many mobility-related key terms have been proposed in the context of environmental tourism, for example, ecotourism, green tourism, and sustainable tourism. This excess of terms is the result of different stakeholders expressing their own environmental awareness, and of the variety of natural settings viewed as tourist attractions, from unexplored mountains to traditional paddy fields. Several international organisations offer frameworks for managing these natural settings, yet they all use different terms to indicate similar natural settings. For example, in relation to landscapes alone, there are protected landscapes, cultural landscapes and socio-ecological production landscapes, but several rural areas worldwide can be classified as all three landscapes.

This paper attempts an analysis of the key terms related to environmental tourism and protection by examining critical concepts and practices. The analysis is conducted with reference to the international keywords shown above, and also to satoyama, a Japanese term, which once meant a type of local forest, yet through national environmental discussion it came to indicate a whole set of rural environments. The Japanese government attempted to use the term internationally and proposed the environmental framework 'the Satoyama Initiative' in 2010. During the preparation for this Initiative, the definition of satoyama was changed to a mosaic of ecosystems, and since the launch of the Initiative, it has been altered again to an example of socio-ecological production landscapes. The examination of the transformation of the definition of satoyama as well as the evaluation of international keywords will offer the clarification of human mobility in natural settings.