SDGs Island: Pioneering Iki City as the model island of sustainability

To promote SDGs and progress regional revitalization, Japan has called out to local governments to be sustainable. Iki City from Nagasaki Prefecture is one of first 29 cities chosen to be a model “SDGs Future City.” However, as an island city with unique challenges intersecting challenges of an unbalanced population, Iki City is not just looking to be sustainable but also self-sufficient.

Iki City has a population of over 26,000, and its infrastructures like roads and communications are well-maintained. Key facilities like hospitals or marts are within a short drive away. Iki City is also blessed with lush surroundings, with over 200 shrines on the island. Yet, the issues it faces are not uncommon, including an aging population and climate change. Fortunately, it already has a head start on solving these problems.

To illuminate the problems and Iki City’s unique solutions, we spoke to Shinohara Issei, the Assistant Manager of SDGs Future Division and Executive Director of Iki Future Creation Site, one of the most active envoys of SDGs in Iki City.

Challenges Iki City faces in revitalization and sustainability

To appreciate the progress Iki City has made towards becoming an SDGs Model City, we will take a quick look at the various issues Iki City wants to overcome.

Japan’s demographic timebomb

Japan’s aging population has social and economic repercussions throughout the country. Iki City faces that issue too, as it is witnessing a decrease in population. The percentage of citizens above 65 is at 37% (as of May 2020 [*1]). It is estimated that two out of every five persons will be over 65 years old by 2030.

Iki City has identified several gaps, one of which is the outflow of young blood. Youths have to travel to the mainland to continue tertiary education. Job opportunities are another concern if the citizens seek employment, and especially to raise families.

Another unique feature of an island city is that even though there is a steady decrease in population, at some point, the population will drop to zero suddenly. This is when services are no longer available, including hospitals, schools, markets, which are necessary support for day-to-day living. Unlike villages on the mainland, residents have to take a boat or ferry to reach such services. One might even say that that is a point of no return.

Extreme weather and declining nature

Climate change affects everyone in the world. And Iki City is also not spared from the resulting extreme weathers Japan has been facing in recent years. It is already experiencing an increase of temperature by 0.7 degrees celsius.

It is a nugget of old wisdom that “there will be a colossal rain once every fifty years,” especially in Kyushu. However, climate change brought along four large-scale occurrences of rain in the past four years. (The last was in last July, which caused the devastation in the Kyushu Floods.) Even well-maintained infrastructures in Iki City were not spared, with mudslides and crumbling roads. With unusual floods came unusual droughts too, as local agriculture saw shortages of water.

Climate change has also cut deeply into Iki City’s fishery industry. The increase in sea temperatures has decreased the seaweed beds around the vicinity of Iki City. The city saw a near 50% decrease in catch between 2008 and 2018, from an annual 6,560 tonnes to 4,408 tonnes.

Systemic challenges in adopting SDGs as a framework

As Iki City started to approach these concerns, Shinohara discovered another issue.

“Japanese governments work within a tatewari gyosei model, meaning that different departments in Japanese governments often separate issues from another department. But if we are to promote SDGs, which covers a whole spectrum of issues, we cannot just delegate it to just the Environment Department or Citizen Welfare Department. That is why Iki City decided to create an SDGs Future Division to progress SDGs on the island.” Shinohara is also currently an assistant manager in the SDGs Future Division.

Iki City’s importance as a pioneering model for Japan’s island cites

What is scary is the scale that is happening in Japan. There are 416 islands in Japan involved in revitalization and supporting livelihoods. While not all are involved in the fishery, the effect of climate change will not be strange to islanders. Neither is the concern of population imbalance.

Therefore, Iki City is looked upon as the pioneer for island sustainability. As an island, the city has a good population size and a rather circular geography, long continuing agriculture and fishery industries, and the common obstacles of regional revitalization. If Iki City can succeed as a sustainable island city, it will become a model SDGs island city for the other island cities.

And as it turns out, SDGs, a concept about sustainability, was the perfect fit for Iki City too. Iki City isn’t looking to prosper beyond any mark, but to continue and maintain within the means of itself. With the adoption of SDGs, Iki City has gained another symbol to rally the citizens for the island’s revitalization.

Iki City’s SDGs Future Division and the creation of Iki Future Creation Project

“In 2018, when we first introduced SDGs to the city,” Shinohara recalled, “Everyone was confused about what the SDGs Future Division is. It was a very new term. But now, almost 80% of the citizens know what SDGs is.” This is quite an achievement when compared to Japan’s average of 29%.

However, solving the problems did not start with SDGs. Iki city had earlier realized their need to revitalize various aspects of the city. The issue of regional revitalization was, therefore, a particular interest of all its citizens.

In search of revitalizing to restore and retain what Iki City values, the SDGs Future Division has created the Iki Future Creation Project to spearhead initiatives to progress that mission. However, the framework it uses is not a difficult one. It expands on sanpoyoshi, a traditional model that benefits the seller, the purchaser and the society. The Project’s modified tri-prong approach wants to benefit:

• Iki City: To drive growth in population and economy, its public servants are playing active roles and are highly involved in reaching out to the citizens to discover needs and problems. Apart from efficacious policymaking, they started the first Future Creation Dialogue, leading to one of the biggest influences on the island’s development.
• Businesses: Whether its existing businesses or new companies looking to grow, Iki City wants to create value unique to the region, and is aligning policies to attract entrepreneurs to set up in the city. Despite the coronavirus pandemic period, interested entrepreneurs are finding Iki City to be attractive and beneficial.

  

• Citizens: Last, and perhaps the most crucial factor, is supporting the residents. To make a living here attractive, Iki City wants to ensure their lifestyles are well supported, including raising families, education availability, and employment opportunities.

Introducing some unique initiatives from Iki City

Shinohara revealed the wealth of assets Iki City has and has created. “Agriculture is one of Iki City’s main industry, and as a small island, achieving 100% renewable energy use is highly possible too. We are already in discussions for online medical checkups and about the regulations for self-driving cars. Even Iki’s children are talking about environmental issues with their parents.”

To help its citizens’ visualize what Iki City’s future could look like, SDGs Future Division has also created a video to play on their local television network.

While there are many exciting initiatives on the island, we will introduce a few that Iki City has leveraged successfully and challenged itself for innovation.

Future Creation Dialogue

Among the many initiatives, perhaps the most important is Future Creation Dialogue. It brings together diverse talents from in and out of the island to deliberate on the city’s issues that the participants want to tackle.

“But just having a session for discussion wasn’t enough, as discussions often get derailed with very little results,” Shinohara shared. “We then introduced Xerox’s method of approaching dialogues, which allowed participants to feel invested in issues in Iki City.” It was a big success, with the first rounds of the dialogue held from 2015, attracting more than 2,000 citizens and students. As of February 2020, participants have covered 42 issues, 30 of which have adopted solutions birthed from the Future Creation Dialogues.

And citizen action went beyond just discussions. “If you think about it,” Shinohara added, “that’s a lot of projects that the SDGs Future Division will not be able to handle alone. That is where the Future Creation Dialogue shines because the members who raised the solutions take ownership to carry them out.”

Innovation Summer Program

The Future Creation Dialogue has an additional benefit to involve the young in the matters of Iki City.

“Iki City doesn’t have a University, so students must leave the island to study in bigger cities. Bringing youths back into Iki City is an issue, which is also an issue of not losing human resources and talents. The dialogue sessions let the youths think about what mattered to them before they left. It even provides an opportunity to show these students the attractiveness of Iki City, and settle here after graduation.”

Last year, they kicked off the Innovation Summer Program for those very benefits. The first batch of 25 students will do research, planning, innovation and presentation to tackle chosen issues in Iki City.

Freewill Studio – Iki City’s pivotal gathering hub

Another key initiative driven by the citizens is the Iki Telework Center. It was driven not by the benefits of having a place for gathering, but by the dreams of Iki citizens who wants to interact with visitors from outside the island.

Seeing how many buildings on the island were not fully utilized, it presented an opportunity with high possibility for follow-through.

But where was a good spot for people to gather? There would be no better place than the historic Harunotsuji Ruins. But as a designated national historic site, new buildings are not allowed to be built. So instead, they cleared the warehouse of Harunotsuji Guidance (archaeological museum) and renovated it.

Today, the Iki Telework Center is better known as the Freewill Studio. The spacious building offers co-working space with meeting facilities and amenities. “Companies were mainly interested in using Freewill Studio, but since the coronavirus outbreak, we see more individuals using the facilities for remote work,” Shinohara shared. The focus of this space is not only on work, but also for locals to hold online classes, yoga, and more.

“However, the biggest success did not come from just creating a place for gathering. Freewill Studio provided an epicenter as Iki Future Creation Site to challenge ourselves. This attracted businesses with new knowledge and technology, making it possible for us to tackle the various problems in Iki City further.”

Iki City as Workation destination

“Iki City used to be a location for tourism. In fact, we were promoting teleworking from Iki City while visitors were here on vacation, which was the first manifestation of what we know today as workation.”

Workation is one of the newest trends in Japan, where one works in a remote area. It was given a hefty kickstart from the pandemic outbreak, which increased the need for remote working. As with all crises, it revealed vulnerabilities in Japan systems and accelerated needs (in this case, the need for new work styles). The trend has also been recognized for its beneficial role in regional revitalization.

“Even before the pandemic outbreak, we saw the potential that Iki City has to offer as a workation destination. We leveraged it as an attraction of Iki City. However, we didn’t want things to just stop there. We hoped that these remote workers would interact with the gifts of the island to find growth in themselves, whether it be about experiencing SDGs, or bringing their family along to reconnect with nature.”

Multiple rental services are also available, from cars to outdoor goods to wifi devices, so that anyone may choose to work in any scenic environment on the island. Even local facilities are offering themselves as interesting workspaces, like the cafe space of Iki Dolphin Park & Resort.

Smart agriculture and Iki’s enthusiastic progress

Let’s not forget about Iki City’s agriculture. With its imbalanced population, Iki City is looking to introduce smart automation into the industry. The first step towards this is Iki’s Asparagus Project, which also promotes eco-friendly farming and the prevention of food waste.

“When we first talked about smart agriculture, it sounded like dream talk to the farmers. It wasn’t easy to visualize. Furthermore, there were no data on smart agriculture for asparagus. Thus, it was challenging to find the first group of farmers willing to change their systems and accept the related risks.

“However, that has changed. We conducted a survey in the last SDGs Fes [held in Iki City], and found that many farmers were willing to accept automation. Furthermore, even though the project period has been short, the data is getting attention from the academic world.”

The spirit of Iki City

We have not covered other aspects of what Iki City is doing, including its aim for 100% self-sufficiency on renewable energy, drone systems, and IT skill development for the citizens. But it’s enough to make one wonder, what makes Iki citizens so adventurous?

Few know, but Iki City has a history of millenniums old. Because of the island’s position, it was a popular trade spot and often the target of conquests. Regardless of either, the natives had a lot of exposure to various culture, knowledge and technology from countries like Japan, Korea and China. And for each, the natives were open to learning and trying, sometimes adapting to use for their own flourishment.

That spirit continues today in Iki City. With every new idea or acquaintance, they are often inviting and curious. That is why the citizens are quick to accept the concept of SDGs, and why the city’s efforts to create an Iki Smart Society 5.0 is progressing positively.

“In a way, that is the strength of Iki citizens: we are open to experimenting with the new, especially if we can make it fun. Besides, we have a can-do spirit and do not overly concern ourselves with the fear of failure. That allows the citizens and incoming businesses to challenge and innovate, and eventually creating the Iki brand.”

[Reference 1] Iki Smart Society 5.0 Overview, with courtesy of Iki City General Affairs Department SDGs Future Division
[Website] Iki City Society 5.0
[Reference] What is Society 5.0?