*3.4. Activities and Management Conditions of the ANAs Surveyed*

#### 3.4.1. Overview

All surveyed ANAs underwent a status change from FPCs in recent years for financial reasons—i.e., burdens of taxation and expected budget shortfall. ANA B had forestry incomes before the status change, but the members felt that such income would not be enough to maintain the status of an FPC.

Even after the status changes, these FPCs continued in their basic forest management activities.

ANAs A and B experienced little issues in terms of membership, because the former FPC members and residents of the communities mostly overlapped. However, for ANA C, where the numbers of FPC members and residents in the community were not the same, difficulties were faced when applying a principle of the ANA, i.e., the forests become an asset for all residents of the community.

#### 3.4.2. Case Study Information

This section provides detailed case study information on each ANA, including members' perspectives.

[ANA A]

ANA A (Fukuoka prefecture), which owns 27 ha, was organized in 2016 after the FPC in Community A was dissolved. The former FPC had been established in 1986. The reason for the dissolution and status change to an ANA was that the cooperative's members lost the motivation to continue intensive forest management activities as an FPC, due to lower timber prices, the aging of cooperative members, and a lack of successors. They decided to choose a less intensive form of management as an ANA.

Even after becoming an ANA, the members continued with basic forest management operations, particularly root-cutting and thinning. Root-cutting was conducted, as a rule, one or two times a year by all residents in the community. Thinning was entrusted to an FOC, paid for by a subsidy from the prefecture.

The former FPC members and the residents of the community mostly overlapped. Therefore, their management situation did not drastically change, other than a positive consequence of being free from corporate taxes.

[ANA B]

ANA B (Fukuoka prefecture), which owns 72 ha, was organized in 2020 after the FPC in the community changed its status. The former FPC was established in 1983. During the time of the FPC, members were engaged in the weeding and cleaning of strip roads. This community experienced severe damage from flooding in 2017 and the members had to remove dirt from their forest area. They had undertaken a final harvest of timber, which they entrusted to an FOC. Before the status change, the FPC had a reasonable annual forestry income of approximately 700,000 Japanese yen.

The members decided on the status change at the 2019 annual meeting of the FPC. The primary reason was that the FPC would otherwise face bankruptcy. The number of FPC members and residents in the community was declining, due to their remote location. Here, when a person's membership ends due to his or her death, and when none of his or her children live in the community, the FPC has to return the amount that the FPC member invested to establish the FPC, i.e., 350,000 Japanese yen. This meant that the more members who died, the more money the FPC had to disburse from their savings. The members were sure that their savings would run out in the near future, despite a certain amount of forestry income. Therefore, they decided to change their organizational status to an ANA. The status was changed in 2020, at which point, an agreement was reached among the former FPC members that they would not claim a refund of the invested amount.

The secondary reason for the status change was the burden of taxation; even though the FPC had forestry income, corporate and corporate inhabitant taxes were a burden.

The FPC members felt little concern about changing the organizational status. In this community, residents and FPC members mostly overlapped, and so, issues of membership was not a problem. The president told the authors that they would continue the same level of forestry operations after the status change.

[ANA C]

ANA C (Saga prefecture), owning 23 ha, was organized in 2021 after the FPC in the community changed its status. The former FPC was established in 1990. A large part of the forest had been designated as a forest reserve for water source cultivation. A few years before the status change, the cooperative's members had conducted weeding, using a subsidy from the city. There were no forestry nor non-forestry incomes. The FPC charged annual fees in order to pay taxes.

The members started discussing a status change to an ANA in 2017, due to the burden of taxation. The president told the author that they had a sense of responsibility to manage the *iriai* forest, particularly with regard to disaster prevention and water source cultivation. However, it was unrealistic to continue the FPC situation for future decades.

In the process of deliberation, the FPC faced a problem in that the FPC members and the residents in the community were not the same. As of 2020, the number of FPC members (households) was 26, but the number of households in the community was 80. After an FPC becomes an ANA, the forest becomes an asset for all residents of the community. The FPC members were uncomfortable with this situation, as they had contributed labor and in-kind and monetary investments. Thus, they tried to determine a method by which they could continuously engage in managing the *iriai* forests.

Consequently, the regulations of the newly formed ANA prescribed that a forest division was to be set up consisting of former PFC members. In doing so, the former FPC members tried to maintain responsibility for managing the forests. It was unclear how the benefits from timber production or any other income sources, if any, would be shared in the ANA—in other words, whether benefits would be shared among the former FPC members alone or among all community residents. This issue had remained a gray area.

This arrangement somewhat deviates from the concept and principle of ANAs, which is an organization open to all community residents. At the same time, this arrangement could be regarded as a technique to reconcile the existing legal prescriptions of the ANA setup with local realities.

The former FPC president told the author that the members of the former cooperative were willing to maintain their existing forest management operations, primarily based on the forest division in the ANA. However, they were not sure what other, non-FPC community residents would be involved in or invited to in terms of forest management. At the time of the author's survey, few concrete ideas on collaboration in the community had been developed.

#### **4. Discussion**

An examination of the historical developments of external policy influence over *iriai* forests confirmed that FPCs were promoted by the government when timber prices were high in the 1960s. Conventional *iriai* communities, based on rights of common, were considered a hindrance to promoting intensive and efficient forestry. As a result, rights of common were subject to extinguishment through due processes. However, conditions favorable to forestry have disappeared, particularly since the 1980s, given low timber prices and declining FPC membership. The status of a cooperative is generally no longer advantageous; instead, FPCs have the disadvantage of paying corporate taxes even though they have no income. As Shimada [14] indicates, these external factors have worked outside the control of *iriai* communities.

We can observe how policies related to administration and forestry can have negative effects on forest commons. Overall, changes in *iriai* forests after the 1960s have typically been the negative effects of commodification and non-settlement trends [6]. On the one hand, this could be understood as simply a failure of certain policies; on the other hand, this could represent a broader indication that such a policy failure is a consequence of modernization and its simplification of the relations between nature, space, and people [30]. The value of maximizing monetary profits by private entities, which prevailed after the 1960s, should be reconsidered, and revitalizing meaningful human–forest relations in the contemporary context is important.

Through its surveys of FPCs and ANAs, the present study has confirmed several important points. First, some FPCs have suffered from disadvantageous circumstances in forestry, including low timber prices, fewer FPC members, and the burden of corporate taxes. Few FPCs had engaged in forestry production in the few years before the surveys were conducted. These were general trends of FPCs that had been indicated in the previous literature [9,11]. At the same time, some FPCs have enjoyed a large amount of nonforestry incomes or assets, e.g., the leasing or selling of forestland. This point has been less emphasized by previous studies, except for Yamashita [17]. It is noteworthy that there are some wealthy FPCs and that not all FPCs are suffering financially. Therefore, it is necessary that future policy options for FPCs consider their diversity and build on the concrete situations of each FPC. However, the fact that all the confirmed non-forestry activities were forestland leasing or selling indicates that whether or not FPCs have an opportunity to engage in such activities depends on their geographical location (whether the FPC's forest is part of an upcoming project site), regardless of FPCs' management efforts. Thus, it is unrealistic to propose attracting forest development projects in order to lease forestland as a solution to the disadvantageous management circumstances of FPCs.

Second, as previous studies have indicated, becoming an ANA is a reasonable option. As seen in the present results, forest management activities are not likely to drastically change after the status change, as the former FPC members generally have high degrees of attachment to and responsibility for their *iriai* forests. However, as shown in the case of ANA C, difficulties will arise when FPC members and community residents do not overlap.

Third, in most cases of both FPCs and ANAs, basic forest management operations were conducted, at least to some extent. Several received subsidies from the prefecture or city to conduct tending operations and the importance of subsidies was confirmed. However, as mentioned in the Materials and Methods section, the present study did not apply random sampling methods, and thus, the author cannot generalize this in quantitative terms. The qualitative interview results indicate that both FPC and ANA members were likely to feel attached to and responsible for their *iriai* forests. The importance of forests in environmental conservation, water source cultivation, disaster prevention, and climate change mitigation was often emphasized. As the owners and managers of *iriai* forests, they perceived that they had contributed to this public good. It is implied that this sense of pride is one of the important factors maintaining management activities of *iriai* forests in the contemporary context.

It Is noteworthy that local communities are likely to want to persist with forest commons, even when it is difficult. Changing the entity's status to ANA is a creative application of an available institution that originally had nothing to do with forest commons. As can be seen, the existing local will and initiatives should not be overlooked or underestimated. Institutional changes should be encouraged to promote or ease local initiatives that can maintain or revitalize commons management; this lesson can be applied to countries other than Japan.
