Tadashi Matsumoto
Head of Unit, Sustainable Development and Global Relations, OECD
The climate crisis, biodiversity loss and pollution are deeply connected. Yet, policies to address them are still often designed separately and sometimes create new tensions of their own.
In Sosa, Japan, solar panels are doing more than generating clean electricity. They are helping keep farmland in production, supporting farmers’ incomes and returning energy revenues to the local community. It is an example of finding environmental solutions that address several challenges at once.
Agrivoltaics protect farmland while generating clean energy
Renewable energy, for example, is essential to cutting emissions, but poorly planned projects can compete for land, disrupt ecosystems or leave local communities feeling that they carry the costs while benefits flow elsewhere.
Sosa offers a different model. Like many rural areas in Japan, it has faced a shrinking farming population: the number of farmers fell from 5,315 in 2010 to 2,514 in 2020. This puts more agricultural land at risk of abandonment.
Local citizens and farmers responded with agrivoltaics, or ‘solar sharing,’ which allows crops and solar panels to occupy the same land. Panels are positioned above fields, so farming can continue underneath while electricity is generated overhead. By 2021, more than 4,000 agrivoltaic farms were operating across Japan.
Restoring rivers, forests and wetlands
can strengthen biodiversity while reducing climate risks
The result is not simply lower emissions
Farmers gain another source of income. Agricultural land remains productive. Part of the revenue from electricity generation is channelled back into the community, helping sustain local livelihoods and, potentially, breathe new life into rural areas facing population decline.
OECD research points to the same potential for combined solutions in other domains. Restoring rivers, forests and wetlands can strengthen biodiversity while reducing climate risks. Circular economy policies can cut pollution while lowering demand for raw materials. Renewable energy can support local livelihoods rather than displacing them.
Decision-making with the local community in mind
Local governments are particularly important because it is at the local level where environmental, economic and social priorities most often meet — in decisions about land, energy, transport, waste and local development. They are well placed to think across systems, ensure communities share in the benefits and design policies whose economic and social gains make environmental action easier.
There will always be trade-offs. Yet, the transition becomes more durable when environmental progress also strengthens local economies and communities. Sosa’s lesson is worth remembering: the best green solutions do not ask people to choose between the planet and their place in it.
