The establishment of national parks has long been a matter of controversy between the government, Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal society. The government always justifies its actions by advocating the ideology of conservation and natural resource management. However, the creation of national parks usually causes harm to local Aboriginal communities by the expropriation of their traditional lands and prohibitions on their traditions, practices and customs.
Certainly, in its deeds and in the legislation it has introduced, the government has long recognized the importance of conservation. But, over the past 10 years, the cultural harm resulting from the government's policy of creating national parks has been a matter of public debate. It has been proven from an ecological perspective that most natural environments on the Earth's surface, which are not occupied and inhabited by indigenous communities, have been depleted and destroyed over the past several centuries. The ecosystem has been preserved only within traditional Aboriginal areas.
Because many traditional and indigenous societies live so close to nature, they have gained exceptional insights into how best to preserve and sustainably use the world's invaluable biological resources. For this reason increasing weight has been attached to the input of Aboriginal peoples in matters of environmental protection. This has lent some impetus to the idea of co-management of resources.
Aboriginal peoples have historically been excluded from any meaningful input into how, where, when and why resource development occurs on their traditional territory. This exclusion has had a significant, negative economic and social impact on Aboriginal communities. The reasons for advocating Aboriginal participation in the management and development of their traditional territories and surrounding resources, are compelling and have much to do with the fundamental value of maintaining the social validity of Aboriginal communities, so inextricably and historically tied to the land.
For many Aboriginal communities, subsistence practices such as hunting, fishing and trapping on traditional territories relate more to issues of culture, lifestyle and identity than to questions of economy, although economic considerations cannot be minimized.
Around the world, community involvement in conserving the natural habitat, wildlife and bio-diversity is becoming the prefer-red method of conservation, marking a shift away from the top-down approach that has characterized such efforts in the last few decades. But there are still important roles for government agencies, such as the establishment of a basic legal framework and management of the overall ecosystem.
In the process of establishing a legal framework, there are further concerns that need to be addressed by government -- whether there has been as little infringement as possible in order to effect the desired result and whether the Aboriginal group in question has been consulted with respect to the conservation measures being implemented.
The realization of the co-management agreement is usually carried out by way of negotiation and reconciliation among interested parties. Fundamentally, co-management implies that each participant at the negotiating table has equal rights of participation and these can then be formally institutionalized in the co-management process.
This situation, unfortunately, is not possible under the present circumstances in Taiwan. In fact, unless a drastic change occurs within the relationship between Aboriginal people and the government, co-management will remain simply an empty promise.
Tsai Chih-wei is a post-graduate fellow at the James E. Rogers College of Law of the University of Arizona.
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