The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) yesterday presented Saisiyat Cooperative a membership certificate during a ceremony at the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, marking the organization’s acceptance into the council.
The Miaoli County-based organization is the first Taiwanese member of the council. It applied for membership in June last year and was accepted in November the same year.
Saisiyat have long coexisted with nature and used their wisdom to care for the land, FSC Asia-Pacific regional director Cindy Cheng (鄭燕莉) said, adding that their values highly aligned with council’s principle of responsible forest management.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
The agency in 2018 introduced FSC certification to establish information disclosure, forest monitoring and local participation mechanisms for national forest management.
Past forest management policies did not place sufficient importance on indigenous people’s rights to natural resources in their traditional territories, leading to distant and strained relationships between indigenous people and the government.
Promoting FSC certification has boosted indigenous people’s participation in comanaging forests, as the FSC not only seeks balance between economic benefits, environmental protection and social responsibility, but also focuses on respecting the rights and cultures of indigenous people and their participation.
The FSC is the most strict, comprehensive and influential international body in forest certification, agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) said.
As of 2024, more than 1.56 million hectares, or more than 70 percent, of national woodland in Taiwan had earned FSC certification, he said.
Forests in Miaoli County’s Nanjhuang Township (南庄) used to suffer severely from illegal logging before the agency initiated a partnership with the Saisiyat in 2018, Lin said.
Illegal logging appeared to be forest destruction on the surface, but actually stemmed from social and economic challenges facing indigenous communities, he said.
The agency began collaborating with the community on developing under-forest economies, ecological tourism and reforestation, thereby improving Nanjhuang’s economic conditions, Lin said.
The collaboration between the agency and the indigenous area emphasized equality and allowed Saisiyat to apply their indigenous traditional ecological knowledge to planting forests in the region, he added.
The forests managed by the cooperative are exemplary and have attracted many conservation groups and private businesses for exchanges, Lin said.
Cooperative president and village elder Ken Chih-you (根誌優) thanked the agency for supporting the region, saying that as an FSC member, the cooperative would continue to share its forest management experience internationally.
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