Indigenous Xinshe Community

花東海岸公路, 977, 台灣

The area starts from the ridge of the Coastal Range on the western side, extending eastward and descending into a watershed of about 600 hectares of land surrounded by the Pacific coast. The upper reaches of the watershed is distributed with national forests, in the valley in the middle reaches we can find Dipit tribe, an Amis settlement, and its farmland. In the lower reaches from the valley downward to the coastal terrace exists Xinshe tribe, a Kavalan settlement, and its farmland. Both settlements and farmlands of the Dipit tribe and Xinshe tribe situate inside the complete watershed on the eastern side of the Coastal Range, connecting forests, rivers, settlements and seas. Residents live at the middle and lower reaches of the river in the valley, with the river system connecting socio-ecological production landscape and seascape (SEPLS).

Top environmental challenge faced by the community (currently or in the past 10 years):

In the past, livelihoods of the Xinshe community depended on environmentally friendly agriculture, forestry, fishery and livestock farming. Forests and streams upstream provide residents downstream with drinking and irrigation water, firewood and wild edible plants. Surface and ground water that goes through productive farmlands and settlements is discharged into the sea, which affects ecosystem of the coastal coral reefs, which in turn affects the fishery of above two settlements, the Dipit tribe and Xinshe tribe. Impacted by urbanization, conventional farming and climate change in recent decades; however, the area has been suffering from problems including aging, production landscape deterioration, economic depression, and traditional ethics and culture disappearance.


How the environmental challenge has affected local livelihoods:

Within the Xinshe community, two different ethnic groups of indigenous settlements and their farmlands are located in the middle reaches of the watershed surrounded by forests and seas. Besides the above mentioned issues, different government sectors in the past worked separately on different community affairs for different settlements. Resources conflicts over water usage, hunting and fishing rights happened from time to time between two indigenous settlements.


Community response to the challenge, through environmental stewardship (conservation) initiatives that improve environmental well-being and support sustainable livelihoods:

Inspired by the ideas of the Satoyama Initiative and the ecoagriculture, a ‘Forest-River-Village-Sea Ecoagriculture Initiative’ was launched in October 2016. Since then, the area has started to be planned and managed collectively with help of a community-based multi-stakeholder platform, composed of about 20 representatives from local indigenous communities, governmental institutions, the local school, academics, NGOs and green enterprises. An action plan of the area was drawn up collectively by stakeholders in April 2017 in line with the framework of three-fold approach to the Satoyama Initiative.


The extent to which the response was successful or otherwise:

Five steps of the participatory planning and management processes (including preparation and discussion, consensus-building, action planning, implementation and monitoring) for the ‘Xinshe Forest-River-Village-Sea Ecoagriculture Initiative’ from October 2016 to the present have been implemented by the community-based multi-stakeholder platform that's facilitated by the research team of National Dong-Hwa University (NDHU). Both the Task Force and Multi-Stakeholder Platform Meetings employs an integrated landscape and community-based approach to enhancing sustainable use of biodiversity by the communities and resilience of SEPLS.


Extent to which governmental policy (at local, regional or national levels, as relevant) has supported, or been contrary to, the community's responses to the environmental challenge:

A short-to-long-term action plan for ‘Xinshe Forest-River-Village-Sea Ecoagriculture Initiative’ was drawn up collectively by stakeholders in April 2017 in line with the framework of three-fold approach to the Satoyama Initiative. To monitor the progress and outcomes of the Initiative, the research team of NDHU adopted UNU-IAS’s indicators of SEPLS and conducted a series of workshops with local people to evaluate 20 resilience indicators as well as figure out strategies for enhancing resilience with respect to each indicator. The suggested revisions of the existing action plan for the Initiative proposed by the local indicator task group were brought into the Multi-Stakeholder Platform Meeting for approval. The platform proves to be an effective means to help stakeholders collectively set up cross-sectoral action plans for enhancing ecosystem services and indigenous cultural values for local indigenous communities.


Keywords: Ecosystem

Agricultural, Coastal, Forest


Keywords: Resources

Fish, Forest, Land, Wildlife, Water


Keywords: Big Issues

Biodiversity, Human-wellbeing, Indigenous peoples, Land use, Resource use


Keywords: Solutions

Ecological Restoration, Empowerment, Governance/Management, Local/Traditional knowledge, Public participation


Contributed by: Kuang-Chung Lee, National Dong-Hwa University, Taiwan

The information provided and opinions expressed above are the responsibility of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views and analysis of the Community Conservation Research Network (CCRN), nor those of all members of the community described.

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