*5.4. Who are the Major Agents of the Governance Process, Who Exerts Influence on Governance, and Who Decides the Trade-o*ff*s among Conflicting Resilience Governance Goals*

The Forestry Bureau continues to control the management authority of the forest park. This means that, without the support of the Forestry Bureau, major independent governance decisions cannot actually be made. Therefore, issues like the degree of local participation, agenda setting, the applied knowledge system, and the trade-offs between the main governance goals are carefully controlled by the Forestry Bureau. With the policy objectives of the central government, the Forestry Bureau adheres to the environmental conservation role of the DFA forest. On the premise of completing this task, it can adopt flexible measures, to some extent, regarding other goals, such as improving local livelihoods. Concurrently, academia serves as a producer of DFA-related academic knowledge and plays the role of a bridge among stakeholder groups and a facilitator of the governance platform. Academia has assisted in fostering several subnetworks such as citizen science and community organizations. Academia, as a bridge, has also critically contributed to the participation of indigenous communities in governance.

Due to negative historical experiences and the resulting mistrust of the state regime and mainstream society, indigenous communities joined the governance network relatively late, after choosing a long-term boycott position. Their joining added two key perspectives to the governance process. First, it let more people (some of whom for the first time) realize indigenous land issues and the social and economic costs suffered by indigenous peoples due to land deprivation. Second, it brought indigenous knowledge into governance decisions, especially cultural traditions that may balance land use and ecological conservation, as well as long-term on-site knowledge. Indigenous, scientific, and local knowledges provided by other subnetworks finally contributed to the redesign of DFA land use planning. That said, this remarkable progress does not mean that the participation of indigenous people was smooth. In fact, the process is filled with obstacles. Members of mainstream society still generally hold a suspicious attitude toward indigenous knowledge. Language barriers and culture gaps make it more difficult for tribal members to express their views in formal meetings and/or in informal dialogues. The migration of young people has resulted in tribes lacking active actors and a new generation of leaders. The impact of these obstacles was evident throughout the development of the governance network. At present, the governance network remains dominated by nonindigenous stakeholders in the number of active actors, network connectivity, and interaction frequency. Indigenous actors played a relatively marginal role.

A practical example can also be used to illustrate the challenges faced by indigenous people in governance. Indigenous representatives strongly advised that DFA land be more intensively used to provide economic and employment opportunities for surrounding indigenous communities, and this recommendation was accepted. Frankly, the reason this proposal was accepted was because the land owner, TSC, strongly supported the proposal to increase its economic revenues. Without strong support from other powerful stakeholders, a purely indigenous proposal would not be so readily accepted in a final determination. Another indigenous proposal was treated completely differently. Indigenous representatives have proposed that a piece of land be allocated to establish an ethnic food forest, because Amis people are known for their unique plant knowledge and plant utilization

culture. However, most participants were obviously more interested in the ecological corridor than the ethnic food forest. This proposal ultimately received little response. This reflects the reality that ecological conservation remains more central to the governance process than the revitalization of indigenous culture.
