**1. Introduction**

The world's Indigenous peoples represent less than 5% of the global population, yet they currently manage or have rights over numerous ecosystems, ranging from the Arctic to the tropical rain forests of Borneo [1]. As the current and projected consequences of global climate change and environmental change come under greater scrutiny, academics have noted that the world's Indigenous peoples bear little responsibility (if any) for the forecast consequences [2]. This is the reason for the rapidly growing trend in studies on Indigenous peoples, resilience, and global climate change [1,3–6]. Such studies have explored how Indigenous peoples' knowledge systems, institutions, worldviews, conservation practices, and local perceptions could be of benefit or be integrated into climate change adaptation

**Citation:** Bayrak, M.M.; Hsu, Y.; Hung, L.; Tsai, H.; vayayana, t.'. Global Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan: A Critical Bibliometric Analysis and Review. *Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 29. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ su13010029

Received: 2 December 2020 Accepted: 18 December 2020 Published: 22 December 2020

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and mitigation programs. These studies have had many aims, including exploring Indigenous alternatives for sustainable ecosystem management [7], understanding Indigenous peoples' perceptions of climate change [4], and Indigenous peoples finding representation in global climate change debates and negotiations [8]. Research has been conducted on various levels. Microlevel studies have often focused on particular Indigenous communities, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) systems, climate resilience and livelihood adaptations, and local perceptions of climate change [9–12]. Mesolevel studies tend to investigate Indigenous conservation practices and land management on a regional or crosscountry level [13–16]. Lastly, macrolevel studies have either performed a global analysis of previous studies [4,6,17] or adopted a global approach to Indigenous peoples' research and global climate or environmental change [1,8].

Within the context of the growing trend in research on Indigenous peoples and global climate change, we now consider Taiwan, which is home to 16 officially recognized Indigenous groups as well as other locally or unofficially recognized groups (Figure 1; Appendix A). Taiwan's Indigenous peoples (Táiwan yu ¯ án zhù mínzú) accounted for 573,086 people in 2020 (2.4% of the island's total population), of whom 287,789 lived in an Indigenous community [18]. Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are Austronesian, and some communities have been able to conserve their culture, customs, traditional livelihoods, and practices despite centuries of colonialization, assimilation, and suppression [19–21].

Global climate change poses a considerable challenge for Taiwan. Since the 1990s, there has been a growing awareness of the impacts of climate change on the nation. This started with the devastating effects of Typhoon Herb in 1996 (73 fatal, 463 non-fatal causalities) and Typhoon Nari in 2001(104 fatal, 265 non-fatal causalities). Climate change is expected to increase temperatures and heatwave frequency throughout the country. Rainy seasons will bring more precipitation, whereas dry seasons will become drier, and typhoons and associated extreme rainfall events are expected to increase in intensity, although not necessarily in frequency [22,23]. Due to its location in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwan regularly experiences climate events that have a negative impact. Of the 384 recorded instances of extreme climate events that had a negative impact on Taiwan between 2006 and 2020, 43.2% occurred or directly impacted Indigenous communities [24]. Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are therefore disproportionately exposed to the negative effects of climate events [22,25,26]. Typhoon Morakot, which struck central and southern Taiwan in August 2009, is perhaps most exemplary of the destructive effects of climate change on Indigenous and rural communities to date [27]. The typhoon killed 699 people, destroyed 1766 houses, and displaced 4500 residents [28,29]. After this national tragedy, numerous studies were undertaken to investigate the effect of climate change on Taiwan's Indigenous peoples, and relevant articles have been published through both domestic and international publishing outlets.

An international conference entitled "Climate Change, Indigenous Resilience, and Local Knowledge Systems: Cross-Time and Cross-Boundary Perspectives" was organized by the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and took place in December 2019 in Taipei City. This conference explored the state of knowledge on climate change and Indigenous resilience in Taiwan 10 years after Typhoon Morakot. One critical issue raised during this conference was the underrepresentation of studies from Taiwan in the international literature. Whether this was due to a lack of Taiwanese studies or Taiwan being largely overlooked by international scholars is unclear. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to assess the state of knowledge of Indigenous peoples and climate change in Taiwan since Typhoon Morakot. This was achieved through bibliometric analysis and a literature review of articles published in both domestic and international peer-reviewed academic journals and books over the past 10 years.

**Figure 1.** (**a**) Distribution of recognized Indigenous areas in Taiwan (data from: [18]) and (**b**) the percentage of Indigenous population in Taiwan on district/township level (data from: [30]).

### **2. Research Questions and Methods**

The aims of this study could be subdivided into five research questions: (1) what trends, themes, and topics can be found among domestic and international studies, and what differences can be observed; (2) what is the geographical distribution of the studies in Taiwan, and which Indigenous groups have been selected; (3) what are the temporal characteristics of the studies (ranging from risk perception to post-disaster recovery); (4) to what extent are Indigenous Taiwanese voices represented in such academic articles; (5) what knowledge gaps and potential research directions can be identified.

We performed bibliometric analysis (employing similar methods as: [6,31,32]) using the databases of Scopus and Airiti Library. Several Taiwanese journals are not indexed in Scopus, which was why Airiti Library was selected for finding Chinese-language articles. The time frame of our research was from January 2010 until April 2020. This date was chosen as we started a special issue on the same theme [33], and this would thus heavily influence our bibliometric analysis. We used Boolean search strings, shown in Table 1, to identify articles that referred to climate change, Indigenous peoples, disaster, or resilience in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. Climate change could also refer to climate hazards or disasters, climatic change, or climate variability. When we searched for international articles, we also employed Taiwan as a keyword to geographically restrict our search results. Additionally, we employed a snowball method in our literature review, examining the references of all identified studies to find other relevant studies. In addition to the inclusion criteria above, this project concerned itself with only peer-reviewed studies.


**Table 1.** Search terms for the bibliometric analysis.

All studies that did not focus (this could range from being the main focus to being relevant to the topics) on climate change (or climate disasters), resilience, or Indigenous peoples were excluded from our constructed database. It is important to take into account that Indigenous peoples in Taiwan also face other negative (environmental) events such as earthquakes, land subsidence, or tsunamis. Therefore, this study does not consider all disasters. At the same time, it is important to note that Indigenous resilience could be applied to all stressors and shocks [34]. Furthermore, climate events and disasters could be considered to be climate change-related but cannot always be proven to be caused by global climate change.

After identifying the relevant articles for the literature review, a dataset in Microsoft Excel was created in which the articles were categorized on the basis of the year of publication, language, type of disaster, the ethnicity of the studied group, the ethnicity of the authors, themes of the study, phase in disaster management, and geographical distribution among other items. Data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and Power BI [35]. The relevance of the data was assured by conducting a literature review to better understand the trends and themes among the articles in our database, and geographic information system techniques combined with secondary data were employed to identify the geographical distribution and knowledge gaps of the studies. Power BI was employed to visualize and analyze the papers, themes, and topics, and an interface was designed enabling the user to interact with and analyze the data themselves (Appendix B).

#### **3. Results and Discussion**

In total, we discovered 111 articles, 50 of which were indexed in Scopus (labeled as international articles) and 61 in Airiti Library (domestic articles; Figure 2; Appendix C). Each year saw an increase in the number of articles, and the number of domestic and international articles peaked in 2012 and 2016, respectively. The international articles were published in *Sustainability* (Switzerland; n = 4), *Natural Hazards* (n = 2), and other journals ranging from *Land Use Policy* (n = 1) to *International Psychogeriatrics* (n = 1). Most of the journals were either related to disaster management (e.g., the *International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction*) or sustainability sciences (e.g., *Sustainability Science*). The domestic studies were published in the *Journal of Slopeland Hazard Prevention* (n = 6), *Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies* (n = 5), the *Journal of Natural and Human Environment of Indigenous Peoples* (n = 4), and the *Journal of the Taiwan Indigenous Studies Association* (n = 4). Other domestic articles were published in various social and natural science journals. At least four of the Taiwanese journals specifically focus on Indigenous peoples; in addition to those aforementioned, these included the *Taiwan Indigenous Studies Review* and *Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies.*

**Figure 2.** Number of articles by year (frequency, left; cumulative count, right).

#### *3.1. Trends, Themes, and Topics*

The studies in our database were categorized into at least one of the following 10 themes and topics: disaster management; Indigenous culture (including cultural practices, traditions, institutions, and worldviews); ecological wisdom; community development; housing and sustainable architecture; Indigenous health; Indigenous tourism; sustainable agriculture; climate justice; and education (Figure 3).

**Figure 3.** Themes and topics of the articles (frequency; multiple options possible). Note: count\_IN = international articles, count\_DM = domestic articles.

After Typhoon Morakot, there was a surge in studies on the impact of the typhoon on Indigenous peoples as well as the post-disaster recovery efforts (Table 2), especially in the years 2012 and 2016, as then most projects would come to an end and results were consequently presented. These studies focused on issues ranging from lessons learned from relocation and resettlement policies [36] to cultural issues in post-disaster reconstruction [28]. Cultural issues (the second most common theme) were considered to be crucial in both domestic and international studies. Some of these articles are critical of the Taiwanese government's response after Typhoon Morakot. After Morakot, many Indigenous communities in southern Taiwan were relocated to or resettled in new locations. Many scholars

argued that these government policies were insensitive toward Indigenous cultures and historical vulnerabilities [29,37–40]. Various Indigenous groups were relocated together; pre-existing villages to which Indigenous groups were resettled were not accustomed to Indigenous cultures; numerous households were ineligible for governmental housing; and resettled families were unable to continue their farming activities or sell their newly acquired homes [37,41–43].

**Table 2.** Type of climate disaster investigated in the articles (frequency; multiple options possible; count\_IN = international articles, count\_DM = domestic articles).


Other studies focused on climatic stressors and shocks: other typhoons besides Morakot; debris flow, landslides, or rock falls as a result of heavy rain; and more general aspects of climate change such as droughts, flooding, and climate variability (Table 2). Some studies created climate resilience or vulnerability indices for urban [44] or rural [25] settings. Several studies focused on the ecological wisdom of Indigenous peoples, including TEK systems [45–47], agroforestry and conservation practices [48–50], the roles of traditional institutions in conservation [51], traditional housing and settlement patterns [52], and traditional knowledge and risk perception [53]. Even though many studies acknowledged the importance of TEK systems, only a few focused on how TEK could be integrated into climate change adaptation [54–56]. The majority of the studies were published in domestic journals. Notably, Kuan [54] presented a detailed case study on the TEK systems of the Atayal/Tayal people and contemporary disaster management in a watershed area. Wang [56] specifically focused on the perceptions of climate change of the Tayal people and how their TEK systems could support households to identify climate change adaptation options. Lin et al. [52] investigated how Indigenous Tao (or Yami) people employed their ecological wisdom by choosing the appropriate settlement location and housing architecture for coping with strong winds on Lanyu (Orchid) Island.

Other major topics and themes included community development (26 articles), housing and sustainable architecture (17 articles), and Indigenous health (15 articles). In terms of community development, some studies referred to either cultural and social vulnerability [28] or procedural vulnerability [38]. The procedural vulnerability concerns the relationships people have with power rather than with the environment [38]. Relocation after a climate disaster, for example, has often been labeled as a double disaster in Taiwan because it shifts Indigenous peoples from one vulnerable situation into another that may be worse [39]. In the health sciences, scholars focused on mental health, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression among Indigenous peoples after Typhoon Morakot and other climate disasters [57,58]. Chen et al. [59], for example, reported that Indigenous peoples tended to show stronger mental recovery from Typhoon Morakot than Han people (the ethnic majority in Taiwan) due to their higher adaptability to cope with a changing environment and climate. Findings from health science studies thus indicate that research on mental resilience could complement studies on Indigenous peoples' resilience when faced with climate change [60,61].

Indigenous tourism (11 articles) is currently a trending topic among the literature on Indigenous peoples and climate change. A growing amount of research is focusing on how Indigenous tourism contributes to Indigenous resilience against climate disasters [62,63] or contribute to community development [51,64]. Scholars often perceived a relationship

between community or household participation in Indigenous tourism (in its various forms) and enhanced resilience to climate change. However, whether Indigenous tourism can be advantageous to all of the environment, economy, and Indigenous peoples in Taiwan within the context of a changing climate remains unclear.

We created two word clouds—for domestic and international articles, respectively which are presented in Figure 4. This study identified that the following terms and keywords appeared in international articles (Figure 4a): Disaster, Indigenous, community, Morakot, resilience, vulnerability, and sustainable. The terms resilience and vulnerability did not appear in the keywords of articles published in domestic journals (Figure 4b); such articles had keywords mainly focused on disaster, Morakot, Indigenous, typhoon, and community. Understandably, most international and domestic studies focused on the impact of Typhoon Morakot on Taiwan's Indigenous peoples and were conducted on the microlevel. This study also discovered limited engagement with the recent international literature on Indigenous peoples and climate change. Studies focusing on Indigenous resilience adopted a somewhat narrow understanding by focusing primarily on coping or adaptation strategies, but transformative responses to climate change remain understudied. We could also not find any cross-country analyses (i.e., comparing Taiwan with another country), except for one study comparing Australia with Taiwan [65]. General studies on how Taiwan's Indigenous peoples have experienced or perceived global climate change are also lacking. Although some studies focused on multiple communities within southern Taiwan, no studies could be found that were conducted on a national level. Lastly, a qualitative approach was employed in the majority of studies, sometimes interviewing only a few individuals; large-scale quantitative studies are still in their infancy. The latter is not due to lack of data, as many government-led quantitative studies have been conducted on the impacts of Typhoon Morakot [66] and other major natural disasters.

**Figure 4.** *Cont*.

**Figure 4.** Word clouds of international (**a**) and domestic (**b**) articles.

### *3.2. Geographical Distribution and Indigenous Groups*

The related studies have been geographically uneven in their focus; some (Indigenous) districts or townships have received considerably more attention than others (Figure 5). This could be related to the distribution of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, but very few studies have been conducted about the eastern coast of Taiwan (compare Figure 5 with Figure 1). Additionally, domestic (Figure 5a) and international (Figure 5b) studies had different geographical distribution patterns, with international studies showing a higher degree of geographic concentration than their domestic counterparts. Most studies were conducted in southern Taiwan, including Ping Tung and Indigenous areas of Kaohsiung. Many places with a relatively high percentage of Indigenous peoples received little to no attention, whereas some places with a relatively low percentage received much more attention, both domestically and internationally. One notable example—which has been excluded from the database—was a study on local and Indigenous knowledge among coastal Han villages in Buidai township, Chiayi county [67]. The study failed to mention that no Indigenous peoples resided in their selected study sites, but they still investigated the local and "Indigenous" knowledge systems of local households.

Analysis of the geographical distribution of the negative impacts of climate disasters in Taiwan could explain the geographical skewness of the studies in favor of southern Taiwan (Figure 6 and Appendix D). Figure 6a shows a large overlap between the destruction path of Morakot and the sites investigated in both domestic and international studies. As revealed by Figures 5 and 6, Namasia district, a mountainous Indigenous district in the northeastern part of Kaohsiung, was the subject of numerous studies and also among the regions most heavily affected by Morakot. Similar overlaps occurred in sites in northern Ping Tung and other mountainous areas of Kaohsiung. However, when considering the total damage caused by climate disasters and relevant studies (Figure 6b), we observed a somewhat different picture. Many places that have been affected by climate hazards were not represented in any of the studies, which could be related to relatively few causalities. Very few studies [68,69] were conducted in Yilan, Hualien, or Nantou counties in the period of 2010–2020. Another observation is that many studies focused on climate shocks (such as typhoons); less attention was paid to gradual changes or climate stressors. Little information is available in the literature on the climate change resilience and consideration of Indigenous communities on Taiwan's east coast, which is home to many such communities. Figure 6 indicates an overlap between climate shock events and the literature, rather than holistic climate resilience studies being conducted into Indigenous

groups and reflecting gradual changes and stressors in general. A notable exception has been Lanyu/Orchid Island, home to the Tao people. Relevant studies [46,52] specifically focused on this island due to the assumed resilience of the Tao people to negative climate events.

**Figure 5.** Geographical distribution of (**a**) domestic and (**b**) international articles at village/town/district level. *Note:* if studies were conducted in multiple research sites, all sites are shown on the map. Studies that did not refer to a specific research site were excluded.

**Figure 6.** Geographical distribution of (**a**) all articles and damage caused by Typhoon Morakot in 2009 and (**b**) all articles and damage caused by extreme climate events on the national level from 2006 till 2020 (data from: [24]). *Note:* damage refers to a cumulative score of deceased and injured people and severely damaged or destroyed houses as a result of extreme climate events, such as typhoons, rainfall-induced debris flows, or heavy rainfall.

Another reason for the uneven geographical distribution among the included studies is the relationship between university locations and site access. Some universities in southern Taiwan (National Ping Tung University, National Sun-Yat Sen University, National Cheng Kung University, and I-Shou University in particular) have extremely active research centers or colleges dedicated to Indigenous studies. Researchers from these universities have produced numerous studies, with articles published both domestically and internationally. This was partly the result of government policy to allocate substantive research funding to southern universities in Taiwan to study the impacts of Typhoon Morakot instead of allocating it to their northern counterparts. In Taipei City, researchers from National Chengchi University and National Taiwan University have taken the lead in conducting studies on Indigenous peoples and those living in north-central Taiwan in particular. According to our database, Wulai, an Indigenous Tayal district in New Taipei City, interestingly received very little attention from Taipei-based scholars over the past 10 years. This is remarkable because Wulai was severely affected by Typhoon Soudelor in 2015 [70], and the district is close to Taipei City. Wulai district has been relatively well prepared for typhoons [70], which partly explains why it has not been a focus in the analyzed articles.

We also searched for the individual Indigenous groups in the relevant studies and identified 13 groups in total (Figure 7): 12 officially recognized groups and one locally recognized group (Taivoan). The Rukai and Paiwan peoples were the most studied with 29 (26.1%) and 28 (25.2%) articles, respectively. These Indigenous groups were most heavily affected by Morakot and government relocation policies [29,39], so it should therefore not come as a surprise that they were the most investigated. The third and fourth most studied groups were the Tayal (17 articles; 15.3%) and the Bunun (14 articles; 12.6%) respectively. Many articles on the Tayal focused on either their agricultural or hunting practice or their TEK systems [45,54,71]. The east coast's Amis people—Taiwan's largest Indigenous group, which accounts for 213,958 people [72]—are underrepresented with only three articles. The Saisiyat, Thao, Sakizaya, and Kavalan peoples were not mentioned in any of the articles, and 21.8% of all articles failed to mention a specific Indigenous group. This is most likely because the authors assumed their readers would know which groups were involved in their study based on the location of the study site or because the authors did not consider this to be relevant information. Some authors also had problems understanding the differences between the terms Indigenous, aboriginal, tribe, and ethnic minority. In one article [58], the aforementioned words were used interchangeably; it was stated that (t)he Indigenous people are the ethnic minority group [sic] in Taiwan (p.12). Hsu [37], in her insightful study on Taiwan's imagined geographies and identities, discusses in great detail the political implications and issues related to the classification and recognition of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples. This is reflected in how some articles (often from outside the social sciences) identify or acknowledge the relevant Indigenous groups. Additionally, the process of translating Chinese terms into the English language could have caused some confusion among scholars [37].

**Figure 7.** Indigenous peoples mentioned in the research articles (frequency; multiple options possible).

#### *3.3. Temporal Characteristics*

For disaster management literature analysis, we divided all articles into four categories reflecting the temporal characteristics of the disaster phase being investigated: risk perception, disaster risk reduction (DRR), in-season coping strategies, and post-disaster recovery (Figure 8). These categories refer to the temporal orientations of the studies and correspond to the four stages of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, respectively). Each phase reflects how climate change affects Indigenous livelihoods and adaptation strategies. Post-disaster recovery was the focus of most articles (76 in total; 68.5%), whereas DRR was the second most reported, risk perception third, and in-season coping strategies last. With the exception of one article [59], the articles in our database did not focus on all four phases of disaster management.

**Figure 8.** Phase of disaster management (frequency; multiple options possible).

In the previous section, we mention that the majority of studies focused on postdisaster recovery or the post-disaster setting. Many articles shared the lessons learned from Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot in a variety of contexts, ranging from the highly descriptive or technical [36] to the very critical [65]. Generally, Taiwan's approach to disaster management is somewhat top–down [39]. This is why numerous scholars have argued for more culturally appropriate post-disaster recovery strategies within Indigenous contexts [28,42,43]. Few studies adopted a longitudinal approach [73], and follow-up studies were rare. Many studies also lacked a clear baseline, but this is somewhat understandable given the unpredictable nature of climate hazards.

Although many of the studies could be considered to have investigated the DRR or risk perception phases, few studies elucidated how TEK could play a role in both perceiving and preparing for climate disasters and climate change more generally [48,53,54,71]. Roder et al. [53] included a relatively small section on traditional knowledge and risk perception in a Bunun community in their article, whereas Ba et al. [48] investigated the Rukai's traditional farming methods for coping with disasters and achieving sustainable development. Another insightful study, conducted in an Indigenous community in the mountains of Taichung county, revealed that local Tayal households could identify disaster risks by detecting changes in local terrain, hydrology, flora, and fauna [71]. However, the lack of relevant studies indicates that more studies on TEK in relation to disaster management should be conducted.

Only nine studies (8.1%) shed light on in-season coping strategies. For instance, a study conducted in (Indigenous) mountainous villages in Kaohsiung City revealed that 86.2% of the households did not receive any formal early disaster warning of the onset of debris flows during Typhoon Morakot [74]. These households solely relied on their intrinsic senses and Indigenous knowledge before and during the disaster. An article published in the *Fooyin Journal of Health Sciences* revealed the power struggles between Indigenous peoples and governmental medical personnel during Typhoon Morakot and its direct aftermath. These struggles were caused by mainstream societal misperceptions of the inferiority and vulnerability of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan [75]. However, Indigenous experiences and strategies during climate shocks and stressors generally remain underinvestigated.
