The Saisiyat people of Nanzhuang have long known how to read a forest. Long before any certification body took notice, they were tracking seasonal rhythms, keeping bees under the canopy, and passing down the kind of ecological knowledge that takes generations to build. On April 9, 2026, that knowledge stepped onto an international platform when the Miaoli County Saisiyat Indigenous Forestry and Labour Cooperative became Taiwan's first FSC group member.
The road here was not straightforward. For years, forest governance policies left little room for indigenous communities to exercise rights over their own traditional territories, and the relationship between communities and institutions had grown distant. Over the past decade, Taiwan's Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency chose a different approach, working alongside the Saisiyat community rather than around them, listening to tribal knowledge, and building a co-management model that reflected Saisiyat values and practices. The cooperative formally came together in 2019, starting with forest beekeeping and growing into a broader green economy that includes timber and non-timber products, ecotourism, forest therapy, cultural programming, and endangered plant restoration.
In 2024, FSC International Global Network Director, Lieske van Santen made the trip to Nanzhuang to see the model firsthand. She left impressed, noting that the community's approach to indigenous rights, local governance, and sustainable development was worth sharing with other countries. That visit helped set the wheels in motion for the cooperative's FSC membership application.
We hope the Saisiyat Cooperative will actively participate in FSC platforms and share Taiwan's experience of co-managing forests with indigenous peoples, showing the world the soft power of indigenous ecological knowledge and mountain culture. ~Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency Director - General Lin Hua-ching
Sustainability is not just about systems. It's about people. Only when local communities are genuinely involved and have a real voice can sustainability truly take root. - FSC Asia-Pacific Regional Director, Cindy Cheng
What This Actually Means
Membership in an organization spanning 90 countries gives the Saisiyat Cooperative a seat at the table where international forest policy gets discussed. But what the community is bringing to that table is something money and bureaucracy cannot manufacture: generations of lived relationship with the land. When livelihoods are tied to a healthy forest, the forest gets taken care of. That dynamic, simple as it sounds, is exactly what sustainable forestry has been trying to figure out. The Saisiyat have been doing it all along.