Indigenous legacy for building resilience: A case study of Taiwanese mountain river ecotourism

Tourist destinations as social-ecological systems face growing challenges to build resilience to cope with various disruptions. This research explores how disadvantaged Indigenous communities in Taiwan, especially those located in typhoon-sensitive and geologically fragile areas, developed resilience as tourist destinations. It applies empirical data from Indigenous River Closure, a movement which aims to develop river ecotourism and build resilience in the face of growing uncertainty. The research applies mixed methods, including in-depth interview, news-archive review, and participatory observation, with an intention for primary data and secondary data to complement one another. Based on the intertwined concepts of resilience, adaptability, transformability, and self-reorganization, the results show that River Closure initiated from within those communities (endogenous) seems to build greater resilience in ecotourism. At the same time, cases instigated by outsiders (exogenous) are not without potential to be successful, but there is a need to cautiously build consensus and increase capacity in the collaborative process with outside resources. The success of river ecotourism in a sensitive area depends on the level of social capital. It plays a key role in mobilizing community resources to adapt to uncertainty, reorganizing relations between the community and tourism development, and transforming River Closure from a community-based response to exploitation, to a robust Indigenous movement. However, while inherent social capital is proved to be a strong essence for community actions, it is becoming rare in modern society. Thus bolstering social capital is core to the exogenous approach for building resilience in the tourism sector.