ECOCLUB, Issue 90
9
Urban Ecotourism in Taiwan
Reviewing Taiwan’s tourism development strategies for decades, sustainable tourism was subsumed after the 1990’s Tourism
Charter of APEC. In 2002, the Tourism Bureau announced that year as the Taiwan ecotourism year to coincide with the
international ecotourism year. After that, ecotourism was promoted to look at both sides of development and conservation.
While most ecotourism has been promoted in pristine areas, such as in national parks and forest reservations, Yangmingshan
National Park and Kending National Park, which have millions of visitors annually, make the environment worse and have been
criticized to the extent of not being classified as ecotourism destinations anymore.
Hence, urban ecotourism has been mentioned to share the stress of pristine areas. The ecotourism report made up by the Tourism
Bureau, also divides the resources of ecotourism into two classifications, which are: resource conservation and tourism
development (Taiwanese Tourism Bureau,
2002) . The zoning of land use is varied. The report also implies the potential of
urban ecotourism while the historic monuments and folk activities in the city are all classified as ecotourism resources.After the
reports published, many local governments have tried to transfer the idea into practice. Taipei City, Kaohsiung City, Taichung
City, Tainan City,
Changhua City and Hualian City have all tried to get urban ecotourism moving, but most of them are only at
the initial stage with limited action. All six cities can be divided into three groups of political divisions¹, thus presenting each
city with a different political status with the ambitiousness to develop urban ecotourism.
The situation of urban ecotourism in Taiwan’s cities
Taiwan’s strategy regarding urban ecotourism has been presented in the “Taipei Green Master Plan” and “Taipei tourism
whitebook ”, which highlight the idea of developing agricultural recreation and ecotourism as a way of showing the
characteristics of an ecological city. In both the reports, resources are mentioned to be in the surrounding mountains and hills,
riverside areas, urban wetland, and city parks. Taichung and Kaohsiung address Taipei’s urban national park separately.
Furthermore, natural and modified wetlands are also promoted by Kaohsiung city. Besides the three main cities in Taiwan,
Tainan City tries to transform its fish farms into urban ecotourism destinations in combination to its original fishing culture, with
Sicao Animal Preserve Area also included as part of this attraction. Hualien City and Changhua City both choose the Urban
Edge-Hills as their ecotourism destinations. An Ecotourism Center has also been established in the Tri-Mountain National
Scenic Area in Changhua City’s Urban Edge-Hills.
Most of all the ecotourism destinations mentioned above emphasize their advantages in accessibility and infrastructure that can
provide city residents with a nature experience not far from the cities. The options to promote urban ecotourism are similar to
what GTA emphasizes. If all the strategies are observed, it is clear that the natural ecological system, such as mountains, hills,
wetlands and riversides are the main urban ecotourism destinations. However historic monuments listed in the Tourism Bureau’s
ecotourism report are ignored in local strategies of urban ecotourism.
Conclusion
When Robinson (2004) used the concept of squaring the circle as a metaphor for an impossible task to describe sustainability, it
is fair to say that the history of the debate over ecotourism illustrates that kind of incommensurability, too. This
incommensurability brings in the two ideas, deep ecotourism and shallow ecotourism, which declare that the involvement and
position on ecological systems of human beings may decide the orientation of ecotourism. Whereas there exists a view that says
sustainable development itself is an anthropocentric notion to serve human welfare, ecotourism rooted in sustainable
development can also not ignore the existence of human beings when seeking for the balance between development and
conservation in relatively natural areas. Because a city is the basic unit of civilization and the main habitat of human beings, this
paper argues that ecotourism in urban areas tends to be similar to shallow ecotourism and can not be excluded from the
boundary of ecotourism.
Besides confirming the legitimacy of urban ecotourism from epistemological issues, this paper argues several reasons why the
study field of ecotourism currently should pay more attention to cities instead of pristine areas. First of all, since ecotourism has
been seen as a way to look after the two contradictory sides,
cities, the results of human civilization, giving consideration to
development and conservation, have the same dilemma as ecotourism. Secondly, cities are usually the main destinations of
tourists, so it seems
reasonable to include urban ecotourism in the study of ecotourism, given that ecotourism is seen as a
suitable way of sustainable tourism. Thirdly, as the Editor of ECOCLUB, has pointed out, “Ecotourism, like charity, begins at
home”. Most ecotourists live in urban areas and carry out ecological tourism in nearby green lands. Finally, urban ecotourism is
more ecological than a day trip to a park: Quoting Antonis B. Petropoulos “Isn’t it far more eco to take a 6 km walk in the urban
jungle of your city on a Sunday morning and meet friends rather than to drive your SUV through a national park some 200 km
away to be isolated in the ‘wilderness’?”
?
Yi-Yen Wu lectures at the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan.
Hsiao-Lin Wang lectures at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Tunghai University, Taiwan.
1
Taiwan comprises of three political divisions, which are Taipei City, Kaohsiung City and Taiwan Province. Taiwan Province consists of
sixteen counties and five provincial cities. Both Taichung City, Tainan City belong to provincial cities, and both Changhua City and Hualian
are under the control of Changhua country and Hualian country.
