Even though both the cases successfully managed their resource through collective
actions, new challenges came consequently. March 2003, a conflict between Maliqwan River Managing Committee and local government officers was caused. The recovering and increasing fish band made the village more famous. The committee made further plan to develop Yiogohon Village. In the first step, they districted the river to several sections just as traditional way. After that, different sections were opened to foreign fishers in turn and the fishers were asked to pay the payment to the committee. Under the proposal of the committee, the payment collected can be used in community actives and even used to hire jobless villagers for cleaning the rubbish river. However, soon after the action began, local government officers came to the committee and prohibited their action. According to the law, committee has no right to ask for payment from foreign fishers. The prohibition frustrated villagers a lot. By the time this article was done, dispute is still contineuted.
On the other hand, even though Sinsibu residents tended to cooperate with central government for constructing a national forest park that government and indigenous communities can “co-manage”. Opposite opinion came fiery from some other indigenous communities near the location of the park supposed to be set in. These communities accused those who agreed with setting the park are betraying the whole Atayal ethnic group. In their view, “co-management” is just a trick of government to set one more national park and gives more restrictions to the actives in the area.
Actually, according to the historical experience, not only the national parks district affected indigenes directly, the tourist business came along with it also gave further impacts to many indigenous communities. Reserved lands with potentially commercial interest were usually purchased by non-indigenous business groups with the illegal way described earlier in this article. An example happened recently can give further description of the sense of crisis in indigenous communities. An indigenous community located in a national park named Yiu-San National Park kept on protesting to government for years. The community kept on demanding government to modify the boundary of the park and excluded the community from it.
However, just after the government agreed to the proposal in last year, the community members changed their minds. They turned to ask for staying in the boundary of the national park. So many years after the park was set, the region near the park has become a complete tourist resort with greedy foreign business men waiting to purchase any new land released in further step.
A national park with “co-management” mechanism indeed provides a positive image to the future of indigenous communities. However, risks also exist. Community like Sinsibu may be confident to overcome it, but it can not be ignored that not all the communities near the location of Maqau National Park supposed to be located in have
possessed the same conditions.
Different challenges came to the two cases both reminded us the insufficiency current land tenure institutions. Even though government tried to protect reserved land from being sold out, the prohibition from central government can not completely stop the individual behaviors to seek their interest within market activities. The decreasing of fish band in Maliqwan River before Yiogohon Villagers began their collective action proved that state power can not perfectly manage the resource as well. Since the committee organized by villagers can do a better job, villagers should be relatively entrusted to deal with the income from foreign fishers and get more motivation to deal with further development issue. Hence, being the Fundamental external institution, the land tenure institution should be modified to allow community owning specific land and land resources. In this way, the external institutions can provide intensives and possibility for community to deal with the public affairs within their living environment. Those communities abominate the interference of state power and fear the compact of market mechanism can get new inspiration from it. According to the experiences of the two cases in this article, the traditional Gaga can be ingenious applied to adapt in modern world. The communities, who can successfully interpret Gaga, can therefore decrease the cost of community mobilization. To allow community owning specific land and land resources can also give more chance for community members to interpret what their Gaga nowadays is.
.
Conclusion
As the analysis in the cases has shown, not only the traditional Atayal society but also the modern Atayal communities can govern the common in their living environment with cooperative ways. It should be doubtless that modern Atayal people possess the ability to manage their resources with the rules developed by themselves. These cases prove two advantages of CPRs self-governing to decrease transaction cost: First, because the rules for cooperation were formed inside local communities, people can gain time-space information more completely. The formalized rules correspond to the internal norm derived with Mata rule of culture can decrease the transaction cost for supervising and executing. Second, CPRs self-governing institution can be imitated in local network and expanded, it decreases the transaction cost for institutions supply.
Since the CPRs self-governing way is practicable in indigenous communities, and it also performed good effects in protecting common resources from exhausted by vast and undeterminable outsiders, the relevant external institutions should be adjusted to empower indigenous communities to operate it. The reform of current
dualistic division of nationalized/privatized in reserved land is important and necessary. If the property right of CPR system can belong to community, the transaction cost of institution innovation and executing will be decrease. It will also protect the ability of communities to develop the proper internal institutions.
Furthermore, it will not only prevent certain lands from lapse but also increase the possibility for communities to internalize external interest with their specific social capital.
All agencies will try to seek their best interest within limited resources. But the structural disadvantage seems make some of them keep on being losers. The characters of material resources destine that they cannot be explored unlimited, however, institutions can be progressed to make higher value and diminish conflicts under ceaseless efforts of agencies. As Ostrom (1990:23) addressed, all the institutions can be considered as games in a broad sense. If we can change the items and of sequence choice, provide new information, new punishment and incentive, then the foregone conclusion can possibly be changed.
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