Taiwan Environmental Information Association

Work Areas

Key species/features

(1) Enhancing the distribution of environmental information

Established at TEIA’s inception, the Environmental Information Center (EIC) has worked to disseminate environmental information to the Taiwanese public as a way to generate awareness and guard the country against environmental threats. TEIA believes that information is the foundation of any helpful action.

EIC provides, on a daily basis, environment-related information including news, feature articles, editorials, and green events, created by our staff and experts from various fields, on our official website. These information reaches 30,000 browsers per day on average.

EIC circulate newsletters through email subscriptions to approximately 100,000 readers and seeks to reach out to our community through Facebook.

EIC won Taiwan’s “Social Responsibility Award” given by The Foundation for Excellent Journalist Award for distinguished journalists and media.

(2) Promoting the environmental charitable trust model

Apart from offering environmental information, TEIA also aims to promote the environmental charitable trust model as a way to permanently protect and preserve natural heritage. An environmental trust is a means to entrust natural property privately owned to a civic organization for the purpose of environmental protection and sustainable management.

The country’s first environmental trust fund was launched in 2011 to protect a hill of 1.8 hectares in northwest Taiwan (named Nature Valley). It was later transferred from its first receiving trustee to TEIA in 2014.

TEIA’s main tasks at the site are threefold: protecting lowland forest biodiversity, building partnerships with the local community, and operating an environmental learning center for people to get involved.

Apart from Nature Valley, we also manage various habitats to experiment with the conservation strategy of land stewardship in trusts. Current projects include farmland in eastern Taiwan and two islets off the west coast of the main Taiwan island.

TEIA has also worked to engage the public in efforts to preserve natural habitats through Eco Working Holidays from 2004.

A Reality That Needs a Working Strategy

Taiwan is made up of the main island of Taiwan and over one hundred smaller islands and islets that lie west of the Pacific Ocean and off the coast of southern China. It straddles the tropical and subtropical zones with an elevation change across 4,000 meters or 13,000 feet. This geographical advantage has contributed to the wide range of ecosystems and richness in biodiversity.

Taiwan’s landscape varies from tropical rainforest to alpine grassland, housing nearly 500,000 species which represent 1% of the total species diversity globally. Many of them can trace their roots back to the Asian continent and the South Pacific.

Nonetheless, due to rapid population growth and pre-industrial government economic policies, the country’s biodiversity and natural resources are diminishing at an alarming rate. The fact that Taiwan has been denied the opportunity to participate in some of the international environmental events due to political reasons only aggravates the situation. Keeping up with the global trends in environmental movements and standards becomes quite a challenge, requiring a solid strategy of environmental care and social responsibility.