Chen Sun

In 2022, a Taiwanese organization for tropical plant conservation reintroduced an endangered orchid species back to its “hometown” – Orchid Island, southeast of Taiwan. The mission of this reintroduction project is not only about biodiversity protection but also to transform the nuclear waste storage site on the island into an orchid seedling reproduction center. However, another plant – taro – was instead chosen to be replanted at the same spot by the indigenous Tao in 2006, in protest of nuclear waste dumping and reclaim their ancestral land. Orchid meet taro on the site of unresolved nuclear waste and calling for biodiversity preservation – it is not only about clashes between different plant ideologies, but a complex entanglement of indigenous environmental justice, local knowledge of plants, and environmental governance in Taiwan. The encounter between these two plants drives my project to understand the tension between conservationists and the indigenous in terms of nature restoration under the environmental uncertainty of nuclear threats and biodiversity loss. Through long-term ethnography, my research will study how conservation is localized, practiced, and entangled with indigenous knowledge, environmental politics, and power dynamics.