近代環境治理與地方知識：以臺灣的殖民林業為例

Modern Environmental Governance and Local Knowledge: A Case Study of Taiwan's Colonial Forestry

過去十年間，臺灣環境學界與實務界興起一陣「地方知識熱」|研究者投身田野與檔案，尋找及建構自成一格、與近代自然資源管理體制截然不同的「生態智慧」。然而，什麼是地方知識？什麼又是地方？援引拼裝觀與環境治理性的見解，本文主張，要回答什麼是地方知識，研究者有必要把國家與技術官僚悉心打造之環境治理體制帶進來，探討此體制是如何取消、吸納、援引與發明地方。日治時期的臺灣林業體制便提供了一個絕佳的例子。本文以日本帝國對近代林業的繼受為始，說明日本在殖民臺灣之際即發明所謂「官民共利」或官民「相利共生」的林業傳統，且成為殖民林業官員在設計臺灣林野之取用與控制制度的導引。此官民共利的林業體制一方面創造絕大面積的國有林野|另方面，透過國有林野之使用權與所有權的收放，總督府林業部門試著吸納其眼中可信賴且篤志的行動者（即日系資本家），將之導向近代林業的最高目標：將天然林法正化。然而，被環境主體化的行動者拒絕從屬於此環境治理體制，且被排除者（多為以舊慣使用森林的臺灣人民）不時援引「日常生活的抵抗」來挑戰殖民政府之於國有林經營的權威。林業部門很快地發現，要在臺灣實施「官民共利」的國有林體制，可能是天方夜譚。即是在此困頓中，林業官員開始強調臺灣林業的「地方色彩」，稱臺灣人為「闊葉樹利用的民族」，主張其地方知識頗有帝國林業借鏡之處。本文分析顯示，此地方的現身不能說是林業官員終於發現了地方|地方於近代環境體制的現身既是權力運作的結果，同時其亦非預期後果|其現身既涉及環境治理涉及之利益關係者的主體化與從屬化，同時也展露該體制搖搖欲墜的程度。本文主張，當代研究者針對地方與地方知識的探究，若不能細究其與國家環境治理體制間的相生相剋，逕自將地方知識類比為――但又在本質上不同於――近代的環境科學知識，其結果恐怕不會比1930年代之日本殖民官員走得更遠。

The past decade has witnessed surging interests in local knowledge among scholars and practitioners of environmental management. Immersing themselves in fieldwork and archives, scholars and practitioners have relentlessly tried to dig up or carve out some welldefined and locally confined knowledge in the hope of refining some ''ecological wisdom'' from it to better tackle today's environmental crises. Yet, what is local knowledge? What is the local? Drawing on a growing body of literature on assemblage thinking and environmental governance, this essay suggests that scholars interested in local knowledge should treat the making of a government-centered and science-based environmental governing regime more seriously, meaning that they should pay close attention to how the regime erases, appropriates, and invents the local. The colonial forestry regime in Taiwan offers an excellent case to illustrate such. Beginning with a genealogical analysis of how modern forestry came into being in imperial Japan, this essay shows that by the late nineteenth century, forestry professionals in Japan had adopted the ''mutualist'' or sōrikyōsei principle to guide Japan's forestry policies. That is to say, instead of monopolizing the benefits generated by forestry management, the government built mutually beneficial and reciprocal relationship with the people and shared benefits with them. This mutualistic forest management soon found its way to Japan's colonial forestry in Taiwan. Of critical importance is that the colonial forestry department on one hand designated a large portion of Taiwan's forests as national forests, and on the other hand recruited ''trustworthy and devoted'' actors (i.e., capitalists from Japan), cultivated them, and collaborated with them in order to ''normalize'' Taiwan's natural forests. Nevertheless, those who got entangled in what may be called environmental subjectification refused to subjugate to the colonial forestry regime, while those being excluded, mostly the so-called hontōjin, or the Taiwanese people, who utilized forest resources according to old customs and conventions, conducted''everyday forms of resistance'' to undermine the colonial government's authority over national forests. In consequence, the colonial forestry department found that the cost of maintaining national forests skyrocketed, to the extent that it was next to impossible to practice mutualism that had for some time constituted the core of Japan's imperial forestry. It was against this backdrop that the colonial forestry department in Taiwan began emphasizing the importance of local knowledge, particularly the ways in which the Taiwanese utilized broadleaf forests, and argued that Japan's imperial forestry could actually benefit from such local knowledge. This essay shows that the emergence of the local concept and local knowledge in colonial forestry did not mean that foresters eventually discovered the local. Rather, the emergence resulted from the government's deployment of power, and yet it also embodied unintended consequences which the power relations resulted in. While the emergence of the local had everything to do with the government-centered environmental subjectification, it also demonstrated how fragile and vulnerable the whole course could be. Altogether, this essay shows that if contemporary researchers refrain themselves from scrutinizing ways in which local knowledge and the government's environment-governing regime entangled with each other, and study local knowledge as if it were essentially different from and incommensurable with the modern environmental regime, the approach may hardly move beyond what colonial foresters in Taiwan had done in the 1930s.