The aim of this nationwide survey was to assess undergraduate students’ environmental literacy level in Taiwan. A total of 29,498 valid responses were received from a number of selected colleges and universities in Taiwan, using stratified random sampling method. A total of 70 items were used to assess the environmental literacy and the results revealed that undergraduate students had a relatively low level of environmental knowledge and behavior, while a moderate level of environmental attitudes was attained. The findings also indicated no significant correlations between knowledge and attitudes or between knowledge and behavior. However, a higher level of environmental knowledge correlated significantly with a higher degree of pro-environmental behavior, and a higher level of environmental knowledge correlated with stronger attitudes. The results also suggested that females outperformed the males in all categories. Results from this study could contribute towards further relevant policy discussion and decision-making, curriculum design and development to the improvement of environmental education in the higher education sector.

The world is undergoing rapid environmental change

Human behavior and the environment interact reciprocally. It is necessary to understand social and ecological systems as an integrated co-evolving social–ecological system (SES) to reveal why an environment is in its current condition and how humans have impacted upon and been influenced by the dynamics of natural system. Many societies in coastal and marine SESs rely on marine natural capital for their livelihoods. They have adjusted to changes in natural capital by utilizing human-made capital (i.e., physical, human, and social capital), and their behavior is simultaneously influencing the natural capital. This study conceptualizes a capital-based framework for investigating the adaptation and transformation of a social–ecological system on temporal scale and provides a case study of Penghu Archipelago, Taiwan, with a 110-year historical review of the period of 1900–2010. It is furthermore examined how human society adapts to marine natural resource problems in order to understand the coping strategies. The results show human-made capital is inadequate with respect to sustaining marine natural resources. Appropriate investment in human-made capital is required for solving the problem. The challenge is to invest in social capital so as to form functional institutions that employ physical and human capital in a sustainable manner

In recent years, the subject of Indigenous peoples and global climate change adaptation has become a rapidly growing area of international study. Despite this trend, Taiwan, home to many Indigenous communities, has received relatively little attention. To date, no comprehensive review of the literature on Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples and global climate change has been conducted. Therefore, this article presents a bibliometric analysis and literature review of both domestic and international studies on Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples in relation to resilience, climate change, and climate shocks in the 10-year period after Typhoon Morakot (2009). We identified 111 domestic and international peer-reviewed articles and analyzed their presentation of the current state of knowledge, geographical and temporal characteristics, and Indigenous representation. Most studies were discovered to focus on post-disaster recovery, particularly within the context of Typhoon Morakot, as well as Indigenous cultures, ecological wisdom, and community development. This study also discovered relatively few studies investigating how traditional ecological knowledge systems can be integrated into climate change adaptation. Most studies also adopted a somewhat narrow focus on Indigenous resilience. Large-scale quantitative and longitudinal studies are found to be in their infancy. We observed a geographical skewness among the studies in favor of southern Taiwan and relatively limited engagement with contemporary studies on Indigenous peoples and climate change. We furthermore determined a large overlap between the destruction path of Morakot and study sites in the articles. Indigenous scholars have managed to find a voice among domestic and international outlets, and an increasing number of scholars have argued for more culturally sensitive approaches to post-disaster recovery and disaster management in Taiwan.