Outreach

Building Capacity and Fostering Networks

ATREE's outreach activities have three broad aims. The first is capacity building of government and non-government organizations. The second is to create awareness about conservation and environmental issues. And third, participate in and foster networks to help promote the cause of conservation.

1. Capacity Building

As part of capacity building, ATREE has:

1. developed and implemented participatory resource monitoring methods to enable forest dweller households to monitor and manage biological resources that they use to sustain their livelihoods,
2. promoted the establishment of a network of community organizations involved in conservation and rural development,
3. provided financial support and technical advice through its small grants program to individuals and organizations involved in conservation research and education, and
4) trained scores of individuals in areas as diverse as geographical information systems, participatory resource monitoring, and conservation science.

2. Forums for Exchange of Ideas and Information

ATREE is also involved in creating awareness by a wide variety of mechanisms. Researchers associated with ATREE write articles in newspapers and popular journals. ATREE also sponsors public lectures on important environmental issues. A significant initiative was the launch in July 2001, of Conservation and Society, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed electronic journal exploring interactions among societies, environment and development. The journal promotes publishing of original research work on conservation and natural resource management and provides a forum to debate and discuss issues on the subject. It draws on both the natural and social sciences and covers basic and applied research and contains submitted and commissioned articles, debates and discussions, editorials, book reviews, short comments and notes, and reader feedback.

3. Networking

The tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, comprising extremely fragile ecosystems, support more than 70% of the world's biota in a complex labyrinth of ecological interactions. These regions are also home to nearly half of the world's human population and thus experience tremendous pressure on their natural resources. In the recent past there has been a growing concern over the accelerating rates of deforestation in tropical forests and the consequent loss of biodiversity.

Some of the initiatives of ATREE are as follows:

Agroforestry to enhance on-farm biodiversity and income in BR hills

"Make water walk not run" is the slogan in the Biligiri Rangan Hills (BR hills). It is well known that erosion of soil and nutrients caused by running water reduces productivity of cultivable land. Water "runs" in the BR hills because most of the cultivated land is sloping. Making water "walk" is the need of the hour! A few farmers are trying the simple, time-tested technique of planting along contours, with bunds at regular intervals, as part of an on-farm research effort. Instead of customary broadcast sowing, farmers are being introduced to row planting with legume inter-crops. We are encouraging the use of traditional agricultural crops like finger millet, corn, red gram, mustard, amaranthus, castor, and lab-lab. Bunds are being stabilized with castor, red gram, and fodder grass. Seedlings of fruit trees such as mango, papaya, jackfruit, custard apple, amla, and soapberry are also being grown on farm borders and along bunds. Horse gram, a very drought tolerant nitrogen-fixing legume will be encouraged as a post-monsoon crop Plans are underway in collaboration with the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK), a partner organization, to set up farmer-owned seed banks. These seed banks should enable farmers to obtain native seeds for the next sowing season. We will facilitate farmer-to-farmer exchange of information on improved agroforestry practices. We also plan to provide training in compost making, improved home gardens, and better coffee-growing techniques, to enhance farmer's livelihoods, protect the soil, and restore on-farm biodiversity. Since most of these farmers are economically dependent on harvesting of non-timber products from the surrounding forest, it is possible that increased income from cultivable lands will also reduce their dependence on the forest.

Making Baskets out of Lantana

At a recent interaction meeting we had with the Soliga people of Kommudikki, in Male Mahadeshwara Hills (MM Hills), there were several suggestions regarding ways in which we could enhance people's livelihoods, and at the same time conserve rapidly dwindling forest resources. These suggestions included a) domestication and cultivation of bamboo in farmer's fields, b) finding alternative sources for bamboo, and c) setting up community based cooperatives that could mobilize resources and provide leadership for micro-enterprise development. Two of ATREE's field assistants and a Soliga representative from MM Hills attended a training session on lantana basket making conducted by a group of Madiga families in the village of Chethe Charala, in neighboring Andhra Pradesh. The Madigas make baskets to supplement their cash incomes. Both men and women collect lantana from the surrounding forest and make one or two basket a day, in addition to working for daily wages. The Madiga community started lantana-basket making in 1993 with the help of Vana Samrisha Samithi (VSS), a local non-governmental organization, in collaboration with the forest department. Members of VSS motivate the villagers of Chethe Charala to conserve their forests. Even though lantana baskets weigh a little more than bamboo baskets, and are not as attractive as bamboo baskets, they have several advantages. They are cheaper than bamboo baskets, and the raw material, lantana, is more readily available than bamboo. They have the added advantage of potentially alleviating harvesting pressure on bamboo. If we can find good markets for lantana baskets in and around MM Hills, then making lantana baskets may help the communities increase their cash income, and simultaneously reduce their dependence on fast depleting bamboo resources.

Building Rapport for future interventions in KMTR

The Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), in the southern Western Ghats, is home to some of the most intact remaining mid-elevation forest of southern India. The low-elevation dry forest in KMTR, in contrast, has been subject to extensive disturbance in the past, and continues to be under pressure due to fuelwood collection and occasional grazing. An eco-development project undertaken by the Forest Department, with support from the World Bank, has reduced these impacts considerably, though it is still common to see women bringing home headloads of fuelwood from these forests. We surveyed villages on the periphery of KMTR and selected three neighboring villages to work with. People from these villages visit the forest on a daily to weekly basis to collect fuelwood. This fuelwood is either used by the collectors themselves, or is sold to others in the village. We identified three categories of collectors: those whose main livelihood was fuelwood collection, those who were farm laborers, but collected fuelwood to supplement their income when on-farm work was not available; and those who collected fuelwood only for their own use. In an attempt to wean the next generation of fuelwood collectors from collecting wood from the forest, we organized a month-long tailoring workshop for daughters of fuelwood collectors. Since the people consider tailoring a useful vocation, they participated enthusiastically in the workshop. This also helped build a rapport with the community, and at the end of the program the participants showed a keen interest in raising trees on their own lands. The rapport that we have built with the villages should stand us in good stead in our future interventions in KMTR.

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