1. Plant a tree
Get your kids to plant a tree in your garden or a surrounding neighborhood area. Get them to water the tree every day and spend a few minutes taking care of it. You could make some of your visits to the tree even more interesting by asking them to name their tree, paint or draw the tree, take a selfie, etc. A great way to get this started is to encourage your child to plant a tree on their birthday. This way, they have a companion that grows with them, who they can celebrate with every year!

2. Play the Recycling game
Recycling can be an incredibly fun activity that could also bring out the creative best in the family. As an example, give your child a box/ bottle to be recycled with some paint, ribbons, adhesive etc and join the fun! Not only will the outcome be a treasure, but the child will realize that a box that was about to be thrown can become an object of wonder!

3. Walk in the park
Forest bathing in many cultures is regarded as a therapeutic experience that brings about a calming sense of well-being. A walk in the park with your child along with some interesting activities like identifying new plants, talking to the gardeners, learning about native biodiversity, collecting flowers and seeds is a lovely way of making an everlasting connection. While strolling through the park, you can engage the children in a game of cleaning up the area around them. This will instill a practice of keeping natural surroundings free from trash, and will help them become ambassadors for a cleaner future. Do remember to carry a yummy treat for the little one as a reward!

4. Create an Environmental Volunteering Game
Each time your child does an environmentally conscious act such as switching off the lights, using less water, etc reward them by giving them points, badges, treats etc. Get your child to make a board where the points and badges can be displayed. Each badge is recommended to be awarded with some fanfare and hugs!

5. Adopt a pet
Having pets is a wonderful way to get your child connected with the natural world. Sometimes when it is not possible to keep a pet in the house, get your child to interact with friendly pets in the neighborhood and build the connection. They can also volunteer their time to walk or feed the pets if the opportunity arises.

6. Celebrate special days
There are several days in the year such was the World Environment Day, Water Day, Biodiversity Day, Pet Day etc that can be occasions to celebrate. Wear green outfits, throw a party for their friends, organize a quiz etc – these are great ways to make the day memorable. Just ensure, all your party themes and supplies are biodegradable in nature, so your celebration has the benefit of being both fun and mindful!

7. The Jungle Book
Read books and stories to them about nature and fire up their imagination through the experiences of the natural world! Encourage them to make their own stories and create their very own version of the Jungle Book.

8. Plant questions and thoughts
Children in early years are exploring cause and effect, and the consequences of their actions. This is a perfect time to introduce the positive and negative impacts they can have on the environment with some intriguing and thought-provoking questions.
As an example, what happens to our rubbish when we throw it ‘away’ or recycle it? What happens to seeds when we sow them? Why buy when one can repair? How can we reduce our environmental footprint?

9. Conserve
Teach kids how to conserve existing resources – water and food, for example. Remind them to put food back in the refrigerator and close the door. There are numerous creative ways to conserve water, food, gas, and other products once you put your mind to it. Turn it into a game!

10. Ride bikes but walk whenever possible.
This is great exercise and saves not only gas but time because you don’t have to drop your kids off everywhere.

The truth is that climate change and climate actions can sometimes be abstract topics. It is by creating experiences and environmental volunteering interactions that as parents lasting impact can be created. As they say the best time to volunteer is now!

The post 10 Tips About Environmental Volunteering to Teach Your Children appeared first on The Sacred Groves.

Canada has some of the world’s lushest forests, accounting for over 9% of the world’s forest areas. About 38% of Canadian land is composed of forest cover. The forests in Canada also have the distinction of being ‘stable’, i.e. less than half a per cent of the forest area has faced deforestation since 1990.

While Governments enact laws to conserve and protect the natural forest cover, it is down to individuals to adopt simple lifestyle changes to save forests in this beautiful country. Consider some changes one can make towards this goal:

#1 Practice ‘conscious Earth-friendly’ behaviour.
An environmentally friendly person is one who is conscious of the impact of their lifestyle on the planet. As a Canadian citizen, you can make simple changes in your daily life to reduce your carbon footprint – power the house with solar panels instead of using fossil fuel-generated electricity, recycle water, install LED bulbs, and use detergents and cleaning materials made from pure plant actives rather than harmful chemicals like bleach. Living with a greater awareness of the resources one uses in daily life, how and where they are produced, how you choose to heat up the house, your use of water and other non-renewable resources, and even the manufacturing processes for the products you use, can ultimately save forests, keep marine ecologies healthier and significantly reduce your home’s carbon footprint.

#2 Recycle, reuse, conserve.
Adopt ‘Recycle and reuse’ as your daily mantra – if something can be put to use multiple times instead of being trashed after one use, or recycled, then the practice must certainly be followed. It is not just about using the nearest recycling station, but of using it properly and often. Ditch the use of single-use plastic and substitute plastic food containers, bottles, straws and other items with glass or metal ones. Meanwhile, conserving resources can be both simple and complex. It could be as basic as switching off the power when not needed, or choosing building materials that do not deplete the forests in Canada (such as wood).

#3 Plant trees around your home.
Keeping your home shaded from the sunlight helps reduce the use of electricity in the summer season. A simple change to make in this regard, is to plant trees around your home and care for them till they become stable. Not only do trees provide shade, they become nesting spots for birds, clear the air by providing oxygen, provide fruits and flowers, and so on. If you cannot plant trees, then aim to cultivate an organic kitchen garden. Growing your own produce is healthy for your home, and reduces the burden on commercial agriculture. Besides this, try reducing your dependence on meat every week and substitute it with vegetables, cereals and grains to lower emissions and save forest wildlife.

#4 Cook only as much as required.
Most households unintentionally discard uneaten food every day – this ends up in landfills and generates greenhouse gases like methane. The forests in Canada bear the brunt of rising greenhouse emissions. Meanwhile, food waste ends up wasting the resources that helped create that food in the first place, right from raw produce to fuel. Do ensure that you cook only as much as the household needs, and donate the uneaten portions to homeless persons instead of junking it. If you have kitchen waste, compost it rather than throwing it away.

Simple changes to everyday life can have a tremendous impact on the forests in Canada. Try and use biodegradable products wherever possible, shop locally instead of having products shipped from other cities or countries, and so on.

The post 4 Changes You Can Make in Everyday Life to Save Forests in Canada appeared first on The Sacred Groves.

Uttarakhand farmer Krishan Singh Bargaley used to have a hard time getting good prices for the apples he so painstakingly grew. Although they were juicy and sweet, they would invariably develop unpalatable looking pockmarks on the skin. The culprit? A bacterial disease called apple blister that would spread with every rainfall to new sites. Aid came in an unusual form — a community radio that launched in the Nainital district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand in 2010, Kumaon Vani (which translates as our radio, our voice). From a programme on radio, 61-year-old Bargaley learned that a traditional mix of lime and water known as Chuna can help in stopping the disease and revive his plants. “We used to travel a long distance to Pantnagar to meet experts, now those experts dispense advice on radio,” says Krishan Singh. “And I was able to rescue my apples from the disease.”

Like Bargaley, a large number of villagers of Uttarakhand tune into Kumaon Vani t at 90.4 Mhz with reception reaching 500 villages in the state. This radio station was set up by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) in 2010 at Nainital, Uttarakhand, to promote sustainable agriculture and spread awareness on climate change, environment, health, science, education, gender and culture among the local villagers. Funded by charity TRISHA, (TERI’s research initiative), the radio station airs a daily diet of climate news and weather forecasts and also warns the villagers about impending landslides, melting glaciers and government-issued alerts, according to Sumit Bansal, coordinator of the station.

“We gather information from the villagers about the problems they are facing and tailor our shows to suit their needs by bringing in the necessary experts,” says Jitendra Raikwal, the radio station’s producer. Villagers are encouraged to phone in their farming-related problems. Experts provide solutions and offer advice to improve their livelihoods through sustainable agriculture, improved biodiversity and accessing government-run welfare schemes. Mohan Singh Karki, station manager at Kumaon Vani says: “The objective of this platform is to provide a solution to all the problems related to water, forest and land of these regions, people should immediately think about our radio for any problems that they face.”

Kumaon Vani’s information-packed programmes, heard by as many as 200,000 listeners, have had some impact. After a program on the impact of using excessive pesticides and insecticides, many farmers switched to using natural pesticides and began to understand the side effects of chemicals on their health and for the environment. Uttarakhand is an ecologically sensitive area, because its hilly terrain and melting glaciers cause frequent landslides. Kumaon Vani is helping increase disaster preparedness among the community by airing tips on how to build homes on slopes. With limited access to television and newspapers, Kumaon Vani radio has also been a key source of news during the Coronavirus pandemic. 

There are limitations to the use of  broadcast radio in hilly regions such as the Himalaya. Because of a low transmitter power of 100 watts, the radio is unable to reach villages in the valleys. Frequent power cuts sometimes interrupt the radio broadcast. Yet it has been successful in creating a sense of community among villagers living in isolated, media dark villages. 

On a typical day last month, Ganga Singh Bisht from Prabada village called in, asking for the selling price of crops in the local market (Mandi). Minutes later, Khushhal Singh from Sunkiya village called in just to appreciate how relevant the programme is to his life. “I rely on Kumaon Vani for farming related advice and weather updates,” says Munni Devi, a farmer from Nainital.  “It’s become a friend in need for me.”

Author: Kavitha Yarlagadda, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Uttarakhand banner image – Anurag Agnihotri/ Wikimedia Commons, Kumaon Vani
(Wikimedia License – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)

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When in 1997, Dutch filmmaker Josepha Wessels arrived in Shallalah Saghirah, a small village on the fringe of the Syrian steppe southeast of Aleppo, it was like stepping back hundreds of  years. “There were all of these wonderful little, white-painted beehive houses,” she says. “It was very rustic and had no electricity supply.” The most remarkable historical artefact, however, was beneath Wessels’ feet. The village’s water arrived via a series of tunnels that were constructed not hundreds but 1,600 years ago. “To some people it sounds dull but the qanats really excited me,” Wessels says.

Qanats were first laid down during the Byzantine-Roman era (395 to 1453CE). They consist of a series of porous subterranean wells connected by gently sloping tunnels that use the force of gravity to transport water to the earth’s surface. They were traditionally used to provide a reliable supply of water to human settlements and to irrigate fields in hot, arid and semi-arid environments.

“In Greek and Roman times the qanats played a key role in the development of empires and thriving cities such as Palmyra,” Wessels, who went on to author a PhD on the topic, explains. Spreading with the Persian empire from south to Egypt and and as far east as India, qanats – also known as kariz – fell out of use from the 1960s on with the advent of diesel-driven pumps and private wells. 

But could they be the answer to the Middle East’s water woes? Today a combination of that 20th century over extraction and climate change has led to a crisis for water tables in the already drought-prone region. Although Wessels warns against a facile link between drought and political instability, a 2020 report by the University of California argues that a severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping to trigger today’s brutal civil war. 

In troubled Syria and in Iran, Jordan and Oman, water shortages are an increasing threat to both livelihoods and liveability.

Wessels’ chance trip led, in the summer of 2000, to a participatory project in which a small group of Shallalah Saghirah villagers cleaned and renovated their village qanat. Wessels, with colleagues including her hydrologist husband Robertus Hoogeveen, went on to lead similar community-led renovations of qanats in towns including in Al Dumayr, a city located 45 kilometers north-east of Damascus, and Qara near to the border with Lebanon with funds from, amongst others, the Netherlands Government. Wesssels soon found that although over pumping by mechanical means was a feature of qanats falling out of use, often they had simply become blocked with calcareous deposits or debris as communities lost to knowledge, or will to maintain them.

“Qanats are simple technology, but every ten years or so they need to be cleaned out, relined so they don’t collapse and desilted,” Wessels says. “Importantly, you cannot do this without the community working together.” Wessels adds that whilst Iran still boasts individuals capable of building qanats – known as muqannis, and often trained by their fathers – Syria now lacks these traditional skills, and thus relies on ancient qanats laid down hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years ago.

There are obvious attractions in reverting to this ancient water extraction system in our turbulent, heating times. Qanats have the advantage of being resistant to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, and to deliberate destruction in war. Furthermore, they are almost insensitive to levels of precipitation, delivering a flow with only gradual variations from wet to dry years. The abandonment of qanats is a warning sign that groundwater in a region is being overexploited, says Majid Labbaf, who has worked on the reconstruction of qanats in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan. “The drying up of the qanats is an indication of a disconnection between humans and their natural environment,” he says.

Sadly, the city where Wessels original renovation took place is today abandoned due to Syria’s long civil war, although qanats in Al Dumayr and at Qara are still in operation. Wessels hopes that should inhabitants return to Shallalah Saghirah, they’ll find its ancient qanats will still be able to provide sufficient water for community life. Wessels also welcomes bids to recognise qanats as prime examples of Islamic heritage for example in the case of the UNESCO world heritage listing of Persian qanats in Iran. For successful restoration, state actors also need to be involved, she says, as qanats have to work in tandem with modern piped water systems. This, she adds, is not just a case of returning to the ‘old ways’.

“By rehabilitating the qanat system in combination with efficient groundwater management measures water resources, in Syria and elsewhere, can be saved for future generations,” she said. “But for that you need political will, and you need peace.”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Robertus Hoogeveen and Lund University

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When hurricane Delta hit the coast of Mexico on 7th October 2020, experts reckoned that repairing and replanting the ravaged coral colonies of the Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) and the coastline around Quintana Roo south of Cancun could cost about USD $800,000. Rapid response was critical as broken coral dies within weeks. But government funding, predictably, could take much longer to materialise. Conservationists and local businesses alike realised that the cost of not repairing the battered reef would be greater than the cost of restoring it, as the Mesoamercian Reef is second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and home to 500 types of fish, 70 different corals, sea turtles and whale sharks. Yet, 80 percent of the living coral along Mexico’s Caribbean coast has been lost or degraded in the past 40 years due to pollution, overfishing, disease and increasingly extreme weather events. A simple and cost-effective solution came to their rescue: insurance.

A pioneering nature-based insurance policy purchased in 2019 by the Quintana Roo state government in conjunction with environmental NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) funded the efforts of Guardians of the Reef, a group of 80 trained snorkelers, fishermen, biologists, even local restaurant staff led by local diver Emanuel Quirago. They stabilised 1,200 affected coral colonies and removed storm debris from the beaches within 11 days. They also rescued and transplanted almost 9,000 broken coral fragments in artificial nurseries until they could be reattached to the seabed to regenerate new coral colonies. The work is ongoing and the guardians are poised to respond to future storm events if necessary.

The funds for the insurance policy came from the Coastal Zone Management Trust, set up by the state government with support from TNC and revenues were paid by beachfront property owners and hoteliers. A parametric insurance policy like this involves calculating pre-specified payouts depending on various potential trigger events – in this case, the payout varies according to wind strength. The restoration of these coral reefs, which attract over a million snorkelers and divers annually, has ecological and commercial benefits. Healthy reefs absorb 97 percent of each wave’s energy so they buffer the coast against storm damage and provide nurseries for breeding fish.

“Insurance plus government commitments paired with on-the-ground rapid response create the perfect formula to quickly repair critical coral reefs,” says Fernando Secaira, Mexico’s climate risk and resilience lead for The Nature Conservancy. TNC was able to enlist the participation of local businesses by making them aware that the health of this fragile coastal ecosystem was intrinsically linked to their economic success. “It’s a win-win and we look forward to identifying other parts of the world where this approach could work,” he says. They are exploring the feasibility of insuring reefs in regions like the Caribbean, Central America and Asia. Studies show that insurance policies like this could help protect coral reefs against natural disasters – perhaps to protect Florida reefs from future hurricanes and coral in Hawaii from marine heatwaves or coral bleaching.

Nature advocate and CEO of US-based fintech company Cultivo Dr Manuel Piñuela believes that this parametric insurance for nature-based projects will grow over the coming years: “We see innovation around insurance and reducing risk as a critical component to unlock investment into nature.”

Author: Anna Turns, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: 1. Daniela Zambrano The Nature Conservancy, all others The Nature Conservancy

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With its lofty pines and vast, glassy lakes, its rare roaming wood bison and endangered whooping cranes, Fort Chipewyan seems like one of the world’s last true wildernesses. Yet even in this remote spot, with its rich natural resources, the effects of the climate crisis are an ever-more pressing daily reality.

This community of 1,000 souls, many of whom are descended from the Chipewyan, Misikew Cree and Métis First Nations tribes, have for decades had their heat and cooking power supplied by a diesel power station owned by Canadian energy group ATCO, which trucks in its heavy black liquid fuel via barge down the northern Alberta’s waterways, or via the ice roads that form across its lakes and tributaries during the freezing autumn and winter months. The trouble with this arrangement, however, was climate change. With Canada’s north warming nearly three times faster than the global average, both the river barge and ice road seasons are becoming increasingly unpredictable.

In 2018, a group of First Nations leaders in Fort Chipewyan decided that enough was enough. In a joint venture of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association, Three Nations Energy (3NE) they decided to bring an ambitious renewable energy project to their remote community.

“We worked together and we made it happen,” Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said at an event celebrating the completion of the project’s second and final phase.

Replacing 800,000 litres of diesel a year, or 2,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, the Three Nations Energy Solar farm project is Canada’s largest remote off-grid solar farm in Canada, with 5,760 solar panels supplying Fort Chipewyan with 25 percent of its energy needs (in the first phase). The solar farm’s energy will be bought under a long-purchase agreement by ATCO and supplied back to the local grid.

Blue Eyes Simpson, Vice President of the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association and one of the founding directors of First Nations Energy, has lived in Fort Chipewyan all of her life. Simpson is area manager for Parks Canada as well as an advocate for sharing the stories of First Nations elders with younger generations, in a bid to reawaken an imperative for protecting the national environment.

“Our people have a proud tradition of making our livelihood from the sustainable use of local renewable resources,”she says. “We are committed to being good stewards of the land for future generations.”

In a picture in which Canadian native ancestral lands are often denuded and polluted by oil speculation, including neighbouring Fort McKay (where emissions from a controversial oil pipeline project have poisoned plants and fish), Fort Chipewyan is a brighter picture. The Three Nations Energy Solar farm was launched November 17, 2020 with a ceremony at the solar farm in Fort Chipewyan featuring indigenous drummers and prayers as well as tearful thanks from the directors of 3NE.

The group now plans to set up hydroponics food production and support other indigenous green energy initiatives across Canada. This model of use of renewable energy goes to prove, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says, what can be done if indigenous communities have a 100 percent stake in their natural resources, as well as their future.

“We work with the sun, we work with the wind, we work with mother nature and we work with the water for the children of the future to give them a better life, a cleaner life,” he adds.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: 3NE

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A Welsh folk poem dating back to the 14th century Derwen Ceubren yr Ellyll, or ‘The Hollow Oak, Haunt of Demons’ tells of an ancient oak that bears witness to the betrayal of Welsh revolutionary Owain Glyndŵr by his cousin and English royalist Hywel Sele, supporter of King Henry IV. The cousins embark on a deer-hunting trip, when Hywel turns his sword on Owain, who has suspected his motives and worn chainmail. In a fight to the death, Hywel is vanquished by Owain and:

“Pale lights on Cader’s rocks were seen,
And midnight voices heard to moan;
‘Twas even said the Blasted Oak,
Convulsive, heaved a hollow groan…”

Owain conceals Hywel’s body in the old oak’s great trunk and never tells of the murder, only bespoken by the oak, which grows gnarled and twisted in its dark knowledge until, many years later, Hywel Sele’s widow leads a band of men to split the oak’s great bole to find her husband’s body within, a rusting sword clutched in its skeletal hand.

Hallowed by the Celts, great oaks traditionally served as meeting spots and boundary-markers to Welsh wayfarers in an era when upland oak woodland – dominated by sessile oak (Quercus petraea) and local pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) and typically supporting 500-plus plant and animal species as well as other trees such as alder, ash, birch, hazel, holly, and rowan – covered much of Wales’ landmass.

These days woodland only covers 14 percent of the current land surface in Wales (in comparison to a European average of 37 percent), and as of 1998, only 38 percent of Welsh woodland was composed of native species such as oak (Welsh Assembly Government, 2013). This process of gradual deforestation is thought to be down to many factors, including destruction of woodlands during English King Edward I’s seizing of Welsh territories and the hunting-to-extinction of apex predators such as the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), European brown bear (Ursus arctos) and the grey wolf (Canis lupis) from the early to late middle ages (700s to 1500s) resulting in an irruption of herbivores that devoured emergent tree saplings.

The final crisis point for many of Wales’ upland oak woodlands were the World Wars, when a rapacious appetite for timber led to upland oak woodlands being force purchased by the British government’s Forestry Commission, felled and in many cases replanted with non-native fast-growing conifers.

One woodland’s tale: Gigrin Prysg

I’m standing in a stretch of upland oak woodlands in a region of mid-Wales whose fate charts the turbulent fate of Wales’ upland oak woodlands. From its slanting escarpments are visible the brooding blues of the Cambrian Mountains and the sheening dams and reservoirs of the Elan and Claerwen Valleys; brushing my ankles as I walk along the woodland’s steep-inclined pathways are mauve heather, fronded ferns and bushes of bilberries, a tiny dark berry that makes a fine late summer pie.

“Those are good indicator species that this is ancient woodland,” says Marc Liebrecht, a Sustainable Forest Management specialist who maintains Gigrin Prysg for Sacred Groves. “As are the lichens that you see on the oaks over there, such as wood bristle-moss and old man’s beard lichen.”

An 11.8 acre stretch of mature oak woodland, Gigrin Prysg translates as ‘Gigrin’s grove’, for an 18th century local farm owner. Its ancient trees were felled, Liebrecht believes, for World War Two timber and have since grown back and reseeded naturally from dropped acorns, in higgledy piggledy patches and clusters of oaks.

The oaks also support the growth of rowan and birch trees in the gaps in the canopy left by this natural dispersal of saplings. Deadwood left to rot on the site provides a home for species including blue ground beetle (Carabus intricatus) and crane fly (Lipsothrix errans).

The lack of ruminant grazing on the site will allow further trees to grow from the tender saplings at our feet, Liebrecht says, as Sacred Groves plan to leave the woodland to rewild and reseed naturally, with the help of supporters.

Regenerating Wales’ lost woodlands is, Liebrecht admits, a long game. Easily felled, oaks grow slowly (at around 50cm a year), and it’s hard to predict if pests or erratic weather conditions borne of climate change will threaten the viability of this native species, as has been seen with Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), a fungus that arrived on British soil in 2012 and which is predicted to kill 80 percent of native ash trees (including a patch on the western edge of the Gigrin Prysg site).

“For dynamic resilience you need mixed wooded ecosystems with different species and ages of tree, and you need time,” says Liebrecht, gesturing at Gigrin Prysg’s boughs. Gigrin Prysg’s venerable Welsh oaks will live, he predicts, to witness other tall tales.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Sally Howard and Hollow Oak illustrations out of copyright

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One of Australia’s great forests once grew hidden from sight off the east coast of Tasmania. Swathes of giant kelp, known as kelp forests, grew from the ocean floor, towering 30 to 40 metres into massive floating canopies across the surface of the sea. “They were charismatic, six to seven storey tall underwater jungles, basically,” says Cayne Layton, postdoctoral research fellow at Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. “It is said that some floating canopies were so thick that they were on navigation charts as a navigational hazard.”

Today, 95 percent of this globally significant forest of the world’s fastest-growing plant – giant kelp can grow up to 50 centimetres a day – has been wiped out by the inexorable shift of the warm East Australian Current – the ocean current made famous in the movie Finding Nemo – displacing the cold, nutrient-rich Southern Ocean waters. The remaining five percent now grow only in scattered patches. The decline of these forests, listed as Australia’s first endangered marine community, has been relentless since the 1940s, largely unnoticed and unremarked by the local community. But the fightback has begun, and the early results are promising.

In the spring of 2020, Layton and a team of scientists planted three restoration plots of kelp on rocky reefs along Tasmania’s east coast, having collected spores from surviving giant kelp plants identified as tolerant to the warmer seas.

The scientists planted tens of thousands of millimetre long juvenile kelp on the reefs. When they returned months later, at the end of summer, they were greeted by a beautiful sight.

“One of the sites had no survivors, but at the two other sites we had really good success,” Layton says. “At those two now, we have over 200 surviving giant kelp. The average size is about a metre, and the largest is over four metres tall, so they’re kind of like stringy teenagers at the moment.

“The really exciting thing for us is that in those first assessments after summer, the kelp looked really healthy. That was encouraging – that the increased thermal tolerance we found in the lab was translated to the field.”

The team will again plant giant kelp this winter, and hope to do so each year into the future.

The rehabilitation of these underwater forests has been touted as a tool in the quest to mitigate climate change – great forests that absorb great quantities of carbon – though Layton cautions that the science is still young when it comes to giant kelp’s carbon sequestration ability. Such efforts, along with regrowing seagrasses, are central to marine protection as the climate warms.

Their value to the planet and marine communities, however, is unquestionable. And moment by moment, these fast-growing marine marvels are now straining once more towards the sun and perhaps even a return one day to navigation charts.

“We’re very happy (with the planting), but it’s still early days,” Layton says. “We want these individuals to grow up and become mature and start producing their own babies. Restoration is never going to work if it’s reliant on me and my colleagues planting these kelp. We’ve got to kickstart the natural cycle, so those individuals that we plant start producing their own juveniles.

“They can reach reproductive age within a year, so we’re hoping that towards the end of this year the largest ones will start to become reproductive. That’ll be the next big exciting step for us.”

Author: Andrew Bain, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Cayne Layton, Masayuki Tatsumi

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The Covid-19 pandemic showed many global city dwellers a future in which we might all breathe more freely. Across the world, as populations were subject to stay-at-home orders and road transport activity dipped, city-dwellers enjoyed clear skies; and a respite from road traffic produced pollutants such as nitrogen dioxides, carbon monoxides and the dangerous vehicle particulates PM 2.5s: tiny specks of pollution which, once inhaled, lodge in the lungs and can cause a variety of health problems.

Those traffic-borne emissions prompted the World health Organisation, in 2019, to characterise air pollution as the number one environmental health risk globally, the cause of an estimated 7.1 million premature deaths per year.

One solution to cities’ pollution problem is air purifiers and, as populations demand clearer air yet policies to reduce car-borne pollution lag behind, air purifiers are big business. Indeed market size is expected to reach USD 22.80 billion by 2028 and is expected to expand ten percent a year from 2021 to 2028.

The problem with standard electric air purifiers however is similar to air conditioners, in that they can compound the problem in themselves requiring power to run, which, in most global contexts, produces additional carbon pollution. Trees, of course, are excellent natural air purifiers but demands for land in cities make it difficult to plant the number of trees necessary to drastically improve air quality.

One answer to this problem also comes from nature, in one young German horticulturist’s design for an air filter that’s based on air-cleansing abilities of common-or-garden moss.

Green City Solutions was founded in 2014 by 29-year-old Peter Sänger, who brought together a team of experts in fields ranging from horticulture to mechanical engineering to design a novel bio-tech filter, the City Tree. “I felt the solution to air pollution can only emerge in combination with nature,” he says, of concentrating his research efforts on moss. “After all, nature has millions of years of experience in air purification.”

Moss is well adapted to the task of filtering polluted air, possessing the ability to bind fine dust and metabolise it. It can filter soot and particulates from the air breathed by 7,000 people every hour. In addition, mosses cool surrounding air by evaporating water on their leaf surface. The problem is that mosses can barely survive in cities due to their need for water and shade. So Green City Solutions solved this problem by connecting a range of species of mosses (with different filtering abilities) to low-energy water and nutrient provision based on unique Internet of Things technology, which measures the plants’ requirements and surrounding pollution levels in real time.

Independent field studies have shown that up to 82 percent of the fine dust in city air can be filtered directly by the City Trees, which the company has installed in cities across Germany, and in London and Paris. Each moss tower has the carbon dioxide absorbing capability of 275 trees.

Positioning is key; as Sänger notes: “Not all places where people live are polluted, and people aren’t everywhere there is pollution. Where the two meet, that’s where we place the trees.” Sänger would like to see his devices installed in the world’s most vehicle-polluted cities within the next decade.

The company is now developing moss-based air filters that are also suitable for consumers to use in their homes or that function – in an extra boon – as attractive greenery for vertical facades.

Author: James Gavin, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Green City Solutions; Peter Sänger and Peter Puhlmann for Green City Solutions; Nate Bell

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In Gangavaram village in the south Indian state of Telangana, G Anjamma alternates layers of cow-dung ash and fresh neem leaves in a basket. In each layer, she places seeds for long-term preservation. Then she seals it with cow dung and clay. “Seeds can be stored for up to three years this way,” she says. As the community seed banker of her village, her house is stacked with big barrels of these seed baskets. This is precious cargo, for all these seeds are indigenous and better suited for rain-fed farming, crucial in a region prone to droughts. Farmers, mostly Dalit, lower caste women from surrounding villages, source seeds from Anjamma. “There is no guarantee how seeds from the market will grow. The market mostly sells commercial crops, and there is little variety,” she says, showing the several regional and national awards she had won for preserving biodiversity and sustainable use of natural resources.

Anjamma is part of a movement led by 5,000 women initiated by the Deccan Development Society (DDS) in 1983. Women farmers gather in ‘sanghams’, groups of varying sizes, to learn sustainable farming. They grow multiple heirloom crops instead of cash crops like peanuts and cotton which need expensive inputs of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. “This ensures we don’t have to buy anything from the market to keep our children and ourselves healthy,” says Anjamma. “Our survival also doesn’t depend on prices set by the market,” she adds. It has also ensured that she and other Dalit woman farmers are not at the mercy of government dole-outs, volatile market prices or vagaries wrought by climate change.

Their food and seed sovereignty has also given them resilience to survive the pandemic-induced economic crisis. The sustainable agricultural practices that women like Anjamma promote, allow farmers to practice multi-cropping.

“I grow 25 varieties of food crops in one acre. Even if ten fail, I still have enough to feed my family and sell the excess in the market,” says Mogullama, another Dalit farmer from the region.

The movement has now spread across 75 villages. Office bearers of DDS estimate that at least 5,000 acres in the district are free of chemical inputs. Every January since 2002, the society organizes a month-long biodiversity festival in which a parade of bullock carts showcases the variety of heirloom millets grown in the area.

The DDS model has been replicated in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo and elsewhere in Western Africa. “We started collaborating with women farmers in Africa as their geology and climate conditions are similar to those found in our region,” says CN Suresh from the society. DDS is also part of the All India Millet Sisters Network, launched in 2016, which promotes the use of millets amongst women farmers. In 2019, DDS won the Equator Prize for its holistic approach to climate change, food security, and empowering marginalised women and in 2020, the Society won the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Award: “in recognition of the work of DDS women to rehabilitate degraded lands and promote biodiversity.”

Meanwhile, DDS’ annual festival this year has seen enthusiastic participation. “Even from men!” exclaims I Mollumma, a Dalit woman farmer and the official videographer for the festival. “Perhaps the pandemic has reminded them of the importance of preserving our indigenous biodiversity in farming…”

Author: Karthikeyan Hemalatha, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Karthikeyan Hemalatha

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