For villagers in Tharabari, a remote village located close to Balipara Reserve Forest (BRP) in Sonitpur district of Assam, India, the forest that surrounded them has always been full of treasures. Other than firewood, they forage the jungle for medicinal herbs like seni bon, a cure for acidity, durun ful, a headache remedy and dupor tenga used to treat kidney stones. Over the years, however, the forest became severely denuded. So did these treasures and their livelihoods. This also led to soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and rise in human-elephant conflict. 

Could afforestation offer a solution? In 2017, Balipara Foundation, a non-profit working for community based environment conservation had transformed barren land in Udalguri in Assam into a full-fledged forest with local help. The transformed forest was soon restored as an active elephant corridor.  It also had experience running similar afforestation projects in other parts of the state. In Tharabari, however, when the Foundation initially explained the plan to afforest the area with indigenous trees, local attitudes initially proved to be an obstacle. Villagers feared that once this happened, their land would have to be handed over to the forest department. 

Lucky for them that a local student, 21-year-old Junali Basumatary, understood that perhaps by restoring traditional biodiversity to the area, local livelihoods could get a much-needed fillip. She persuaded Jermia, 43, a local farmer, to participate. Together, they convinced 150 villagers to join the drive and paved the way for the Foundation to start their work at Tharabari. 

The plantation drive had a three-fold strategy. “We started by offering them wages for the plantation that gave them livelihood. Then we asked them to build a community nursery from where we could purchase saplings,” explains Gautam Baruah, chief operations architect, Balipara Foundation. The project took off and today, planters and site supervisors earn between Rs 250-350 a day, considered a good livelihood here. Additionally, they also undergo training in multi-cropping and looking after the newly planted saplings.  

From 0.25 million in 2020, Jermia and friends have already reached the grand figure of 0.47 million saplings planted this year at Tharabari. The project however, is fully dependent on Balipara Foundation as of now. It needs time and perhaps more community support to become self-sustaining. 

Linking forest regeneration with livelihoods has ensured that villagers are not solely financially dependent on cultivating rain-fed paddy. It has also reawakened the community’s natural affinity for the forest. “It is unbelievable that we are managing to earn our livelihood without destroying the environment,” says Jernia. “The earth can certainly become a nicer place to stay if such efforts are replicated in other places!”

Author: Gurvinder Singh, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Balipara Foundation

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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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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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Think of the Cotswolds countryside and what springs to mind? Green, sheep-dotted fields? Honey-stone cottages? Neatly tended gardens with flower beds in full summer bloom? What about lawns and verges that sprawl unmown as they sprout daisies, clover and that most reviled of gardeners’ weeds, the shock-haired common dandelion?

One Cotswolds village has challenged British gardeners to cast aside their famous prediction for neatly trimmed lawns and rigorous weeding of unwanted plants. Tysoe’s journey began in spring 2019, when a handful of its residents refrained from mowing their lawns during May, the month when emerging bumblebees and hoverflies are feeding on the rich nectar of wild plant species such as dandelion, bluebells and cowslips. The campaign, dubbed #NoMowMay, was first proposed by British wild plant conservation charity Plantlife in 2019, as a way to protect endangered species as well as the fast-disappearing natives that feed on wildflower nectar and whose populations are threatened by factors including global warming.

In Tysoe, locals took to it with gusto: sowing wild flower seeds, refraining from mowing and installing Brian May, a scarecrow who inadvertently resembled the legendary guitarist with British rock group Queen, to deter birds from pecking at wildflower seeds and shoots.

“The effort has been growing every year since,” Rosemary Collier, one of the project’s local coordinators and an entomologist at Warwick University. “The idea to make space for nature came from members of the church and we first rewilded parts of the churchyard. Then the parish council came on board and we re-wilded some of the parish’s verges. We also harvested seeds from local native wildflowers and sowed these alongside yellow rattle, which is semi-parasitic and suppresses grass, allowing other wildflowers to grow.”

Tysoe villagers are part of a broader citizen-led British green volunteering trend that’s been dubbed ‘ungardening’, which urges Britons to let 30 percent of their gardens and public spaces grow wild for the benefit of native wildlife. The trend can present a challenge to British tastes, admits Shirley Cherry, who coordinates a conservation campaign to turn Tysoe into a year-round wildlife-friendly village that’s sprung from the village’s rewilding efforts, Tysoe Wildlife.

“You won’t win everybody over because some people like primness in their gardens,” Cherry says. “Nature likes things messier: curving lines rather than straight lines, plants left to grow.”

On a mild day this May, Tysoe’s verges bloom with daisies, buttercups and wild violets as bees fly in busy arabesques and passersby quizzically stop to read the signs erected to explain the thinking behind the villages’ unkempt verges. Collier, who studies insect counts in her work at Warwick University, says that quantitative analysis of the impact on Tysoe’s insect life is tricky but that she had noticed more bees in the village this year, as well as a greater range of insect species.

Any good news is much needed. A 2019 study found that a third of British wild bees and their pollinating relatives, the hoverflies, are in decline, with habitat loss and climate change thought to be the principal causes of the insects’ demise.

Collier has enjoyed the flowers that have sprung up on her village’s unmown verges, including nectar-rich wildflowers such as oxeye daisy, field scabious and knapweed. She’s also pleased that dandelions, unsung kings of the pollinating world, are being rehabilitated, in Tysoe and beyond.

“People get annoyed with dandelions because they’re so good at dispersing their seeds but they’re amazing pollinators because they’re composite flowers with lots of little flowers in their head,” she says. Collier hopes such efforts will lead to a renewed appreciation of the environmental benefits of wildflower such as dandelions and nettles and the important role they play in supporting insects and animals higher up the food chain.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Unsplash, Rosemary Collier and Sylvia Davies

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At almost 4,000 meters above sea level, the high-altitude grasslands of Peru, known locally as punas, are a complex and increasingly fragile ecosystem. Climate change, the melting of glaciers and unpredictable rain patterns have shrunken the wetlands, with alarming consequences for some of the country’s most vulnerable communities, who depend on them to graze their sheep, alpacas and llamas. Though Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, their size has diminished by 40 percent in the past four decades. As glaciers recede, the drying grasslands force herders to concentrate in smaller areas, leading to intensive grazing practices, which further degrade the puna.

In search of a solution, the residents of Miraflores and Chanchayllo, two small Andean villages in the Nor Yauyos reserve, decided to look back into the past; a bet that has yielded extraordinary results. With the help of the U.S. non-profit The Mountain Institute (TMI) and enlisting Colombian archeologist Alex Herrera, local authorities were able to bring back to life a 1200-year old ancestral hydraulic system. The complex network of waterways had been used for centuries, but it was abandoned in the 17th century when Spanish colonizers forced indigenous populations to relocate.

The silt dams, reservoirs and canals were used by ancient communities to slow the movement of water through the soil and grasses. The slower pace of water they produced mitigated the impact of both floods and droughts, created nutrient-rich soil and expanded the wetlands, allowing for rotational grazing. While livestock and crop productivity have indeed increased since the system was revived, Herrera explains that the success of the project should not be measured in terms of output, but of sustainability. “Andean knowledge is not about maximizing production, but minimizing risks,” he tells us, “and that can be antithetical to the current growth paradigm.

Ancestral technologies look to increment production to provide food for everyone over time, not to increase revenue.”

For the team behind the revival of the waterways, its success lies in its bottom-up participation and collaboration. The initiative was decided upon in community assemblies and relied heavily on local knowledge. The project is not an off-the-peg solution: combining, as it does, complex forms of social organization and an understanding of the ecosystem built over centuries and passed orally across generations.

Though the TMI believes the success of the project raises hopes for highland communities everywhere, Herrera is quick to point out that adapting it to different contexts might prove to be a complex endeavor. “Andean technology is not just material; it is also the capacity to organize work over time and space. This type of solution requires local knowledge and, more importantly, a local commitment to sustain it over time. And this can only come from the communities themselves, not from external actors,” he explains. Listening to indigenous populations, he adds, is a good place to start.

Author: Jimena Ledgard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Grassland banner image and 1. Alexander Herrera Wassilowski, 2. The Mountain Institute

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For years, locals in the remote district of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra have supplemented their agrarian livelihoods by poaching the Indian pangolin, a species given the highest protection under India’s Wildlife Protection Act. Through his non-profit Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra, Katdare, locally known as Bhau, had tried everything from organising awareness campaigns to training police to identify poached pangolin parts.

A Ratnagiri local himself, Bhau dropped out of college and has chosen to learn from the field since 1992. He began to wonder, through his immersion in local communities, if creating an emotional connection with the pangolins in the minds of the locals could be the key to finally putting an end to poaching.
“In many ways, conservation is the essence of all religion,” he says.

In 2020, he enlisted the help of the temple priest in the Dugwe village of Ratnagiri. Together they created an event celebrating the scaly mammal – “Khawlotsav” or Pangolin Festival – coinciding with the World Pangolin Day that falls on the third Saturday of February.

Bhau asked toymakers from a nearby town to make a large effigy of the animal, which was then hidden in a deep thicket. When villagers found it, they bedecked it in the finery usually reserved for the village deity and brought it back to the temple with great fanfare. Traditional dances were performed in its honour, and prayers were dedicated to the animals that ate the ants and termites that often infested locals’ crops. Villagers even prayed for better sense and wisdom to prevail upon animal traffickers and poachers. The pangolin replica was then installed in the temple, beside the idol of the village god and finally, it was placed on an elegant scarlet palanquin and paraded from house to house.

In the past, Bhau’s team had made people swear oaths to protect the species and raise awareness not only in their region, but also in neighbouring villages.
“At the end of the festival, they all swore the same oath again, and I could sense a shift,” he recalls.

A few months ago, someone sent him a video of the villagers’ reaction to a pangolin that had strayed into the village. In the past, it would have been killed without a thought. This time, however, when someone suggested they kill it as usual and sell its scales, a village elder reminded them of their oath to protect pangolins.

On a recent visit to the Dugwe village temple, Bhau discovered that the priest – his old ally – had placed a picture of a pangolin permanently next to the deity. The discovery has made him hopeful that their festival might become a tradition.

As he gears up for World Pangolin Day this year, the 60-year-old barefoot conservationist aims to continue fostering lasting connections between men and animals through India’s rich religious and cultural traditions. To advance the cause of sea turtle conservation in a neighbouring district, he plans to organise a drama performance about the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu, who took the form of a turtle in his second incarnation.
“If we get them to think of turtles as incarnations of their favourite god, maybe we’d have a shot at protecting them too,” Bhau says.

Authors: Geetanjali Krishna and Snighdha Bansal, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra

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Imagine being inside a house, a smoky hearth at its centre around which the family huddles for warmth with snow falling in flurries outside. This is how people in Lahaul and Spiti, the remote, high altitude region in Himachal Pradesh, India, spend over seven months of their lives every year. Their need for fuelwood, a scarce but highly polluting resource, is undeniable, given that minimum temperatures in winters dip to minus 30 degrees centigrade. Which is what makes the inexpensive renewable energy innovations developed and implemented here by Ecosphere Spiti, a social enterprise with a passion for eco conservation, responsible mountain travel and adventure, so important.

Ecosphere Spiti uses principles of solar passive architecture: south-facing, direct solar gain windows and insulated floors and walls, to trap the sun’s heat in Spitian homes. Over the years, people here have noted that these tweaks ensure that even when it is minus 30 degrees outside, the inside temperature remains around ten degrees without artificial heating. On average, passive solar rooms reduce a household’s fuel wood consumption to half, leading to savings of USD $130-260, depending on family size. They have also developed solar greenhouses — polythene-covered structures on wooden frames with a ventilator and door, in which villagers can grow food even when it is snowing outside. These ensure that villagers have a supply of spinach, coriander, onions and garlic – not just to consume, but also to sell.

Both these solar technologies make a perceptible improvement in the local quality of life, and cost relatively little to implement. Solar passive houses cost about USD $700 to construct, while a greenhouse can be made for about USD $400.

“While Spiti urgently needs better infrastructure, we have also seen how its vulnerable ecology is being adversely affected by its very creation,” Ishita Khanna, co-founder of Ecosphere Spiti, explains. Ecosphere Spiti uses tourism as a funding mechanism: operating local tours, a café, B&B and a successful volunteer tourism programme to subsidize its development programmes. “Some time ago, volunteers helped build an artificial glacier in the village Demul to recharge the groundwater,” says Khanna. “In fact, they’ve built most of our greenhouses as well!”

Now Ecosphere is studying the potential of cost-effective solar water-pumping technologies to aid people in mountain-top villages, who have to walk long distances downhill to collect even drinking water.

While the need for plentiful direct sunlight limits the replicability of Ecosphere Spiti’s innovative solar technologies, they serve as a model for sustainable development projects in ecologically fragile regions. As importantly the project shows that development goals need not be in conflict with the urgent task of protecting the natural environment.

Author: Geetanjali Krishna, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Spiti valley banner image: Carlos Adampol Galindo/ Wikimedia Commons, 1. Geetanjali Krishna, 2. 3. 4. Ecosphere
(Wikimedia License – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)

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When Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear power plant shut down, the electricity went out in Tsuchiyu Onsen [hot spring resort]: the first of many blackouts resulting from the March 2011 nuclear meltdown.

The disaster had catastrophic effects on the small hot spring (onsen) town, some 70km away in the Azuma mountains. “Five ryokan inns had to close,” explains Kazuya Ikeda, Executive Director and Secretary General of Tsuchiyu Onsen tourism, “and we saw a simultaneous exodus of residents. The rates of people aged over 65 exceeded 50 per cent of the population… maintaining sustainable living conditions started to become more and more difficult.”

At the heart of Tsuchiyu’s tourism and population crisis was its energy crisis. With renewed concerns about nuclear power, residents decided to establish a town-led geothermal energy project. Their goal was to harness the same seismic energy that had devastated the region and use it to create jobs, profit, and sustainability.

Now, a decade later, the generator – hidden just upriver in Japan’s picturesque mountain scenery – not only provides power for Tsuchiyu Onsen but pays off the original loan by selling energy back to the grid. Ikeda describes the project as “a series of very hard fought battles”, yet the enterprise was so successful that residents are now finding ways to further harness its geothermal resources.

Tsuchiyu Onsen uses a binary generator, which relies on a secondary liquid in a closed-loop system. This liquid has a lower boiling point than water, so it vaporises when hot spring water passes through a heat exchanger. The resulting gas drives the turbines and thereby the generator, and the all-important closed-loop system means atmospheric emissions are negligible. The vapour is then condensed back to liquid and the process starts again.

”We also began work on sub-projects within the town itself, like shrimp cultivation and local sake production,” Ikeda explains “but we’re still new to it and started in a fumbling sort of way.” These smaller endeavours have been key to Tsuchiyu’s revitalisation, repurposing vacant buildings in the town centre and creating jobs.

The shrimp, farmed in warm water pumped through the generator, are enough to supply the town’s hotels, but Tsuchiyu isn’t aiming at a wider market. Instead, the tourism board is creating more local businesses around it, such as shrimp-fishing cafes.

Overall, the last decade has proven remarkably positive, but the next five years are crucial to its long term success: the original loan must be repaid just as ageing facilities start to need maintenance and investment. Beyond this, Tsuchiyu Onsen is aiming to eventually go entirely off-grid and to pass on its legacy within and beyond its snow-capped borders.

Tsuchiyu’s story has garnered national attention. Its residents’ ingenuity has inspired others, having achieved their aims through state funding and without hiring external consultants. The renewable set-up also disproves long-standing Japanese concerns around geothermal energy: onsen towns having been historically reluctant to use generators for fear of damaging water quality.

Visitors and tourists certainly haven’t been deterred. Domestic and international researchers have flocked to the town, with around 2,000 arriving annually. Before Covid-19, Tsuchiyu reached 370,000 annual visitors and they aim to reach 500,000 within five years.

This ongoing revitalisation of town and tourism has promoted renewable energy as a sustainable way of life, making Tsuchiyu Onsen a symbol of resilience and hope in the face of Fukushima’s nuclear energy fallout.

Author: Jo Davey, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Fukushima Tourist Board

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He polices the forest with missionary zeal. Locals claim that his Public Interest Litigations (PILs) – challenging the construction of mines, dams, resorts and more – have helped not only maintain but regenerate the unique flora and fauna of this biodiversity hotspot in Karnataka, India. Indeed, the catalytic role DV Girish played in facilitating the government-sponsored voluntary relocation of more than 450 families from the forests of Bhadra from 2001-3 is inspirational. Even today, twenty years later, the lessons from India’s most equitable conservation swap (in which 13 villages were relocated to sites away from the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary, a part of the Project Tiger) remain the blueprint for socially minded conservation interventions. Here’s how he did it.

Karnataka-born, Girish grew up within a stone’s throw from Bhadra Reserve. “Over the years, my forays into the jungle brought me in contact with people living inside the forest,” he recalls. “They had no schools, limited livelihoods, poor access to the world outside and lived in constant fear of encountering elephants and big cats. No family wanted their daughters to marry men from these villages as life there was so tough.”

Although the forest had been declared a sanctuary in 1974 and plans were afoot to relocate these villages out of the forest, government machinery was slow. In the late eighties, Girish and his team conducted a socio-economic survey of these villages and drew a blueprint for the relocation process.

“First, suitable land had to be identified outside the forest where these villages could be shifted in their entirety,” he explains. “Each household was counselled and given land corresponding to their landholding in the village. Being local, we became the bridge between them and the government.” When the central government finally disbursed the funds in 1999, the relocation began. First to move was a village 17km inside the forest. Girish and his team provided them with temporary shelters, communal kitchens, even loans to build their new houses. By 2003, Bhadra became the first ‘inviolate’ (people-free) wildlife sanctuary in the country.

His job, however, didn’t end there. Girish has kept in touch with the villagers he’d helped relocate. “The reason why our effort was successful could also perhaps limit the replicability of this project: my being a local, speaking the same language and understanding their culture made it easier for them to be convinced by me,” he says. “Would they have taken so kindly to an outsider asking them to leave their homes? Possibly not…”

Today, the veteran conservationist is Bhadra’s most vigilant watchdog. He has successfully opposed the construction of three dams on River Bhadra, fought the powerful bamboo lobby which wanted to extract bamboo from the forest, and stalled the construction of resorts, windmills and mines in and around. “I’ve learnt from all these experiences,” he says, “that whether it’s people or projects – in the long run, relocating them safeguards the jungle more effectively than developing (and enforcing) physical and legal infrastructure to do so.”

Author: Geetanjali Krishna, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Madhu Venkatesh and Girish DV

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