Massive deforestation in central India is leading to ecological disaster, with desertification, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity, all aggravated by climate change. Bare soil cannot hold moisture, so monsoon rains wash it away to distant rivers and the ocean. Drying of rivers and lowering of groundwater levels create a vicious cycle of devastation for ecoweb-rooted tribal people and creatures living symbiotically on these lands. Failure of subsistence agriculture and loss of forests leads to food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. Both cultural and financial impoverishment is apparent, including breakup of communities and displacement to cities as migrant laborers. Indigenous knowledge and culturally relevant relationships with the land and forest are being lost.

Farm ponds excavated hold water through the dry months giving this community access to water for bathing, washing, and cleaning. If there are enough ponds, people use the water to grow a second crop. Communities earmark some ponds for cattle so that they can drink and bathe. Giridih district, Jharkhand.

We are using Indigenous knowledge and state-of-the-art scientific approaches to help communities regenerate forests and restore livelihoods, making them food and water secure, bringing hope to these communities. We develop partnerships with community-based groups, hydrological experts, and most importantly, with the villagers themselves. Our holistic approach makes forest restoration and community ownership central to its solution, which sustains water supply in the long term. Further, this leads to a positive chain reaction of freedom from daily wage labor, ecosystem restoration, productive livelihoods, and education for the girl child. Our work empowers communities: they have full decision-making power and ownership of the solutions throughout the process.

In April 2023, the team, along with people from each village, marched on foot for 100 kilometers in searing heat. They met people from 100 villages along the way in the catchment of the two rivers they plan to rejuvenate. The objective was to listen to the people and discuss possibilities of bringing water to the village using the experience of the previous successes. Cultural forms were used to communicate important ideas. The team marched for 9 days in the districts of Pakur and Giridih in Jharkhand.

Working collaboratively with the communities and hydrological experts, hawse have designed watershed restoration solutions that involve building soil and water conservation structures and reviving the forest. Communities participate in making check dams, contour trenches, and farm ponds and have made thousands of seed balls to regenerate degraded forests. Over the past five years, our work has impacted 5,000 ecoweb-rooted tribal families in the Indian states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Bihar, covering an area of 100 square kilometers. Our success is evident in the rise of groundwater by several feet, wells remaining charged through summer, rivers flowing for longer periods, areas under rabi crop cultivation doubling, forest cover increasing by 13%, forests becoming denser, and reappearance of wildlife. Communities that struggled with farming one crop are now harvesting two crops a year, resulting in reduction of distress migration. Collectively, hawse have built the capacity to conserve 100 million liters of water annually.

A team member facilitating discussion on the plan to construct water and soil conservation structures using a miniature model (made of foam) of the area. The same model is used to understand the soil layers and the flow of sub-surface water. Pakur district, Jharkhand.

In 2022, monsoons failed over Jharkhand and other central Indian states, leading to loss of the main paddy crop. In 2023 also, there was a deficit of rainfall. El Nino, in 2024, is further affecting the monsoons, possibly leading to a prolonged drought of three years. Currently, we are planning to work towards rejuvenating two rivers which used to flow perennially just 15 to 20 years ago. The catchment of the two rivers was divided into approximately 100 micro-watersheds, ten of which are already active. Discussions have already begun with the people in 20 villages to develop a plan for drought-proofing their villages. New resources are required to implement the already proven soil and water conservation structures. In the longer term, we are working on scaling up this model of community-based watershed and livelihood restoration that will benefit 25,000 families across 350 square kilometers. Denser forests will restore livelihoods based on hunting and gathering, while protecting topsoil during floods and droughts that will become more frequent, making these ecoweb-rooted tribal communities more food and water secure.

Community members participate in the excavation of a farm pond with dimensions of 60x40x10 feet (depth: 10 feet). When soil or rocks are very hard soil, earthmover machinery is used. The program wants to ensure that the wages go to the people in the villages where possible. Giridih district, Jharkhand.

Our message is that grassroots planning and community ownership of ecological restoration can rejuvenate and sustain livelihoods, preserving human dignity, and reestablish the kinship of human communities with other living beings. With the evidence our work with communities has provided, demonstrating that natural processes can be healed and ecologies restored, governments and other organizations have a reliable model to respond to people’s demands to halting ecological degradation and invest in ecological restoration.

Acknowledgements: This project is being carried out by the Association for India's Development in partnership with Jharkhand Vikas Parishad (JVP), Savera, and Mohammed Bazar Backward Classes Development Society (MBBCDS).