Linking Biodiversity Conservation and Livelihoods in India

I n a country like India, millions of people rely on products from natural ecosystems to sustain their livelihood. Natural ecosystems provide clean water from watersheds, retention of soil and soil fertility, sequestration of carbon, as well as pollinators and natural predators of pests. For these reasons, rapid, often irreversible, loss of species and ecosystems is of more than just academic concern. Indeed, our understanding of biodiversity in natural ecosystems remains so woefully inadequate that we are unable to fully comprehend the consequences of its loss. With impending climate change and increasing spread of invasive species, the biodiversity crisis is likely to get worse, with far-reaching effects on human societies. To meet these challenges, we need institutions and scholars that can generate new knowledge, and apply it to resolve our most pressing environmental issues. The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) (http:⁄⁄www. atree.org) was established in 1996 to curtail the rapid loss of India's biological resources and natural ecosystems, and to address the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of this decline. We highlight below two examples of ATREE's work from very different ecosystems and regions. The Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRT), a 540-square-kilometer protected area, forms a part of India's Western Ghats, one of the global hotspots of biodiversity. The area has traditionally been inhabited by an indigenous community, the Soligas, and is also a habitat for a number of endangered plants and animals. Soligas have harvested forest products for centuries for their own use and more recently for markets. The interrelated issues of livelihood enhancement of the Soligas and biodiversity conservation have been at the heart of ATREE's work in BRT for close to a decade—along with a partner non-governmental organization, the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra; a local community organization, the Soliga Abhivrudhi Sangha; and the Karnataka Forest Department [1]. A detailed understanding of the drivers that cause forest loss and degradation is the fi rst step toward its preservation. We have used demographic models to analyze changes in population structure of nelli (Phyllanthus emblica and Phyllanthus indofi scheri), one of the most important NTFPs in BRT. Nelli is an edible fruit high in vitamin C, extracts from which are key ingredients in traditional Indian medicine, and in cosmetics. Our results indicate that population growth rates, on average, are close to rates that would allow full replacement of individuals. Moreover, it is not harvest, …