Community Forest Rights Granted in Pillur, in a First for Tamil Nadu
December 10, 2022 By Community Well-being team In a groundbreaking motion and a first for Tamil Nadu, 13 villages in Pillur region were granted Community Forest Rights (CFR) in late November. This achievement is following decades of dedicated activism and grassroots work by Keystone’s Community Wellbeing team, local Forest Rights Committees (FRC) and local government […]
Community Well-being at the HDCA Conference 2022 in Belgium
September 22, 2022 By Kanmani PalanisamyCommunity Well-being Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum theorized the ‘Capability Approach’ framework in the 1980s as a unique perspective on welfare economics. He proposed that a person or a community’s true capability (considering real world obstacles) to achieve a life that aligns with their values must be assessed rather than […]
Indigenous communities using Right Information Act to strengthen FRA
It is said that access to information or being informed can be empowering as it allows one to make good choices or decisions. To access or receive information, one must ask questions. And to ensure robust and useful information, the questions must be framed in a way that is clear, crisp and representative. As citizens, […]
An Adivasi women at the Forefront of Forest Rights
While the primary focus areas of the Community Well-being programme are Health, Livelihoods, and Environmental Governance, one of the common threads we find too evident to miss is the gender aspect. Multiple pieces of literature point towards gendered-subjectivities. What it means is that women and men perceive things differently- be it in terms of how […]
A commitment to protect Forest, Land, Soil and Water
Given the current state of affairs across the country, the process of claiming and obtaining Community Forest Rights (CFR) could take until kingdom come. The subject is largely discussed or promised during the time of elections, but the intensity fades away when it comes to implementation, by state governments. Facilitating training and workshops to improve […]
Forest Rights Act – An Exposure visit to Yavatmal
The three-day visit helped community members deepen their knowledge of the Forest Rights Act and made them understand the need for collective actions.
Field initiation
Read about the first week and how it all began… – It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.- Henry David Thoreau The week of 20th May was one the students had been eagerly waiting for. As an early initiation to the field, the students traveled to Pillur on Sunday (19th May). As […]
Week 6_Livelihoods and Governance
What changed our livelihoods pattern? Environmental history fades away by the time a nation establishes its post-industrial era! The livelihood opportunities of the students from Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR) are predominantly dependent on nature like agriculture, gathering forest produce, rearing cattle, etc. They are primarily engaged in seasonal work based in and around their communities. […]