From Valparai to Nairobi: Meetings with ERA and REDAA

By Anita Varghese, Director

Header photo: REDAA Community

An alliance for ecological restoration – ERA and Keystone

September 14-15, 2024

Since 2021, Keystone has supported by giving time and effort to build a national alliance for
ecological restoration. This effort was lead by Nature Conservation Foundation – Valparai, who invited us to the meeting. The alliance has grown to around 350+ members and spread across the country representing each one of its bio-regions.

Today we sit on the steering committee of the Ecological Restoration Alliance (ERA), where we are institutional members and many of our staff are individual members of the alliance. The ERA hosts a national conference annually, which has been attended by many of us from Keystone. At the last conference, we decided to set up ‘desks’ at each organization that was interested, so that focus could be given to issues pertaining to ecological restoration. The desks range from generating knowledge products, communicating restoration practices, advocacy and policy, and community building.

Keystone holds the desk for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities working in the ecological restoration space. This desk will be lead by the Biodiversity team and works to build a network of indigenous groups across India who are taking up restoration work. Most importantly, the ‘desks’ moved very quickly from being an idea to a project when Rainmatter Foundation came forward to fund this work. Along with NCF, we have also taken up the role of managing the funds for the whole network.

The steering committee of the ERA usually meets on the sidelines of the annual conference but this
time round, we decided to meet in person. The SC meets first Friday of every month online and it was
indeed refreshing to meet in person, especially at the breathtaking Valparai Plateau in Tamil Nadu. Attending the meeting were also the coordinators of the various ‘desks’ and that brought an intergenerational feel to the whole gathering. While the elders talked of their efforts of the past three decades and their visions for their desks, the young took frantic notes and asked questions, seeming genuinely interested and inspired to start something of their own.

The meeting was beautifully interspersed with bird watching, forest gazing and learning from NCF’s
restoration efforts. As we walked through the restoration plot which was a 20 year old site, we
looked at the thin tall trunks of the restored rainforest trees. We were reminded that restoration is a
work of patience: it’s not just a row of trees, but carefully planted diverse seedlings that compete,
adapt and eventually establish themselves to grow into a rainforest in the next 200 years or more.

As evening descended, we chanced upon a fallen branch along the roadside of a Cullenia tree loaded with mature seeds. Of course, everybody was busy collecting each precious seed for the NCF Valparai nursery, ah, the joy of seed collection. Just then, we heard the sounds of large wings in flight and at that moment we all knew the Hornbills are coming home. There was a pair with their juvenile returning to roost for the night. The three large birds somewhat clumsily found a perch on the highest branch of the tallest tree. They spent a couple of minutes testing the branches and settling themselves in for the night. They didn’t seem to mind 25+ eyes and binoculars trained at them. As we walked out of the forest, leaving the hornbills to their perch for the night, there was a genuine feeling of contentment in every one’s hearts that the hornbills had selected a restored site for their home.

Anita Varghese, Director at Keystone and Sumin George, Senior Programme Coordinator, attended this gathering at Valparai for only two days between September 14 & 15. We listened, we talked, we walked, we watched and all along we knew we were in the company of people with passion and commitment – it was very palpable, very genuine. Sumin and I also felt that all of them have given the best years of their life to a landscape and in turn, the landscape has given them a home, just like the hornbills.

We also spoke about the uncertainties that loomed over all the work of the past. What if the land tenure changes? How do we balance the needs of conservation and development? What if a scheme is brought in to plant trees? What if we are not ‘granted’ permissions for work? What if the local communities don’t buy in to the idea of the restoration? What if an infrastructure project – a green energy company wants to set up shop in the landscape?

There were several elephants in the room but for now, we were going to be content with the
elephants we heard in the forests, the gaur we saw in the tea estates, the lion tailed macaques
swinging in the trees and the hornbills swooping over the valley. When we sat outside for some of
our sessions, we had to follow the condition that we give each speaker our undivided attention. Five
minutes into the session, a beautiful rare Rufous Bellied Eagle glided over us – how could we not look! A
herd of ecologists will always drop whatever they are doing for one more sighting, one more
observation and one more chance to restore a lost grassland, forest or coral reef.

From restoring ecologies to restoring nature based livelihoods – REDAA Community Meeting in Nairobi

September 16-19, 2024

In March 2024, Keystone Foundation started work on the community based ecological restoration
project, which is supported by the Reversing Environmental Degradation in Africa and Asia (REDAA).
As part of the project, REDAA organized a meeting of all the project leads in Nairobi between
September 16-19. The community building workshop allowed for the opportunity to meet not only the other project team leads, but to also meet in person the team at the IIED, UK office who are managing this grant. It was indeed great to spend time together and ask questions, learn and understand project goals, communication, monitoring and evaluation. Anita and Sumin also attended this meeting.

We spent one day in the field visiting a local NGO that was working in partnership with local communities and the Kenya Wildlife Service to restore indigenous forests. The third day was a very interesting event where three of UK’s biggest funding for climate, biodiversity and people were in a room together to hear from each other and to brainstorm on funding themes-setting right the agenda for future investments in this sector. There were academics, practitioners, decision makers and indigenous peoples representatives in the room.

Sumin and Anita made a short presentation on how we are including gender and social inclusion aspects to our project planning. We heard from our counterparts in Africa on their approaches to restoring degraded lands through tree planting efforts, we heard of similar efforts from South East Asia too. Others presented on their interventions to provide alternatives like fuel efficient cook stoves, beekeeping to supplement incomes and reduce the dependence on forests. We heard much about tree planting and very little about restoration of grasslands; frankly, we were concerned about whether all the tree planting would occur on landscapes that were appropriate for trees. We also left pondering the big question as to where water will come from to support nurseries and tree growing efforts.

Looking back now, September 14th to 19th was an interesting week. We travelled from a group full of ecologists doing restoration to a group full of development practitioners doing restoration. While one group was happy about hornbills finding a perch on the branches of a tree in a restored site, the other group was equally happy to keep a portion of their forests protected for the ‘maternity ward’ of the elephants that came every year. For the ecologists, restoration came from a dedication to nature and for the local communities of Kikuyi forests they took care of their forests since their very lives depended on it. The need to have dialogue across these two good forces for ecological restoration and learn from each other to build a stronger alliance for reversing degradation is imminent.