Alumni Update: Swapnil Chaudhari
Swapnil Chaudhari is a 2012 Inlaks Ravi Sankaran Fellow who pursued an MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge. He is the Founder CEO of GroundUp Conservation.
GroundUp, employs a bottom-up approach by supporting and empowering grassroots to scale up their conservation successes. They do this by providing organisational development, cultivating business thinking and collaborating to design and implement self-sustaining programs, all the while adopting a no harm approach to Nature.
In this blog post he chats about his journey into the field of conservation and how he carries forward all that he has learnt along the way.
I struggle to explain to people what I do therefore, I would like to take a step back and share where I come from and my journey so far. I'm from a small town in Maharashtra, India called Chalisgaon, in the Jalgaon district. I was fortunate to growing right next to a wildlife sanctuary, called Gautala Autrumghat Wildlife Sanctuary. As my father was a milkman, and mother was a farmer, which meant that they had no time to look after me and I was left to my own devices. My friends and I would catch snakes, birds, butterflies, lizards as all children in villages do.
I have always been fascinated with wildlife so much so that I wanted to pursue veterinary science, much to my parents’ dismay. However, during my time in college I came across an advertisement for an undergraduate course in environmental sciences in Pune. Living in Pune introduced me to so many people who worked in wildlife conservation, ecology, and development. While in Pune I also pursued a yearlong course in Ecological Restoration at Ecological Society of India. This course set the foundation for everything that I do today. It led me to Pondicherry University for my master’s degree. In Pondicherry I was given a detailed orientation on how to look at the nature through the scientific angle. I had remarkable professors who taught us, how to develop a scientific reasoning, collect the data and make sense of it, how science underpins conservation. Armed with this knowledge I worked with IIT Kharakpur mapping biodiversity landscapes in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Paschim Bangal, and Orrisa.
I have also mapped forests working with the Ministry of Information Technology with Government of India as a subject matter specialist. During this time, I traveled from Gujarat all the way down to Kanyakumari. Mapping the biodiversity provided me an opportunity to go deeper into the jungles, allowing me to interact with the local communities and wildlife. I found myself relating to many of the problems that the people were facing. Being from a small town myself I understood the consequences of what they were facing, such as the pain of wild boars and jackals eating their crops as well as leopards picking up livestock.
Working for the ministry was a cornerstone in my career that allowed to understand how government operates. My journey till then equipped me for my time at Cambridge. I attended Cambridge in 2012 with the Inlaks Ravi Sankaran Fellowship, to pursue a master’s in conservation leadership. The exposure I received there was unparallel, I met some brilliant people, my classmates themselves were celebrated entities in the conservation field. I was surrounded by people who came from Africa, South America, Central and South East Asia, Western countries and the Middle East. Talking to them expanded my horizons and outlook towards conservation. In learning how conservation was conducted in other countries, I was able to look at conservation efforts in India through an alternative perspective.
Agriculture in the Pangi Valley that provides Livelihoods to indigenous communities. Also the areas of active human wildlife conflict
After Cambridge I worked for five years with an intergovernmental organisation called the International Centre for Integrative Mountain Development, whose headquarters are in Kathmandu. The organisation works in the length and breadth of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, starting from Afghanistan, all the way up to Myanmar. I worked with the Government of China, Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Nepal and India, on a transboundary landscape conservation programme. This programme is the first of its kind in all Asia that considered nature conservation beyond the borders. Issues such as water shortage, wildlife depredation, climate change impacts, the lessen of agriculture yields are similar across the borders of Nepal, India and Tibet. The natural world and wildlife do not recognize manmade international borders, therefore is only makes sense to join hands and work together at resolving issues that are common to people and wildlife be it on any side of the border. I sat at the table with dignitaries from Delhi, Beijing, Kathmandu who were all quite fierce and intimidating in their negotiations.
High altitude Himalayan pastures
While the experience was great, I couldn’t help but get a little frustrated. The policies created at a national level were fantastic, but hardly ever reflected on the ground. Somehow policies rarely make their way down to those for whom they were created for, nor are the issues of those directly affected ever really get reflected in any discourse. It is this disengagement that prompted me to quit my job so that I could pursue a path where I could work on the ground with locals and those working at the forefront.
I took a year to travel around the world. With a little backpack I made my way across 13 countries in Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, such as Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and then starting from Ethiopia all the way up to Mozambique. I visited parts of these countries that tourists don’t usually visit. My experience was quite incredible, I went deep into the interior areas with local friends I made on the way with whom I didn’t share a language, I even came across militants. During my travels I realized that across the world, the conflict between people and wildlife is almost the same. It is the local people who live at the cusp of human settlement and wilderness who best understand that the fight isn’t man vs animal, as they are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, it is only logical to work with them towards making positive change. Afterall, they are the custodians of their environments, not the decision makers sitting in Capital. This is how I came to create my startup GroundUp Conservation.
Retreating glaciers being observed by indigenous youth as a part of studying climate change impact on the Himalayan landscapes
GroundUp Conservation stems from the notion of a bottom-up approach to conservation. We have a three-pronged approach, livelihood, conservation, and technology. Livelihood is a primary engagement and conservation a by-product where as Technology provides power to scaleup. We work with the assumption that if we resolve people's issue with their daily income, they will not unnecessarily harm wildlife. By paying attention to the ground realities, we attempt to tap into the social and emotional connection people have with their surroundings to conserve them. The idea is not to tell them what needs to be done, rather actively listen to their concerns and work alongside them to resolve them together. People who need it the most are often neglected, and in my experience, welcome support with open arms if you possess the strength of honesty and pragmatism.
One of the projects we are currently working on is in Pangi, Himachal Pradesh. It is a remote valley at the foothills of Greater Himalayas. It is landlocked for six months of the year under heavy snowfall. The indigenous people of Pangi, known as Pangwal, have a wonderful cultural identity, which recognizes and embraces the wildlife with whom they share the valley. I found myself in Pangi by accident in 2019, where I met Harish. He is from the Pangwal community and is the first tribal indigenous person to hold a PhD in social work. He has been running an organisation called Collective Efforts for Voluntary Actions (CEVA) since 2008.
With Harish, I started speaking with the locals to understand their issues, who offered us solutions to them as well. The way in which tourism is managed in the Himalayas is a bone of contention for them. In the gentrification of the valleys and hill stations, the mountains are losing their ethos and identity. In an effort to retain it, we wanted to establish a unique model, where local community are engaged with and allowed to define what kind of tourism they wanted.
We assisted with the registration of 60 homestays in Pangi. This was a major accomplishment for two reasons, we were able to facilitate financial independence for the women in the village as well as guided the village to organize itself in preparation for guests. Most of the homeowners, approximately 30-40%, are indigenous women. They now have bank accounts and the income that they will generate from this will offer them a sense of independence but also power them to make their own decisions. The houses were prepared not only to meet with all the governmental guidelines, but also had to prepare the locals to interact with outsiders. Since Pangi is detached from the rest of the world for half the year, when rest of the India develops by 30 years, Pangi progresses only 15 years. This have had serious consequences in terms of educational, health, technology and infrastructure etc.,. Keeping this time lag in mind, the locals have placed codes of conducts and informal systems of governance, locally known as Praja Mandalas, to ensure that all kinds of problems, be it local disputes or issues that might arise from disgruntled guests, drunken behavior etc of tourists., to manage grievances . They do not want the valley to in anyway be managed by non-locals as is the case with popular tourist destinations. Our promotional efforts are minimal at the moment as we want to build a strong foundation before inviting large inflows of guests. We want to ensure all our checkboxes are ticked. We will be ready when a woman can travel through the village without feeling unsafe. Therefore, we are currently relying on our social circles to spread the word and have placed signage along the highway to notify bikers making their way to Leh, Manali and Killar-Kishtwar that Pangi is a potential stop on their travels.
Our hope is that the income generated from these efforts will also aid towards conservation of wildlife. We do not intend to tell them how to conserve their surroundings, they have been doing it for generations. We do however hope to create a corpus fund from some of the tourism earnings to compensate farmers in case of loss of crop or livestock caused by wildlife, such as brown bears and snow leopards who are native to the landscape. Brown bears are notorious lovers of apples. At a time, they are known to ground 4-5 apple trees to pluck fruit. Apple trees yield fruit after four years of proper care. Snow leopards on the other hand are known to steal goats and sheep. When a farmer watches his hard work being snatched away it builds frustration and gives rise to retaliatory killing. Should they decide to ask the government for compensation, it would require them to travel to the Forest Department, fill out paperwork, may be pay a bribe to arrange documents. The loss and suffering they incur is very high. With the help of the corpus fund, the immediate anger they feel towards the animal can be minimized.
Grass roots organisations such as CEVA play an integral role in social and emotional fabric of local communities. They become the first point of support for any issue as they form a link between inhabitants of these remote places and the outside world. Grassroot organisations are at the forefront of change as they are able to facilitate it from within. I was very happy to hear that at the Climate Change Conference COP26 (Conference of the Parties) $1.7 billion pledge was announced in support of Indigenous peoples and local community efforts to protect tropical forests. The importance of grassroot organisations being recognized at an international level is huge, it means that people at the bottom of the pyramid also have a say in how they safeguard their homes. The next natural question then is how do we enable Grassroots to harness such a growing global momentum, that’s the lacuna GroundUp Conservation is attempting to fill.
Cover Image: Discussing the need for biodiversity conservation, and its linkages with tourism and income for with indegenous Communities of Pangi, Himachal Pradesh
