00:00The sun finally breaks through after months of heavy rain in Maharashtra's Satara district.
00:08For Santosh Kadam, it marks a change from planting to nurturing growth.
00:13Once a migrant labourer in Mumbai and Chiploon,
00:16Santosh now leads afforestation efforts in his home village of Nechal.
00:22It has been seven years since I started working here.
00:27I have benefited a lot.
00:28We have around 23 to 25 people working on this plantation.
00:34I was first given 35 acres to manage.
00:37We did a good job and then I began to manage 100 acres of land.
00:43The land he works on lies between two wildlife sanctuaries, Koina and Chanduli.
00:49But unlike other protected zones,
00:51these plots are privately owned and have suffered years of environmental damage.
00:58These are mostly non-agricultural lands, you know, so people want to get some kind of returns from these lands.
01:05And the traditional practice was to cut the forest on these lands at regular intervals and, you know, sell them for firewood or similar, maybe for making charcoal etc.
01:16So, initially, for a few cycles, maybe it remains sustainable.
01:21But when you cut these trees again and again, then at some point the forest starts becoming degraded and it gets converted to, say, bushy kind of vegetation and eventually to grasslands.
01:32Once part of a thriving forest, the land here was stripped bare, reduced to dry, degraded patches.
01:40Now, Santosh is helping to turn that around.
01:43The project is funded mainly through corporate social responsibility contributions,
01:48a model where businesses invest in social and environmental initiatives.
01:52These funds support local workers who are restoring the landscape, planting native trees and bringing biodiversity back.
02:01The work is ongoing according to the seasons.
02:06We were very poor before, but because of this work, our situation has improved from before.
02:11Today, up to 200 people work on these plantations.
02:17The non-profit Wildlife Research and Conservation Society has become the region's largest employer.
02:24So, initially, when we started doing plantation, there were some worries among the local people that, you know, when we give the land for plantation,
02:32like, are we going to, you know, take ownership of the land or something?
02:36But now they have developed confidence in us and they don't have any such worries now.
02:39It all starts with saplings.
02:42They are first grown in nurseries, many set up as part of the project.
02:47After several months to a year, they are planted and carefully tended to.
02:53Once we do a plantation, it continues to give employment to people in that area for a period of three years.
02:59And so that is the immediate benefit that the community gets from these plantations.
03:04And the kind of trees that we plant are mostly economically useful.
03:08They are native tree species which enrich the biodiversity of this region.
03:11But they are also economically useful and economically important in the sense that they use, they yield various kinds of forest produce, you know, like fruit, seeds, etc.
03:20Since its launch in 2014, the Koina Chandoli project has reforested over 900 acres across 18 villages.
03:30In the long run, it aims to generate income through sustainable harvesting of forest produce.
03:36But even now, the impact is tangible.
03:39Many families are already seeing financial relief.
03:43Among them is Santosh's wife, Meeta, who also works for the project.
03:47The money I get is helpful for children's education.
03:53The money I earn from this work.
03:56If there is something I need in the house, I am able to buy that.
03:59If there is any emergency, then the money I get from working can be used for that.
04:05In remote areas like this, long-term employment is rare.
04:14Men often migrate for work, leaving women behind.
04:20We used to sell wood.
04:22That was our only option.
04:23More than 10 years in, the impact is clear.
04:29The soil is healthier and wildlife is returning.
04:32Today, 80% of the workforce is female.
04:35Many of those who once survived by cutting down trees are now helping them grow.
04:39We now plant trees, nurture them.
04:45We will now get fruits from these trees.
04:48There's guava, there's black plum.
04:50When the trees grow, we will get to eat these fruits.
04:53A little over 200 kilometers further north in Loni Kalbhor, near Pune, sustainability consultant Shantanu Goyal is testing a similar model with a focus on faster returns.
05:07The main idea is to show a forestry model, a production forestry model, and we are using a private land for that.
05:19What we are doing is, wherever we used to do agriculture, the flatlands, there we are going in for growing napier, which is going to go either for fodder or for biofuel industry.
05:29And then, the other part of the thing is, wherever we have sloping lands, we will be doing a lot of tree plantations.
05:34Again, the tree plantations will be of two types, one will be for timber, so about 60% may be timber, and 40% will be horticultural species.
05:43So, it will be mainly for getting returns out on this land.
05:46To make his model work, Shantanu Goyal's top priority is water.
05:52So, a lot of forestation projects do not have a very strong focus on water, and that's why a lot of projects fail, and they do not give the sort of returns that you're looking at.
06:02He's already dug two reservoirs and tabbed into deeper rock layers to store cooler water with less evaporation.
06:10His goal is to speed up afforestation and make the model financially self-sustaining.
06:15What we are doing is, once we do the water, we are increasing the pace at which the forestation happens, and the biodiversity comes back to this place.
06:24In both Satara and Loni Kalbhor, the mission is clear, making conservation work for communities, by giving people a reason to protect their forests.
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