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Report of the Small Grants Programme regarding ABSTRACT INTRODUCTUION Small Grant Programme (SGP) of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & Environment (ATREE) sponsors innovative initiatives in the area of ecology & conservation. I thus thought it appropriate to apply for a grant under this programme, in early 2001 to expand & strengthen the emerging theme of urban wilderness, that I was associated with. Given the rampant urbanisation, it is increasingly evident that the world will soon be left with an impoverished biota that is able to tolerate direct (e.g. pollution) & indirect (e.g. habitat fragmentation) impacts of urbanisation worldwide- from Amazonia to Australia. What management strategies might maximise the biodiversity in these impacted, fragmented landscapes is the latest & premier research concern globally. Suchresearch could largely hinge on biology students, as a part of their formal curriculum, it was proposed by environmentalists & academicians, during the last decade of the last millennium. However, with the turn of the new millennium, pure, academic biology education courses like taxonomy are increasingly turning unrewarding & giving way to applied, commercial courses like biotechnology. Applied courses like undergraduate environmental education is only ending up in producing qualified recruits for the flourishing industry in generating fraudulent `no pollution' certificates, to perpetuate & not regulate the escalating pollution. The problem tackled with the SGP was thus exploring ways to involve undergraduate biology & environmental students in building their capacities to study & plan for their neighbouring environment. METHODS The college student driven NGO I am associated with- Research & Action in Natural Wealth Administration (RANWA) had coordinated during 2000 with Abasaheb Garware College & Environmental Science Department of Pune University synthesis & publication of urban biodiversity directory for Pune city. This initiative neamed `Pune Alive' was an exercise in listing & tabulating distribution of species of a dozen organismic groups in & around Pune city. Besides launching the concept of urban biodiversity as an important & replicable study, it highlighted the need to `look around' with open eyes & `build upon the existing resources' than explore remote resources. The programme was co-sponsored by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc). I attempted to employ SGP support in building capacity of environmental students & less so, institutions, in ecological monitoring & publicity. This is hoped to enhance awareness leading, in theory to informed decision making by urban planners, in favour of ecological conservation. Expansion of the urban ecology theme entailed deeper inquiry at micro level as compared to the urban area studied in Pune Alive. This was achieved in terrestrial ecosystems at Pune University campus & aquatic ecosystem as a stagnant waterbody- Pashan wetland on city outskirts. Besides these municipal catchment areas, defense establishment catchment was also explored as possible conservation site. OUTPUTS The research lead to synthesise boost & ongoing data collection, leading within a semester to scientific publications of international standard, as evidenced for their inclusion in a specially carved theme entitled urban ecosystems, in the international conference on Tropical Ecosystems organised by Association for Tropical Biology (ATB). Simultaneously, appeared several follow-up popular articles, involving student authors, in reputed national magazines such as Hindu Folio, Sanctuary Asia, Down to Earth- raising the possibility of its replication elsewhere in the country. This possibility is brightened by its dissemination through the National Biodiversity Strategy & Action Plan (NBSAP) project coordinated jointly by the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), Government of India (GoI) & numerous NGOs across the country. Most importantly, the cause of urban biota was upheld by local news media (see annxure 1). The initiative was not confined to publications alone, but divulged into planning such as with the Municipal authorities (annexure 2) leading to studies on mapping & monitoring changes in urban garden biota (annexure 3) or action of de-weeding the wetland. The uninformed & unwarranted dredging of the wetland by the authorities weeks ahead of this discussion only highlighted the need for using such publications to build pressure from citizen's groups. Horizontal expansion of the theme was facilitated by the series of discussions with Centre for Environmental Education, leading to a grant from them under the SGP of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) project in India through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). At the local level, this facilitates expansion of this theme to Pune-Mumbai urban belt, an order of magnitude larger than the Pune urban area, with focus on a hotspot in the Western Ghats in between the two cities- Khandala valley catchment- of the size of Pune urban area. This project opens up the possibilities of replication of this approach elsewhere globally. This re-assurance was derived by the student force that drove the ATREE-SGP was re-assured at ATB, which provided unprecedented opportunity for the students involved to network with potential regional & global collaborators, & build confidence amongst all (annexure 4). These outputs are shared worlwide through the website- www.ranwa.org. The ATREE-SGP has uniquely helped build capacities, confidence, satisfaction, besides earning them & the theme a recognition. I remain thankful to ATREE fraternity & particularly its promotional director Dr. Gladwin Joseph. |