Climate Historians in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve

Leveraging traditional knowledge for gender just, bottom-up climate action.

Home to a vast range of diverse beings — including more than 3,200 flowering species, 100 mammal species, 550 bird species, 300 butterfly species, and others waiting to be discovered — the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve is one of India’s most enchanting and unique biodiversity hotspots.

Its delicate and thriving ecosystems are, however, under threat today from the accelerating nature and climate crises. Erratic rainfall, temperature increase, extreme weather events, and irregular construction activities, among others, are reducing natural cover, increasing land infertility and soil erosion, and contributing to natural habitat destruction. More than 20 tribal communities, who have lived in harmony with and depended on the region’s natural resources for centuries, are now grappling with the consequences of climate change — most also belong to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

One of these is the Irula community, a Scheduled Tribe, dependent on subsistence farming, wage labour, and collection of non-timber forest produce. Bellu, a smallholder farmer and Irula Tribe elder fondly called Bellu ‘Amma’, has witnessed socio-ecological changes in her hometown, Chokkanahalli village, and the surrounding Sigur plateau region since the 1970s. Asked about her attachment to the region, she reminisces about the crystal-clear water in the local stream — once good for kulikyurdukku and kudikyurdukku (bathing and drinking). The ecology and flow have since changed due to the construction of an upstream dam and erratic weather patterns. Bathing in the stream now causes skin allergies; drinking it often brings on a cold and cough due to yellow algae that grow on the surface in lean season. The turtles that once inhabited the river have also disappeared, and the fish have reduced both in size and number.

While articulating these changes, Bellu Amma recognises the significance of local cultural knowledge in addressing the biodiversity and climate crises. She recollects that she would follow tribal elders into the forest, as a child?—?and, while they would graze, she would climb trees, eat local fruits like magare palam (Canthium coromandelicum fruit), harvest greens like munne keerai (Alangium salviifolium leaves), and learn about nature. Her children, however, did not accompany her into the forest, having gone to school, and therefore did not acquire a lot of this traditional knowledge and insights.

To preserve and honour community memory, she sits with village children once a month through the tribal Village Elder programme to impart traditional knowledge about the forest, river, hills, food, animals, and birds. “I am happy about it,” she says. “They would at least carry the knowledge that I teach them.” Not knowing how to write, Bellu Amma’s journey as a natural historian has revolved around oral traditions; but, for the coming generations like her children, she thinks it is important to document knowledge so it is not lost.

Putting gender justice at the centre of climate action

Natural historians like Bellu Amma aren’t alone in recognising this need. Keystone Foundation, a non-profit, has been working to document this traditional knowledge for participatory, and collective, bottom-up climate action. Through their Climate Historians project, Keystone Foundation is leveraging community perceptions and histories of adaptation and resilience to create a comprehensive database of climate indicators, derived from traditional ecological knowledge. With this, they hope to enhance climate change research and strategies, eventually impacting climate action plans for the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.

This project adopts nuanced pathways to gender just climate action?—?building on learnings from Keystone Foundation’s Barefoot Ecologists model, started in 2008. In 2019, they started working with the women Barefoot Ecologists team focusing on agroecology, which won the UN Gender Just Climate Solution at COP27 under the transformational solutions category. Under this, local women were trained to collect and analyse data with a specific focus on agroecology?—?including the state of forests, waters, and farms, and then establish initiatives to improve the situation, like water projects, tree nurseries, seed banks, and community gardens.

Realising the need for a specific focus on climate change, Keystone Foundation extended this model to the present Climate Historians project in 2021. In addition to two streams of knowledge (scientific methods and traditional knowledge for monitoring the ecosystems), critical components like oral histories and technology like Automated Weather Stations were included. This holistic combination is key to the project’s bottom-up intent – essential for sustained community buy-in and participation in local climate action.

After training locals in quantitative and qualitative research methods, Keystone Foundation now chooses Climate Historians like Bellu Amma, who are then each paired with a formally educated person from the same community. The paired individuals complement each other (with traditional and formal knowledge), facilitating documentation and use of new technologies?—?helping community members like Bellu Amma understand weather patterns from the latest technologies and blend these insights with her observations.

In 2021, Keystone Foundation conducted a pilot to test this project and document oral history traditions in Sigur, Sathyamangalam, and Kotagiri. They conducted focus group discussions with the local community, starting with elders’ perceptions since the 1970s, with the interviews led by Climate Historians like Bellu Amma. One tangible output of this work is an ecological calendar, which Climate Historians use to facilitate discussions with community members about how to adapt livelihood activities to new weather patterns. Keystone Foundation is also planning to share these learnings through a community radio and storybooks in local languages.

Another key result is the integration of local women into nature conservation and climate action, helping overcome the ‘victim-saviour’ mentality prevalent in policies and actions. For example, by documenting knowledge about and uncertainties in local perceptions, Climate Historians can now impart formal climate education curricula in mainstream and tribal residential schools in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. Capacity building among tribal women also facilitates the vocabulary and tools required to communicate their vulnerabilities and needs to Government officials and foster collaborations with government authorities, to be part of the solution. This project also seeks to document climate change-related perceptions of other marginalised communities like tea pickers, wage labourers, and farmers in peri urban spaces, and build substantial climate capacity in the region with a strong gender focus.

It is widely recognised at global fora that women are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Yet, insufficient effort is put into creating safe spaces for women to contribute to climate conversations?—?participation is often about headcounts, impacting substantive gender inclusivity. Furthermore, although women in the region are knowledge holders about traditional medicines, wild foods, seeds, etc., they aren’t given sufficient space in climate conversations due to socio-cultural reasons.

According to Bhavya George, Programme Coordinator?—?Climate Change, Keystone Foundation, this is a crucial opportunity to address this imbalance. “The Climate Historians project focuses on talking to men and women and documenting their knowledge and perceptions, and climate impacts?—?ensuring women are involved in the planning and action measures. This is easy for us as an organisation with 30 years of field presence and with previous engagement with women through different programmes like farming, watershed management, seed banks, nurseries, etc.”

This bottom-up approach is vital to localised and context-appropriate climate action. As Bhavya says, “We know about the weather-based crop insurance scheme in the country; but, imagine Climate Historians utilising the data from Automated Weather Stations backed by community stories on climate impacts and then claiming the insurance. This is a long-term goal but it needs a beginning; this is why separate funding for such projects with independent priority is the need of the hour.”

Bellu Amma’s journey reflects the urgency of the project. Her time as a Climate Historian over two years is already yielding benefits for her livelihood, connected with Keystone Foundation’s initiatives like Barefoot Ecology and the Village Elder programme. Her training alongside formal ecologists has enabled her to incorporate climate-resilient practices, such as analog forestry, with sustainable traditional farming practices. Armed with her oral history, emerging vocabulary, and formal documentation, she can now take the community’s observations and learnings to the panchayat about farmers’ challenges and risks?—?impacting climate adaptation strategies at the village level.

Scaling value and validation for traditional knowledge

Soon, Keystone Foundation hopes to bolster these local Climate Historians’ efforts through planned Climate Discovery Centres. Envisioned as interactive climate science spaces with a local and traditional knowledge lens, these centres will translate real-time data from Automated Weather Stations and other open-source weather platforms into interactive visual narratives to increase accessibility to climate data. This will aid strategic knowledge sharing among Climate Historians, village elders, and younger generations, about climate risks and adaptation tools and strategies?—?transforming thinking into action.

The establishment of these centres in proximity to community settlements shows that the Climate Historians project is not stand-alone?—?but an essential solution to a challenge faced across the breadth of Keystone Foundation’s community-led programmes in the Nilgiris, including its farming, watershed management, biodiversity conservation, and beekeeping programmes.

This also reflects the transformative potential of the project, which, while not immediate, will yield long-term positive outcomes. “Women face cultural and social barriers in embracing digitalisation and technology,” Bhavya states. “Through the Climate Historians project, women can engage deeply with technology, towards digital empowerment. Our work with women is also informing programmes that tackle other intersectionalities that impact gender, such as climate x health and climate x food. Our work with Climate Historians will help us document changes in food plates due to climate reasons, for example, and discuss ways to supplement nutrition through alternative options for women.”

By scaling the Climate Historians model, Keystone Foundation hopes to achieve three things: advocate for local gender just climate solutions, build the capacities of women as a collective, and build networks and convergence with government schemes.

This is an essential and inclusive start to capturing how individuals across the Nilgiris are bearing witness to the impacts of climate change. As Vasanta, Sathya, and Prema, of the Irula community in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in the Nilgiris, express, “As we live so close to the forest, we can see the changes right away. These are the months of Butea monosperma flowering. The flowers are also commonly called the flame of the forest because of their rich orange colour. One thing we have noticed is the colours of the flower are not the same. It seems dull and, in some trees, there is no flowering at all.”

Learn more about Keystone Foundation’s Climate Historians project on Earth Exponential, the India Climate Collaborative’s climate solutions platform that connects CSR funders with non-profits across India.

Co-written by Bhavya George, Programme Coordinator?—?Climate Change, Keystone Foundation , and Padma Venkataraman Venkataraman, Editorial Associate, India Climate Collaborative