Reforestation of a biodiversity hotspot

By Thies Geertz

With the onset of the monsoon, in June this year, I traveled to India to visit our reforestation project in the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats are a mountain range that stretches over 1,600 km in a north-south direction and separates the central highlands of the Indian subcontinent from the ocean. During the monsoon, humid air masses hit the land and produce heavy rainfall on the mountain slopes of the Westghats, creating a lush and biodiverse rainforest here. The Western Ghats are among the world's most important biodiversity hotspots.

Due to the pressure of more and more new settlements, the rainforest had to gradually give way to arable land and cattle pastures - with fatal consequences for the people who live in the mountain region. The forest is not only a gigantic water reservoir for agriculture, but also supplies cities with millions of inhabitants such as Pune and Bangalore with water. Due to deforestation and global climate change, droughts in the region are already becoming more pronounced, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people.

Planting 55,000 trees together

To counter the rapid deforestation, we are implementing a reforestation project in the northern part of the Western Ghats in partnership with Terre Policy Centre and the Shashwat Trust. In the project, local communities are closely involved in the measures to jointly create economic perspectives by processing the products harvested in the forest. Primarily, these are medicinal plants such as Hirda, which are used in Ayurvedic medicine and for which there is a great demand.

On site, I visit the central nursery, which was established here within a year as part of the project and has a production capacity of 100,000. This and other smaller nurseries are run by local women's groups. Following start-up funding, the women's groups are able to earn an income from the nurseries as well as from processing the hirda fruits. Together, 23,000 trees have already been planted on degraded land in 2022. By the end of 2023, there will be more than 55,000 trees - a great success story that I take back to Radolfzell.