Summer sights

The neem has flowered as have the Spathodea and Copper Pod trees on our road.

I saw the Shikra this morning - it has been in the neighbourhood for a while, I have been hearing its calls, for the last couple of months. Finally, a sighting. 

Terrace walking has its rewards. 

Nature worship

Kopsia fruticosa

 The morning shower washed these blooms.  

I watched them with delight everytime I passed the window.  

In the afternoon, they were all gone.  in dismay, i looked around, on the ground, nowhere to be found.

Selvi had other ideas.  She had offered them in puja.  All of them.

Lost Words and Lost Spells

Lost Words and Lost Spells - YouTube

Dams are being brought down

Damming rivers is terrible for human rights, ecosystems and food security

March 05, 2021

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/environment/damming-rivers-is-terrible-for-human-rights-ecosystems-and-food-security-75783?

Despite industry rhetoric, hydroelectricity is high-cost and high-risk. There are better options for a post-pandemic recovery and a renewable energy future

Despite industry rhetoric, hydroelectricity is high-cost and high-risk. There are better options for a post-pandemic recovery and a renewable energy future

There’s some good news amidst the grim global pandemic: At long last, the world’s largest dam removal is finally happening.

The landmark agreement, which was finalised in November 2020 between farmers, tribes and dam owners, will finally bring down four aging, inefficient dams along the Klamath river in the US Pacific Northwest.

This is an important step in restoring historic salmon runs, which have drastically declined in recent years since the dams were constructed. It’s also an incredible win for the Karuk and Yurok tribes, who for untold generations have relied on the salmon runs for both sustenance and spiritual well-being.

The tribes, supported by environmental activists, led a decades-long effort to broker an agreement. They faced vehement opposition from some farmers and owners of lakeside properties, but in 2010, they managed what had seemed impossible: PacifiCorp, the operator of the dams, signed a dam removal agreement, along with 40 other signatories that included the tribes and the state governments of Oregon and California. Unfortunately, progress stalled for years when questions arose around who would pay for the dam removals.

The dam removal project is a sign of the decline of the hydroelectricity industry, whose fortunes have fallen as the troubling cost-benefit ratio of dams has become clear over the years. The rise of more cost-effective and sustainable energy sources (including wind and solar) has hastened this shift.

This is exactly the type of progress envisioned by the World Commission on Dams (WCD), a global multi-stakeholder body that was established by the World Bank and International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1998 to investigate the effectiveness and performance of large dams around the world.

The WCD released a damning landmark report in November 2000 on the enormous financial, environmental and human costs and the dismal performance of large dams.

The commission spent two years analysing the outcome of the trillions of dollars invested in dams, reviewing dozens of case studies and testimonies from over a thousand communities and individuals, before producing the report.

But despite this progress, we cannot take hydropower’s decline as inevitable. As governments around the world plan for a post-pandemic recovery, hydropower companies sense an opportunity.

The industry is eager to recast itself as climate-friendly (it’s not) and secure precious stimulus funds to revive its dying industry — at the expense of people, the environment and a truly just, green recovery.

Hydropower’s troubling record

The world’s largest hydropower dam removal project on the Klamath river is a significant win for tribal communities. But while the Yurok and Karuk tribes suffered terribly from the decline of the Klamath’s fisheries, they were by no means alone in that experience.

The environmental catastrophe that occurred along the Klamath river has been replicated all over the world since the global boom in hydropower construction began early in the 20th century.

The rush to dam rivers has had huge consequences. After decades of rampant construction, only 37 per cent of the world’s rivers remain free-flowing, according to one study. River fragmentation has decimated freshwater habitats and fish stocks, threatening food security for millions of the world’s most vulnerable people and hastening the decline of other myriad freshwater species, including mammals, birds and reptiles.

The communities that experienced the most harm from dams — whether in Asia, Latin America or Africa — often lacked political power and access. But that didn’t stop grassroots movements from organizing and growing to fight for their rights and livelihoods.

The people affected by dams began raising their voices, sharing their experiences and forging alliances across borders. By the 1990s, the public outcry against large dams had grown so loud that it finally led to the establishment of the WCD.

What the WCD found was stunning. While large dam projects had brought some economic benefits, they had also forcibly displaced an estimated 40-80 million people in the 20th century alone.

To put that number into perspective, it is more than the current population of present-day France or the United Kingdom. These people lost their lands and homes to dams and often with no compensation.

Subsequent research has compounded that finding. A paper published in Water Alternatives revealed that globally, more than 470 million people living downstream from large dams have faced significant impacts to their lives and livelihoods — much of it due to disruptions in water supply, which in turn harm the complex web of life that depends on healthy, free-flowing rivers.

The WCD’s findings, released in 2000, identified the importance of restoring rivers, compensating communities for their losses, and finding better energy alternatives to save rivers and ecosystems.

Facing a new crisis

Twenty years after the WCD uncovered a crisis along the world’s rivers and recommended a new development path — one that advances community-driven development and protects freshwater resources — we find ourselves in the midst of another crisis. The global pandemic has hit us hard, with surging loss of life, unemployment and instability.

But as governments work to rebuild economies and create job opportunities in the coming years, we have a choice: Double down on the failed, outdated technologies that have harmed so many, or change course and use this transformative moment to rebuild our natural systems and uplift communities.

There are many reasons to fight for a green recovery. The climate is changing even faster than expected and some dams — especially those with reservoirs in hot climates — have been found to emit more greenhouse gases than a fossil fuel power plant. Other estimates have put global reservoirs’ human-made greenhouse gas emissions each year on par with Canada’s total emissions.

Meanwhile, we now understand that healthy rivers and freshwater ecosystems play a critical role in regulating and storing carbon. And at a time when biodiversity loss is soaring, anything we can do to restore habitat is key.

But with more than 3,700 major dams proposed or under construction in the world (primarily in the Global South, with over 500 of these in protected areas), according to a 2014 report — and the hydropower industry jockeying for scarce stimulus dollars — we must act urgently.

Signs of hope

So what would a strong, resilient and equitable recovery look like in the 21st century? Let’s consider one example in Southeast Asia.

Running through six countries, the Mekong river is the world’s 12th-longest river, which is home to one of the world’s most biodiverse regions and includes the world’s largest inland fishery.

Around 80 per cent of the nearly 65 million people who live in the lower Mekong river basin depend on the river for their livelihoods, according to the Mekong River Commission. In 1994, Thailand built the Pak Mun dam on a Mekong tributary.

Six years later, the WCD studied the dam’s performance and submitted its conclusions and recommendations as part of its final report in 2000. According to the WCD report, the Pak Mun dam did not deliver the peaking energy service it was designed for, and it physically blocked a critical migration route for a range of fish species that migrated annually to breeding grounds upstream in the Mun river basin. Cut off from their customary habitat, fish stocks plummeted and so did the livelihoods of the local people.

Neighboring Laos, instead of learning from this debacle, followed in Thailand’s footsteps, constructing two dams on the river’s mainstem, Xayaburi dam, commissioned in 2019, and Don Sahong dam, commissioned in 2020.

But then a sign of hope appeared. In early 2020, just as the pandemic began to spread across the world, the Cambodian government reconsidered its plans to build more dams on the Mekong.

The science was indisputable: A government-commissioned report showed that further dams would reduce the river’s wild fisheries, threaten critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphins and block nutrient-rich sediment from the delta’s fertile agricultural lands.

Studies show that Cambodia didn’t need to seek billions of dollars in loans to build more hydropower; instead, it could pursue more cost-effective solar and wind projects that would deliver needed electricity at a fraction of the cost — and without the ecological disasters to fisheries and the verdant Mekong delta.

And, in a stunning reversal, Cambodia listened to the science — and to the people — and announced a 10-year moratorium on mainstream dams. Cambodia is now reconsidering its energy mix, recognising that mainstream hydropower dams are too costly and undermine the economic and cultural values of its flagship river.

Toward a green recovery

Increasingly, governments, civil servants and the public at large are rethinking how we produce energy and are seeking to preserve and restore precious freshwater resources. Dam removals are increasing exponentially across North America and Europe, and movements advancing permanent river protection are growing across Latin America, Asia and Africa.

We must use the COVID-19 crisis to accelerate the trend. Rather than relying on old destructive technologies and industry claims of newfound “sustainable hydropower,” the world requires a new paradigm for an economic recovery that is rooted both in climate and economic justice as well as river stewardship.

Since December 2020, hundreds of groups and individuals from more than 80 countries have joined the Rivers4Recovery call for a better way forward for rivers and natural places.

This paradigm will protect our rivers as critical lifelines — supporting fisheries, biodiversity, water supply, food production, Indigenous peoples and diverse populations around the world — rather than damming and polluting them.

The promise of the Klamath dam removals is one of restoration — a move that finally recognizes the immense value of free-flowing rivers and the key role they play in nourishing both the world’s biodiversity and hundreds of millions of people.

Healthy rivers — connected to watershed forests, floodplains, wetlands and deltas — are key partners in building resilience in the face of an accelerating climate crisis. But if we allow the hydropower industry to succeed in its cynical grab for stimulus funds, we’ll only perpetuate the 20th century’s legacy of suffering and environmental degradation.

We must put our money where our values are. Twenty years ago, the WCD pointed the way forward to a model of development that takes humans, wildlife and the environment into account, and in 2020, we saw that vision flower along the Klamath river. It’s time to bring that promise of healing and restoration to more of the world’s rivers.

This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute

Deborah Moore is a former commissioner of the World Commission on Dams

Michael Simon was a member of the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Forum

Darryl Knudsen is the executive director of International Rivers

Views expressed are the author’s own and don't necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

Kingfisher morning

 10th March 2021

Kingfishers have been very active this last moth, calling almost incessantly though the day.  This one got to work early.

Blues, to chase away the blues.

Unmindful of me.  Calling and communicating to the females in the territory I think.

Serious and loud

Focussed

Business-like

The excitement of the hornbill that showed up in south Madras

My first post this year celebrates an unusual event for me.

23rd Jan 2021

A rather interesting start to the morning.  As I desultorily scrolled through the MNS WhatsApp messages, I stopped.  Lakshmi, very tentatively, asks, "Is grey hornbill a usual visitor near Adyar broken bridge?"  Huh, whaaaat?  And then two pictures of pictures in their cameras!

The group was buzzing with amazement and excitement.  Rajaram called the bird Jonathon Livingston Hornbill, out exploring southern climes.  Vikas mentioned that it had not been seen south of Mamanduru maybe.

31st Jan 2021

The feathered celebrity made it to the papers, and of course e-bird.  TS has been such a sanctuary for all sorts of non-human creatures, in the heart of my city, guarded zealously by its members.  

Patagonia Picnic basket?  From Wiki -

The Patagonia picnic table effect (also known as the Patagonia rest area effect or Patagonia rest stop effect) is a phenomenon associated with birding in which an influx of birdwatchers following the discovery of a rare bird at a location results in the discovery of further rare birds at that location, and so on, with the end result being that the locality becomes well known for rare birds, even though in itself it may be little or no better than other similar localities.[1]

The name arises from the Patagonia Rest Stop in Arizona, where the phenomenon was first noted.[2] As of June, 2020, more than 220 species have been recorded there

24th Feb 2021

I am terrace-walking and listening to music, watching the sunbirds and the kingfisher, when there is a raucous frenzy among the crows, and a flash of grey into the Spathodea tree across the street.  Shikra, I think and watch it idly as I continue walking.  (A shikra had been calling loudly and insistently the fortnight before), and as I move, I suddenly stop - that beak looks way too big, and wait, that tail is too long.  

Hello, what - it is the hornbill!  I could not believe my myopic eyes were seeing right.  Call to my husband goes unanswered.  Ring Sheila - she answers, I hiss, come up immediately - bring camera and binocs - the hornbill is here!  I must say that she was up pronto (nothing else would stir us up into such quick action), and I point (without pointing, can't have the bird flying off), and she says yes.  I grab her binoculars, and her hands shake as she tries to put her camera on and focus on it, in the foliage.  The crows continue to caw blue murder all around.  I get a good look through the binoculars.

Almost immediately, it decided it had enough of the bullying crows, and took off with one call, flying east.

The Indian Grey hornbill seen on new beach road, seconds before it took off.  Photo by Sheila

What an unexpected "darshan", and I was so happy I could share the moment with atleast one more person.  I felt a bit sad as well, as to the hostility it had to face from the neighbourhood crows, let alone the lack of its favourite fruit trees.  I wished and hoped it had flown back to the TS.

Tried to upload the sighting on e-bird, but hmmm the bird did not exist or what?  Ah, tripped by Grey vs Gray.  

Soon after, it was not TS, but IIT where it was heard.  Suzy reported hearing calls, but no sightings.  And then on the 27th, Mahathi caught a glimpse.  

Indian Gray Hornbill (Ocyceros birostris) (1)

- Reported Feb 27, 2021 13:01 by Mahathi Narayanaswamy
- Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
- Map: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=p&z=13&q=12.9934334,80.2380896&ll=12.9934334,80.2380896
- Checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S82408913
- Comments: "Flew into the banyan in front of stadium and disturbed 9 of the 14 koels on the tree. As a result it got startled and it flew out. I tried to look for it again, especially since a lot of banyan trees in the area are fruiting but looking at birds on the banyan tree for so long non stop caused my neck to get strained so will go home check the trees around my house take a break and come back once the sun subsides a little to look for the bird to get a record shot.
This individual has been seen in ts and thiruvanmiyur recently and we have been hearing it on campus around the stadium area for the past three days so it may be doing rounds there owing to the several fruiting banyans in the area.
As for description- Size was koel+, flight was in a sense as though it soars before it landed, colour of feathers is uniform grey, tail and wing feathers have white markings which are viable in flight, for the few seconds that I got to see it the notch like thing on the hornbills beak was also visible(dont know what its called)."

I wish you safe passage and haven, and may you make a home and family in our city, or wherever your journey takes you.  Thanks for the visit.  

Beach walks

 

Creamy mallows, and blushing Ipomoeas.  Blue skies and a bright sun.

The waters glimmer and shimmer.  I look hopefully.  No dolphins sighted.

But hello, what is this?  The waves washed over it and it moved tentatively.  that one claw looked a bit disjointed.  Actually it looked "dirty".  See the pink and the brown cover.  Yuvan wondered if it was a Decorator Crab. Eh?

And so I learnt about decorator crabs which cover themselves with all sorts of things as part of camouflage - from seaweed to coral bits, to even moss and sea anemones.  Who would have thought!  

I also got a response from Vardhan patankar, via Manish Chandi that this is a spider crab, genus Doclea.  "Quite common across the Indian coastline, he said.  Seen it on the Goa coasts.

Bivalves were all over the intertidal area - Siliqua radiata - all empty shells.

This tower snail (Turritella),  seemed to be alive and on the move - see the trail behind it.

This Plough Snail was alive too.  The snail foot was moving.  Such beautiful texture and delicate colouring of its shell.

Ipomoea pes-caprae - a beautiful sight in the mornings.  

A Chalky Percher rested on the sands.

I almost missed this ghost crab - it was a brave one - stared at me and didn't vanish down its hole.

Pretty dishes, facing the sun.

With their two lobed thick leaves

Can't seem to get enough of them.

More, next time.

Loving the rains - new leaves and flowers

 

Our Tulsi plants are happy and blooming - Ocimum tenuiflorum

Rains last night,

Purple bells in my garden this morning

What magic is this?

The rain is magical - it makes every plant kind of perk up like nothing else.  And that is true of all my ten and a half balcony pots.   No wonder that the monsoon makes the artist in us wax lyrical.  

To my delight, the rains have brought the flowers and fresh leaves as well to my tulsi pots.  For some reason, these tulsi flowers transport me to the Valley of Flowers, the valley floor filled with green and wild flowers.  The last few days, the weather has also been like that - ok I'm imagining yes (I hope Sriram doesn't read this) - cloudy, with a cool breeze, and rain.

The rains have also brought a mouse to the house.  It feasted on the plentiful supply of bananas and melon seeds that i had carelessly left on my kitchen counter, and has decided not to leave,  Last two nights it has neatly eaten the coconut in the mouse trap and gone. Tom and Jerry games await, with me being Tom I think.

Lockdown Diaries - Ecosystems, learning and relationships

29th August 2020

A Saturday morning, and I'm up with the excited mynahs outside my window.  After a long gap, I headed to the OMR Tree Park of Nizhal, and with the excuse of assisting with some deweeding and basic gardening, I actually had a lovely outdoor morning.  (Mutualism?)

Rashmi left me to my own devices, and it was good to be on my own, working at my own pace, observing the ants.  A huge carpenter bee buzzed past, busy in the morning dipping into all the Calatropis flowers.

Milkweed (Calatropis procera) was in bloom everywhere

 

Calatropis, what an amazing plant.  This milkweed will never disappoint, always has so much going on.

Reminded me of Yuvan's insightful essay on The Ecosystem of Learning where he writes, "Within a square-inch of space I had seen awhole web of ecological relationships,..."

He writes about the experiments of the Songlines Farm School in moving children to the centre of education, changing their perspectives from an object-driven to a process driven understanding, which means the inclusions of all living beings in a relationship web.  The article is in full below.

Getting back to the Calatropis. and kin (read about ki and kin in the article), insects. 

A Gaudy grasshopper family (Poekilocerus pictus)  were busy feeding on the milkweed, which is considered poisonous to everything else.

Predation - A jumping spider had caught and was busy snuffing the life out of another insect that I couldn't make out.

This Lynx Spider, on the other hand, was not so lucky and was yet to find ki's breakfast 

Mutualism - A Small Banded Swift - a butterfly was also on the lookout for nectar

A better picture of the Skipper, but I have not yet identified this tree

Competition? Elsewhere on what looked like some member of the legume family, a Small Transverse Lady Beetle seemed to be having a face off with the black ant.  The beetle was probably looking to eat some aphids, which the ant was busy rearing?  

I admired the designs on this shiny red beetle (Coccinella transversalis)

The Calatropis plants were in fruit and seed.  Fruits created by the pollination of a whole set of different pollinators.  This one was ready to let go of more seeds.  And ki also was feeding many insects and beetles.

And after much workout for my knees and back - all that sitting on the haunches while deweeding - it was time to leave.  The butterflies and Odonates were just beginning to whizz around.  A whole host of Tawny Costers, Plain Tigers, Grass Yellows, and even a Blue striped tiger.  I saw my first Picture Wing dragonfly as I walked around outside the park, among the overgrown weeds and grass.

The wonderful work that the Nizhal team does, day in and day out, come rain come shine, through the lockdown and pandemic, sometimes even through the thoughtlessness of institutional action, it is remarkable and inspiring. 

Putting into action what Yuvan writes about.

Here is the essay.

The Ecosystem of Learning

By M. Yuvan on Aug. 27, 2020 in Environment and Ecology

Reimagining an Earth-centric and child-centric education

Specially written for Vikalp Sangam

On the Drumstick tree dozens of Lappet moth caterpillars had begun to descend from the foliage. Their furry bodies draped its trunk. Tender bark exfoliated with their feeding. I was accompanying a group of children to the animal shed, at the Songlines Farm School. Songlines is an alternative educational space I am part of running under Abacus Montessori School, where children and educators live and learn on a farm, with the natural environment. It is located in the small village of Vellaputhur, in the district of Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. The monsoon was retreating, and the dense December mist would veil every dawn for several more days.

Larvae throw a unique challenge to language. Lappet caterpillars physiologically lack a gender till they metamorphose into moths. For the period of their larval lives they are non-binary creatures and their physicality ‘trans’cends our commonly held gender notions. Let us for a moment suppose – if we had to address the caterpillar, how would we, while also treating it as an alive, animate creation? What pronoun would we use to describe its activities on the Drumstick tree? She, he, it – all fall short. ‘They’, ‘them’, ‘Ze’, Zir’ are now coming into use. The bryologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer has proposed the words ‘ki’ and ‘kin’, singular and plural respectively, as gender-neutral more-than-human pronouns, for trees, moss, mountains and others we’d like to speak of, ascribing animacy to. ‘Ki’ is from Potawatomi, a native American language. ‘Kin’ is from English, ringing with kinship. They happen to be phonetically related words.

“Ki is crawling down the trunk to pupate in the soil”

“Kin are more in number on the shady side of the tree”

I feel a dormant part of my mind shifting in its sleep when I speak these sentences. They stretch my mind in an unfamiliar direction, though a strangely intimate one.Here is a new portal of greeting, speaking, meaning-making when I meet caterpillars, trees and millipedes.

Across the line of Drumstick trees, in the vegetable garden, I would later do an exercise with children, as another experiment in shifting perception.

Some weeks later. Children strolled among the vegetable plants with iron pans to harvest Lady’s finger, Brinjal and Azuki beans. I crouched by some bean plants which were swathed with Aphids, to photograph some event which may occur amongst their gatherings. Golden backed Ants (Camponotus sericeus) farmed them with their antennae-tapping. Ants have been livestock-keepers for many millions of years before humans. Aphids in turn secrete sugar solution for the security services provided by the ants. Leaf petioles held fresh frothy spawn of froghoppers. I turned over bean leaves one by one, looking for any interesting insect-world occurrence, and the underside of one leaf offered me a radically new idea to engage children.

In the spaces between the veins were Aphid patches. Two Zig-zag Ladybird Beetles, staunchly aphidophagous creatures, were lazily eating them from one end. In a while an Ant came to check on its bug-herd, and charged open-mandibled at the raiding beetles, both of whom flew away as soon as the leaf shook with the ant’s arrival. Within a square-inch of space I had seen a whole web of ecological relationships, between four beings.

Let me list them –

Aphid on the Bean plant – Parasitism

Ladybird Beetle and Bean plant – Mutualism

Beetles eating Aphids – Predation

Ant and Beetles – Competition

Aphids and Ant –Mutualism

Bean plant and Ant – Commensalism

An entire ecological web under a bean leaf

In a few days, I sent groups of 9th grade children around the farm, each assigned a specific crop or plant – Paddy, Brinjal, Cluster Beans, etc. They were to observe the life on them, make observations, use field guides to identify the species they saw and make a ‘Relationship Web’. In mapping a relationship-web, children spread the names of the organisms they see, on paper. They then map six different ecological relationships (mutualism, parasitism, competition, predation, commensalism, and herbivory), each drawn with a different colour. Each creature is linked to every other one, through at least one of the colours – with a legend below as to which colour indicates what relationship. This is in contrast to a food-web, which is taught as an important concept in biology – a construct which portrays ecosystems as hierarchical, linear, and somewhat crudely communicating to children that organisms merely eat each other in nature - a structure somewhat reflective of our own linear extractive models of economy, society.

A Relationship-web maps an ecosystem more vividly and accurately. It is non-linear, complex, non-hierarchical and lends to many ways of seeing and comprehension. Children come up with composite and colourful maps of the microhabitat they have studied. You could start anywhere on it and follow it around in various ways, each an equally valid story of interactions and energy flow.

A relationship web mapped by children on the Bhindi/Lady’s Finger plant

Once the activity is over and the Relationship-webs are presented by each group, several reflections are pursued.

What were some new learnings and un-learnings during the activity? Which relationships are the most frequently noted in my web and why? How do soil, water, and air flow in it, animate it? How do we participate in this web?

With teachers and older students, I have pursued or been posed with some deeper questions which have sparked off other tangents of conversation –

“If democracy is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species”

– Robin Wall Kimmerer.

A relationship web charts what could be called an ‘inter-species democracy’ which is alive in natural ecosystems. Where extractive energy flows are balanced with counter flows to it. And where one can see interdependence, diversity, and plurality at work.

“When you see this paper, do you see the clouds?” – Thich Nhat Hahn

When we see life forms, do we see them as separate objects or do we also see their relatedness? How easily do we perceive relatedness?

What social constructs are reflected in other concepts and subjects taught in school? Do we want to reimagine, restructure them?

______________________________________________________________________

In her essay “Perceiving how we perceive”, educator Seetha Ananthasivan speaks about two different kinds of perception – object perception and process perception. She says, “a major preoccupation in nursery and primary education is on learning the names of objects.”Little is done to allow the child to discover the connected and hidden realities of these isolated objects. For instance, is a child encouraged to think, ask a question of a water bottle – where it came from, how it was made, where it will go after its use? This is process perception. In the materials we use, food we eat, clothes we wear, do we perceive beyond their separate forms?

We could say that the culture of consumerism, even the politics of capitalism thrives on object perception. Violence, deeply hidden and structural, is distanced from the products on their sanitized shelves. They dote on anaesthetized eyes which don’t and won’t see beyond them.

As somebody working at the intersection of education and conservation, I am interested in understanding if and how ecological loss affects the richness, depth, and diversity of our perception – especially of children who have come into the world during this period. Also, are we to pass on the same model of education we went through, in the era in which they’ve entered this planet?

In my experience as a teacher, young children have a natural familiarity and curiosity for parks, fields, beaches, bird sanctuaries - wildernesses. In little time they feel at home - somehow part of the living-systems themselves. This capacity of kinship and openness to the trees, birds, insects, and soil diminishes if such experiences are not created when they are young. Children are deprived from many ways of seeing, thinking, and learning when schooling is divorced from the natural world. Visionary educators like Maria Montessori and J.Krishnamurti have emphasised this in their teachings. In her concept of ‘Erd-Kinder’ Montessori stresses upon the importance of adolescent children growing in a farm-school, working with the land, growing their own food and being in touch with the landscape. She explains how this is a necessity for the developmental needs of children at this age. Richard Louv braids the wild and the wellbeing of the child intimately in his seminal book ‘Last Child in the Woods’. He emphatically says that “if we are to save the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species – the child in nature”. Children and nature have a reciprocal relationship in protecting each other.

Work by psychologist Gail F. Melson opens up how contact with other forms of life is important in all aspects of child development – cognitive, social, emotional, and moral. She, like others, attributes this to the fact that nature is the most complex and composite learning environment we can provide a child, and hence an un-substitutable one.

I am continually astonished by how a well-planned activity in Kotturpuram Tree Park or Adyar Poonga or Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary, or at our arboretum at Songlines is inclusive and supportive of a variety of learning styles. Time and again, children labelled as ‘challenged’ by the linear yardsticks within the cinderblocks of classrooms, are able to express and enjoy themselves through their unique capacities and on their own terms, in living learning environments.

I am also keen on exploring how we can bring ecological principles into our schools and learning environments, just as we bring learning environments into ecological spaces. A fundamental aspect to any ecosystem is ‘diversity’. As Colin Baker has put it “In the language of ecology, the strongest ecosystems are those that are the most diverse.” In a single ecosystem we notice that there exists rich perceptual diversity. The Ghost Crab which sees the horizon as a full circle with its periscope-like cylindrical eyes. The strange Chiton, an unearthly mollusc, which sees in magnetic field lines and has an astonishing acumen for navigating the seabed. The Sea-Eagle which rides rising thermals and sees in heat. The mangrove trees which live by the tidal rhythm, stand on stilts, and speak with each other through fungal networks under the ground. The Blue button, which looks like a little jellyfish but is a colony of creatures working together like an organism, a puzzle between singular and plural. The Magpie Robin which makes new music each morning, who never sings the same song twice. The Octopus which speaks through colour. The Sea snake which paints its world through smell. Each creature has its own distinct perceptual field. Each sees the world so differently. Yet this diverse mosaic of perceptual fields, roles, and abilities, woven together by sand, air, sea and sky - form a webwork of numerous interdependent lives and a thriving and resilient intertidal habitat.

Can children’s learning environments be an ecosystem? A place inclusive of diversity – inclusive of all kinds of intelligences, capacities, cognitions – which makes it a rich habitat rooted in the place it is in. Such an ecology of learning spaces would be both Earth-centric and child-centric, and these, I think, are urgently needed now for children and the planet.

The mainstream education system is both unnatural and detrimental for this Earth-child complex we have been discussing. It is often described as ‘factory-schooling’ as it is rooted in mono-culturing and homogenizing children’s minds and aspirations. It is also a fundamental driving force for the economic system and the destructive model of ‘development’, both of which are the primary propellers of climate crisis, biodiversity loss and the social injustice we are witnessing today. As Carol Black says, the conventional education system functions such that children are “molded and fashioned like any other industrial raw material into a predetermined finished product”. It was devised for a dream of colonial industrial utopia. And I agree with David Brooks who describes that “its main activity is downloading content into students’ minds, with success or failure measured by standardized tests”. Those whose capabilities lie in the vast ‘outside’ of the system’s purview are ‘failed’, creating what Manish Jain calls a “new kind of academic caste hierarchy” and a “crime against humanity”. We treat children like inert media, passive recipients to be shaped into products for society – consumer beings. Often, their growth and blossoming, if at all, is in spite of schooling. Notably and not surprisingly, such education treats ecological literacy as adjunct, optional or unnecessary portions to be omitted.

The current schooling system also devalues diverse kinds of cognition. I immediately think of children I have interacted with along the Elliot’s beach over the years, who belong to the local fishing communities. They have a profound knowledge of the coast and seas. They are innately aware of the longshore currents, tides and can plainly predict weather. I can do none of these, despite walking these shores for over two decades. Or consider the children of the Kattunayakan tribes of the Nilgiris who can understand and track bees and hold vast spatial maps of the forest in their minds. Though modern schooling marginalizes these communities and seeks to make them ‘literate’, their embodied ecological literacy is astounding and is something no mainstream school has achieved. For the indigenous and Adivasi communities of India, education, and the ideals it imposes, has often been a form of acculturation, by de-basing their knowledge-systems. Younger generations are no longer valuing them and are no longer bearers of their eco-cultural wisdom.

A counter current to this form and definition of education has been emerging -through schools, colleges, and other institutions and movements whose core principles draw from ecological values, democratic values, and inclusivity of children – across learning styles, cognitions, and contexts. The unschooling and home-schooling movements have had an important role to play in this too. For my own work as a nature-educator, my visits to and interactions with such alternate schools have been deeply formative. They include Pathashaala, Bhoomi College, Marudham school, Shikshantar, SECMOL, Barefoot College, Swaraj University, Wild Shaale among others. And for the curriculum and activities I plan for children at Songlines, I have made for myself a ‘Songlines Wheel’ based on these learnings. This is the value wheel which I draw upon, to keep me grounded.

The Songlines wheel has at its centre Child, Earth, and Community. And its spokes hold various values under each, which guide the teacher. The wheel is the basis of an ‘Un-syllabus’ we are evolving - a participative, spacious, and context-based curriculum based on these values.

Here are some of its broad guidelines –

Bottom-up pedagogy – this means that the context, place, children, and their energies and capacities decide the curriculum. The curriculum is place-based. As opposed to the mainstream curriculum, which is top-down and sets a single rigid syllabus for everybody regardless of these diversities of contexts.

Conscious of content and process – this means that ‘what’ is being learnt or facilitated and ‘how’ it is done are given equal thought, time and effort. Conventional syllabi ignore processes and impose purely content.

Active learning –This is where children are active part-takers in the planning and learning process and have space to direct it and shape it.

Plurality – This has multiple implications. One is that these learning spaces normalize all kinds of learners and are inclusive of learner-diversity. Second is that lessons involve the head, hand, and heart and blur the artificial distinctions between sciences, arts, languages, and humanities, leaving no child feeling excluded. Third is that learning spaces are multidirectional – wherein learning happens along various trajectories, not just in the uni-direction of teacher-to-student. It also means that it’s a horizontal and poly-vocal space – where all voices speak and are listened to.

Values of Social and environmental justice– This means that rights of people and nature are respected and need protection for a just, egalitarian, and healthy community. Citizenship education is an important part of this where children learn their laws, rights and means to actively participate and partake in society.

With the Covid lockdown, we had to take our farm-school to the virtual medium and it was at first a challenge to envision such a programme through a digital screen. Just then the Tamil Nadu state government announced the denotification of a significant part of Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary – a place all the classes have visited, to watch birds and understand this lake’s rare example of community conservation. Our first module was to research about this issue and make campaign-art for Vedanthangal. The children’s work depicting their bond with the bird sanctuary and asking it to be saved, inspired many more schools after print media covered it. It incited numerous more voices to stand up for the cause. (Read Children Make Art to Save Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary)

Following this module, some classes studied and illustrated the life-arc of various waste or unused materials at home and did upcycling projects with them. These came out to be cycle-tire clocks to a school bag stitched from outgrown jeans to toy-sets from cardboard to coconut-shell hand sanitizers. Other classes conducted ‘water audits’ in their homes, and researched and presented on various traditional water conservation systems in India. The lockdown had given us a strange opportunity to find other paths of learning and engagement, which, ‘unconfined’, we would not have thought of.

Through a subsequent module, the children became ‘Young Journalists’. Small groups reached out to various experts, naturalists, environmentalists, local people, government officers, etc. and conducted interviews about current environmental issues, and shared their findings with the larger group. And presently the older students are making a place-based, illustrated alphabet book for the primary school children (ages 2 to 6). A for Adyar river, B for Banyan, C for Coucal, D for Damselfly and so on. Words these young children can find, see, touch, enter and directly sensorially connect with in their school campus, around their homes and in the local landscape.

Assam Day 5 - Seeking the dolphins, encountering the Osprey - the gigantic Brahmaputra

 Continued from here.

15th Jan 2020

On to Kaziranga, from Mangaldoi, today.  But first, we were to stop at the Brahmaputra and take in a river cruise as we searched for the Gangetic dolphins.

We were headed west, staying north of the Bramhaputra, a 3 hour journey.

We stayed on NH15 for the most part, the highway was in good shape.  As we reached Tezpur, there was more military presence and large, walled military compounds.  I learnt that Tezpur is one of the old cities of Assam, and there is a lot to see here, but we were not stopping.  The British made it into an army Headquarters for the region.  

Aparna wrote this in our trip report:

The place Tezpur was named for the rivulets of blood that flowed there. Legend has it that this was the place where the war between Banasura, who was King of the area, and Krishna took place. Banasura’s daughter, Usha, dreamt of Anirudh, the grandson of Krishna. Her friend Chitralekha drew his portrait and through her magical powers brought him to Usha. Banasura refused to give his consent for the marriage. That is when Krishna went to war. The war was actually fought between Shiva and Krishna as Banasura was a devotee of Shiva. And much blood was shed.  It is said that Brahma had to intervene to stop the fight. However Shiva gave in to the reason of Krishna and relented.  

We drove on to the river bank, close to the Kalia Bhamora bridge that spans the river over here.  

We walked across the fine river sand to the boats with colourful canopies.  It was close to 11am and the sun was blazing through, but the river was a vast expanse of a still dull, muddy colour.  To me, at that moment it felt like this large, silent, somewhat sullen, sleeping beast.  The currents were strong but one wouldn't guess it, due to the vastness of the river.

As we chose our boats, there was a sudden commotion, with everyone telling Shuba not to move.  She was startled but complied to the urgent orders.  On her ghamsa-covered head was what looked like a little colourful brooch! 

The butterfly brooch - Delias descombesi, the redspot Jezebel

Chinese fishing nets.  I read somewhere that the river supports some 222 species of fish! Tezpur is one of the important fishing centres on the river.  But the fish population is greatly depleted, due to human activity (of course, what else).

I think Pranjal mentioned Grey throated Sand Martins flitting along the river banks - but I did not see them (as usual).  

On returning, I did some reading on the sedimentation and turbidity of the river.  A 2017 NDTV article mentioned that the turbidity measure at Tezpur was 195 NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Unit), as against a permissive level of NTU5!  Aparna, who collects river waters, dipped a bottle in, and I was quite surprised - the water was clear, not turgid as I expected. The heavy sedimentation adversely affects fish life as also the Gangetic Dolphin, that we were out looking for.

That's us - adding colour to the river.  Picture by R Shantharam

The Brahmaputra river system is one of those huge carriers of sediment, and this sediment forms sand banks and islands - chapori - which can support a lot of bird life.  

You could also get small grassy islands in the middle - so vast is the river.

The Gangetic Dolphin (Platanista gangetica)

Several of our group had already gone on this boat ride on their last trip to Arunachal and they asked us to keep our eyes peeled.  We were warned that it would not be like some NatGeo movie where it would gently, gracefully and in slow motion arc out of the water and show itself to you. It will be in and out in the blink of an eye. A grey shadow in the water. And that's exactly what it was. 

We had a lot of these fleeting 'darshans' of the greyish brown snouts of these endemic, poor eyesight river Dolphins, which are highly ecologically stressed. They are on the IUCN red list

We were in two boats with a canopy that shaded us from the sun.  The boat engines created a hell of a racket, and he would cut the engines every now and then, and we would drift. Those were the best moments. The river was a dull grey brown and placid.  The whole scene was tinged in grey and brown.

They spend an average 107.3 seconds under water and 1.26 seconds above water. Once, the most commonly sighted aquatic mega-fauna in the Brahmaputra river system, it now faces extirpation from most of the major tributaries of the Brahmaputra and restricted to a few pockets in the mainstream.

Unregulated rise in human activities is causing serious degradation in dolphin habitats in the Brahmaputra. Acoustic vision being the primary mode of perceiving the environment for these animals, increasing noise levels and industrial activities cause major disruption in their perception of biologically critical sounds.

Scientists find conservation efforts of river dolphins in the Brahmaputra have largely ignored the aspect of Acoustic Habitat Degradation.

2019 North East Now

I didnt realise - dams on the river have isolated dolphin populations.  There are supposedly more than 50(!!) dams of different sizes on the Brahmaputra, fragmenting these populations, making them in-breed, disturbing the availability of their food.  So, not only on land are forests being isolated, but even in the water.  

The Osprey encounter

What I managed to photograph...

Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) - have seen them before, but this was a thrilling experience to see this one so close, and then take off and glide lazily through the sky.  Pranjal had said that we would most probably see one of these fish eating raptors over the waters, and yes his prediction was right.  

.

Photo by Elumalai - as it sat, an emperor of all it surveyed, or a masked bandit?  The Osprey is supposed to be the only raptor with all toes being equal in size.  interesting, did not know this.  Does that make a difference in how it perches?

Photo by Elumalai - All set to take off, possibly disturbed by our outboard motor.  Rounded talons and a reversible outer toe means that it can catch those slippery fish with two toes in front and two behind.  

Photo by Venkatesh, as it took to the air, showing us the "fingers" on its wing feathers, and its spread out short tail.

Photo by Venkatesh - the white breast and the golden brown upper wings - what a magnificent sight it was!

Photo by Venkatesh - we gawked at the wingspan - a good 4-5 feet, as it flapped them in slow succession  and moved away from us.

This photo by Suresh - of the brown upper parts and those four long finger-like feathers, with the fifth being a bit shorter.  The drooping hands are a characteristic flight posture of this piscetarean.

We chugged along back now under the bridge and what seems like the new Brahmaputra bridge coming up alongside.

Mountains of concrete, as Man looks to overcome natural "obstacles"?

Add caption

Do we need another?

Off the boat, and we found little "loo huts".  

A group picture and some tea and potato biscuits, before we set off for lunch and then Kaziranga.

Very tasty!  A new discovery.  Potato "biscuits".  They were so yummy, I brought a couple of packets back home.

Tree sparrows

A reminder of what was going on in the country.

We were coming across to the southern bank of the mighty river, and turning east, to Kaziranga.