India's green artisans

topic:	Conservation
located:	India
editor:	Bindu Gopal Rao

If there is one plant that environmentalists dread, it is Lantana, one of the ten worst invasive species in the world. A dangerous weed, Lantana's chemical properties hinder the growth of other plants in its vicinity, displacing native flora and increasing conflict between humans and wildlife.

The UNESCO heritage site of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve faces this problem when it makes a concerted effort to eradicate harmful and invasive lantana weeds. The Real Elephant Collective (TREC), a socio-environmental enterprise, has partnered with Rang De, a peer-to-peer social investing platform, to start the Nilgiri Elephant Fund to help with elephant conservation and empower local tribal livelihoods.

TREC works with artisans to create life-sized elephant structures from the lantana weeds. Rang De helps TREC cover working capital costs for making 300 elephant sculptures for exhibitions around the USA in 2024 and 2025. Over 70% of the costs of making the elephants go directly to tribals for their time invested into clearing Lantana and creating these elephants. This partnership brings together environmental conservation, art, and empowerment. The fund has raised over Rs 44 lakhs ($52,000) for nine artisans from 2335 social investors or lenders worldwide.

Tarsh Thekaekara, Co-founder of The Real Elephant Collective, says, "each elephant is based on a real wild elephant in the Nilgiris hills of South India. The herd travels worldwide, telling stories of human-wildlife coexistence in India and calling on people to live well with animals around them. This art project has employed about 150 indigenous people from the Kattunayakan, Bettakurumba, Paniya and Soliga communities, with over Rs. Three crores in direct payments to date. Finally, they are auctioned or sold to raise money for wildlife conservation and human-wildlife coexistence in India."

Smita Ram, the Co-founder and CEO of Rang De, adds, "the challenge of credit accessibility in remote regions of India, compounded by reduced affordability due to exorbitant interest rates, has been a persistent issue. At Rang De, we take a thoughtful approach to crafting feasible loan terms for borrowers, and through this fund, we extend loans to artisans at a low interest rate of just six per cent."

As the world fights climate change, this initiative takes a holistic approach. Its successes indicate it is a step in the right direction and can become a great working model for implementation in similar environments.

Image by TREC.

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