: In 4 Years, Man Helps Villagers Raise Their Incomes By 40%, Plant 2.1 Million Trees #IndiaNEWS #Assam In Udalguri district, Assam, bordering Bhutan, locals from the Bodo community reforested over

In 4 Years, Man Helps Villagers Raise Their Incomes By 40%, Plant 2.1 Million Trees #IndiaNEWS #Assam
In Udalguri district, Assam, bordering Bhutan, locals from the Bodo community reforested over 1200 hectares of land. In and around the Bhairabkunda Reserve Forest, along with planting trees, they started a medicinal plant garden based on Bodo indigenous knowledge, agroforestry patches and even an eco-tourism project. The change is a result of the Balipara Foundations work and their programme Rural Futures.
In 2016, concerned about the growing effects of climate change on the state of Assam, Saurav Malhotra (32) returned to his native town, from a university teaching job in Germany.
I grew up amidst nature visiting the Kaziranga National Park and Nameri National Park with my parents every chance I got. And over the years, a growing understanding about climate change shifted my attention to the relationship between humans and the environment, says Saurav, a biology major, and native of Guwahati speaking to The Better India (TBI).
Later that year, he began interning with the Balipara Foundation, a non-profit in the Northeast dedicated to conserving and preserving the natural heritage of the Eastern Himalayas.
Currently, Saurav is working with the Balipara Foundation to run a pilot project — The Rural Futures — in four areas of Assam: Udalguri area in the Assam-Bhutan border belt, Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, Balipara Reserve Forest again with the Bodo community and Baligaon. Within these four geographic locations, they are working with about 12 villages. These villages comprise four to five different ethnic communities — Bodo, Mishing, Garo and Nyshi and Adivasi.
In these four years, we have been able to impact about 4,500 people, directly and indirectly, this number is close to about 30,000 (since households are dependent on them). Across these communities, the immediate impact is the cash that they are earning via the process of collecting seeds and planting trees. Our 4,500 people have managed to plant over 2. 1 million trees across the four geographic locations covering over 2,000 hectares, says Prabir Banerjea, Managing Member of the Balipara Foundation, speaking to TBI.
And all this is based on the novel concept of Naturenomics.
Saurav Malhotra
So, what is Naturenomics?
The current model of economic development emphasises on a tradeoff between development and sustaining natural resources. However, its self-evident that this is not a zero-sum game. We can have economic development and yet sustain our natural resources. This is where the concept of Naturenomics comes through.
Naturenomics relates to capital formation for a region or organisation through the creation of ecologically compliant assets in a sustainable manner .

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