Auroville Botanical Gardens: SOUTH INDIA Restoring the TDEF through Community Participation

Auroville is an international community of 1700 people from over 30 different countries living together with the ideal of creating Human Unity. It began in 1968.

In the early days it was a hot, sandy, treeless plateau.

The first settlements began. Aspiration Community 1971

The initial priority was to create an environment to live in, to plant trees.

Auroville’s first tree nursery 1971

20 years later

The barren plateau has been transformed into an emerging ecosystem

In the regenerating environment remnants of old forests began to emerge, and this led to further investigation of the surrounding areas.

Small remnants were discovered on land that was unfit for agriculture.

As well as former residents.

Research showed that the Ecosystem was known as the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest, and that it was unique to a narrow strip of the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu – It became apparent that it is one of the most endangered forest types in India with only a few hundred acres of undisturbed vegetation left.

Original Range of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest

Presently a team from the Auroville is involved in a project funded by the EU to restore this Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest; in a thousand acres of the Auroville Green belt sanctuaries and throughout the Bioregion in Government Reserve forests and on village common lands.

Sacred Groves are the best remaining Gene banks of the TDEF. The best remnants are found in sacred groves often only a few acres in size

Over the last decade Auroville botanists have continually surveyed the remnant forests and sacred groves of the region. Collecting seeds as they go.

Which are processed and grown on in nurseries for afforestation programs.

Auroville nurseries have mastered the propagation techniques of more than 200 indigenous species

Kaluveli Bio Region As we discovered the vegetation we also began to understand the interrelated area we call the Kaluveli Bioregion that Auroville is part of.

Around the wetlands the communities are predominantly farmers following the rhythms of the seasons.

Skills and technologies abound using the Bio resources of the region to live and work with nature.

Over the last decades working with the villagers we have documented the skills, technologies and cultural practices of the communities of the bioregion.

In particular through working with more than 300 traditional healers we have collected the local knowledge about medicinal plants.

400 plants are still used by the people as medicine

Vandipalayam Green Center (VGC) Within the target area we have set up Green Resource Centers

These centers serve as dispensaries for Traditional Medicines

Re-establishing the link of the communities to the benefits of the forest

As centers for community based activities such as women’s groups

For environmentally based programs with local children

We are developing alternative field crops with the local farmers

Local communities are now getting involved in planning processes.

As well as working with policy makers and village authorities we work with the women and children in exercises of village resource mapping.

So that when we finally plant the trees they have the full community’s support behind them

Auroville Botanical Gardens: Conserving Diversity