Alternative Glossaries: Relooking at Biodiversity Registers

Abstract/Brief of the course

Every gram panchayat in India is meant to keep a People's Biodiversity Register, a record of the plants, animals, waters and living knowledge in a village. In this course, learners will engage in three distinct living contexts to reimagine a register through non-verbal, creative methods - walking, sorting, printing, listening, mapping on the ground and assembling. Each of these living contexts make a track which the learners can choose to be part of.

The three tracks are,

Track 01 | Agroecological parcels: Farmers become the ecological knowledge holders and facilitators of discovering the biodiversity in their farm and the Gram Panchayat area. Learners will engage in four farms with four farmers - Veerbhushan farm comes under Manhalli Gram panchayat; Suryakant farm comes under koutha B village and comes under Koutha panchayat; Jafar saab farm comes under Chitta Village and Chitta Gram panchayat; and Raj Kunche farm comes under Kamathana panchayat.

Track 02 | Water systems: Bidar situated within the larger Deccan bioregion is part of semi-arid landscape. Over centuries and many generations the people and place hold immense knowledge on how water behaves in their landscape. This knowledge is embedded in a diverse kinds of water structures. Another significant keeper of knowledge are the biodiversity elements around these water structures which tell us what interdependencies and coexistence between human and more-than-human-world is integral to the landscape.

Track 03 | Grassland ecosystem: The rainfall this year has been scanty and far apart between each monsoon period. In this situation the grasslands are a living indicator whose knowledge is sensorial and kept that way among the people living close to the grasslands patch. In this track we will work in Alur-Belur which shares its boundaries with three villages Pashapur, Alur B and Gadi Kushnoor. With patches of land with the Forest Department.

This primer is meant to introduce such complex socio-ecological settings. As a cohort the learners will co-produce what a biodiversity register could be like and ways of making it participatory in the Gram Panchayat regions. Possibilities of collaboration with the GP members, Biodiversity Management Committees, social workers, farmers & pastoralists, Govt School children and particularly women producers, practitioners.

Key words

grasslands, open natural ecosystems, Biodiversity Register

Course Plan

A week-wise focus in each of the four weeks of the SSE (Study of Social Ecology) is mentioned below,

Week 01 - Orientation to the place, learning from living contexts, Biodiversity register as a governance requirement and methods

Week 02 - Learning from the living contexts and making of the Biodiversity register. This can culminate into an exhibition at BNC, with Spirit of Srishti Hub event hosted by LLI.

Week 03 - Reorienting in Bangalore to convert the register and glossaries in shareable format.

Week 04 - Production of artefacts to exhibit to their peers, faculty and public at SMI campus.

Communication channels

• Southern Central Station discord server will be used for all online sessions, coordination and sharing of the learning materials.

• Notion will be used for maintaining notes and submission of assignments

• Nextcloud will be used for sharing files

• Zotero will be used to share all references relevant to this course.

• Whatsapp group for all fieldwork related coordination & communication with our community collaborators

• All official communication will happen via emails