We held hands together, and the earth seemed greener: Stories of participation and community stewardship

By: Shaik Imran, Trisa Bhattacharjee, Varun Tumuluru, Dr. Pramode Kant

Growing up, I watched my grandmother plant different kinds of vegetables, grasses and other plants in our tiny garden. I always wondered how it was beneficial to grow all the plants together, densely planted, and to waste space on things that do not produce any fruit. 

To explain, my grandmother dug up a small patch of soil to show me a vast network of roots sharing space, tiny insects crawling around and a white patch of fungus. This sight taught me how coexistence and participation are the most fundamental principles of ecology. 

Growing up, I realized humans and animals were no different. Co-existence has been the greatest pillar of resilience, livelihood and conservation for communities across the globe, supporting entire landscapes of people, plants, animals and beyond.

In the hilly slopes of the Western Ghats conserve hundreds of varieties of tubers. Our tribal forest guardians help native tree species thrive. Most times, the labor put in by different members of a landscape goes unnoticed and uncredited. Take, for example, the countless women farmers who hold the backbone of agriculture through floods and droughts, or Chechis (elder sisters in Malayalam) who quietly propagate wild native seedlings to raise nurseries of forgotten trees. 

I always wondered why those who were unrecognized for their efforts kept going. The answer is simple: protecting the landscape means protecting our culture, identity, our children and our home.

Yet care alone cannot protect a landscape. Across India, native forests are being replaced by fast-growing plantations and invasive species that promise income but degrade soil and starve wildlife. Local communities are the first to notice. They know which trees heal the land and which ones deplete it, but even the strongest cultural bond cannot protect a landscape without participation. 

Data about migration away from rural areas and young people’s declining interest in agriculture often distract us from the real issue –policies and institutions that support communities. The problem is socio-economic and is deeply tied to governance and class. Solutions must be participatory and involve all classes, all communities.

Across India, participation takes many shapes: through governments that choose trust over control, through villages that restore land out of love and through those who challenge the inequalities that decide who gets to protect nature. These stories show how participation grows only when power is shared.

Governments trusting communities

In Telangana, a quiet change began not by planting a tree, but by letting people believe that planting one would not cost them their land. Many farmers resisted tree planting not because they disliked trees but because they feared that once the lands had many trees, they might not be allowed to harvest them, and that the lands themselves might be taken over by the forest department as forest land. 

Others worried that even if they grew valuable trees, they would be trapped in endless paperwork trying to take timber to the market. Under the Telangana Forest Produce Transit Rules of 1970, transporting timber often meant delays, multiple permissions and unpredictable harassment.

The state government did not respond with authority or pressure. Instead, it chose trust. Thousands of village-level meetings were held to repeatedly assure communities, openly and in writing, that their lands would not be taken over if they chose to plant trees. 

In 2017, the government removed a major barrier by exempting forty species from needing transit permits. Bamboo, mango, jackfruit, cashew, coconut, toddy trees, ashoka, eucalyptus, casuarina, subabul, Prosopis juliflora and many more can now be harvested and transported to markets freely and without formalities.

Once fear disappeared, planting began. Government departments without a mandate to restore land, like revenue offices, police academies, universities, colleges, public sector corporations and other agencies were asked to turn unused land into forested areas. They were given budgets and support, and asked to work with the forest department for technical help. Private institutions of all kinds were also persuaded to restore unused lands. In forest lands, species were chosen based on what communities valued and used. Neem, tamarind, mahua, jamun, sharifa, rosewood, bel, ficus, locally preferred grasses and medicinal plants were planted to connect enrichment programs with community preferences and needs.

The result was visible in the landscape. In 2015, Telangana’s forest cover stood at 19,854 square kilometres and tree cover at 1,727 square kilometres. By 2021, forest cover rose to 21,214 square kilometres and tree cover to 2,518 square kilometres. The target of planting 230 crore (2,300 million) trees was exceeded by more than 40 crore (400 million). 

The city of Hyderabad in India also won the World Green City Award in 2022. But more important than these numbers was the shift in freedom. People began planting without fear. The government did not force people to participate in restoration. It removed the barriers that stopped them.

Communities restoring land because they love those who live there

In the Western Himalayas, restoration did not begin with a project announcement. It began with a monkey. The Chamba Sacred Langur, a species struggling to survive because fragmented forests lacked enough food, drew a team from Zurich to the Chamba region in 2012. What began as a primate study soon revealed deeper ecological concerns. The langur could not survive because its home was disappearing.

The team did not rush into planting or designing solutions. They chose to listen. They worked with communities for nine years, engaging them in discussions on climate change, coexistence and restoration. Trust was slowly built over nearly a decade of participation and relationships.

The turning point came in 2021, during a meeting with women’s self-help groups. A Sarpanch, an elected head of council in India, representing 28 villages, stated that villagers wanted to offer land for restoration. More than 800 hectares of land belonging to over 500 families were voluntarily pledged to bring back forests. The land was not being taken, purchased or forced into restoration. It was being offered by the very people who lived on it.

Soon, the restoration became a shared effort. Women, children and students began asking to help restore their surroundings. A community nursery was built in 2021, and today it holds over 11,000 saplings from 13 native species. Every year, new species are tested to see what grows well. The project focuses on creating forest corridors for safe wildlife movement, reducing human-wildlife conflict and increasing food availability for animals. 

People now plant not for compensation, but because they want their forests to return. The forest is slowly coming back, but more importantly, the community is leading the effort. 

Participation means sharing power, not just planting trees

We often celebrate restoration by counting saplings, measuring restored hectares or showcasing success stories, but planting trees does not always mean true participation. As one practitioner reflected, restoration can easily become a performance, a check-box activity for carbon markets or a tool for greenwashing. When that happens, we may grow trees but fail to grow justice.

Across landscapes in India, those who work most closely with the land are not seen as decision-makers. When men migrate, and women manage farms, livestock and forests, they are still rarely consulted in management planning. Landless workers who have traditional knowledge of plants and soils are rarely asked what to plant. Indigenous knowledge becomes rebranded into modern scientific terminology, as if lived knowledge becomes legitimate only when experts validate it.

True participation is not inviting communities to join a plan. It is letting them lead. It is recognizing women not as helpers, but as custodians. It involves landless communities not for labor, but for their knowledge. It is listening to young people not just as volunteers, but as the next stewards of the landscape. Restoration that serves only governments, corporations or funders may create green cover today, but it will not protect landscapes tomorrow.

Building spaces of shared power together

Across each landscape, the lesson is clear. Communities protect what they love, but participation does not begin with planting trees or attending meetings. It begins when power makes room for those who already care for the land, when decisions are shared and when communities are trusted to shape the future of their own landscapes. Once we embed these ideas in our governance systems and education, the restoration of entire landscapes becomes a way of growing together, rather than a project carried out on paper.

To build systems that truly share power, we can start with three simple commitments:

• Create space without fear. A tree will only be planted when a farmer knows the land will not be taken away, and their work will not be trapped in rules and paperwork. Protection begins when people feel secure in their own soil.
  
• Let people choose what the land needs. Families in the Himalayas did not wait for targets or expert lists. They chose species that fed wildlife and restored their home. Participation means deciding what grows, not just planting what is given.
  
• Recognize those whose labor is invisible. Women who raise seedlings, youth who save seeds and workers who know plants like family are not helpers, they are guardians. Sharing power means letting them lead, not just contribute.

Restoration in places like Wayanad has taught me that communities do not ask for authority, only for room to act on what they already know. 

Sacred groves flourish because no one dictates what should grow there. Mini forests thrive on private land because families choose species that belong to the soil. School gardens are protected because children feel ownership, not because a policy tells them to. 

These efforts work not through instruction, but through a sense of belonging. And when communities lead, they do not just restore forests, they defend them. When we treat people as custodians rather than participants in a program, landscapes recover the same way a native tree returns to degraded land, slowly, but rooted in the place it calls home.