SAIIER 2014:Auroville Botanical Gardens

Stewardship for New Emergence		Aranya
Auroville Botanical Gardens

Introduction

Covering 50 acres and established in August 2000, the Entity::Auroville Botanical Gardens has been established to help conserve the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF) of the Southern India Coromandel Coast.

This is achieved with the follow actions:

Education of local school children through daylong programs.
In-situ collections of the species of the TDEF.
Outside consultancy and projects encouraging people to work with the species of the TDEF in landscaping and plantations.

The Botanical Gardens has 15 Aurovillians working on a daily basis and 25 people employed from the local area working in at the gardens in various roles ranging from gardeners to teachers and draftspersons. Additionally we have between 3 to 5 volunteers staying with us and working in the gardens, and 1 or 2 students working in the office.

Environmental Education

Environmental education is an educational methodology and a overall approach to involve the students community and the general public to maintain a sustainable and eco friendly environment. The Auroville Botanical Gardens has eight years' experience in providing quality environmental education to the students and general public of the Auroville bio region. Our objectives of environmental education are:

Educating to shift anti-environmental practices, including consumer habits, to eco-friendly ones.
Educating towards political action (action that is aimed at influencing decision makers).
Educating toward eco-management (actions that restore or improve natural areas).

School visits

Schools visiting the Botanical Gardens occupy the majority space of our education programs. On most occasions, school visits are one-day program. We provide the schools free transport (i.e. we pick them up in their school in the morning and drop them back in the evening). Stationary items are also provided for the students. In addition snacks and lunch are provided to the students free of cost. In the end we give good knowledge, healthy food and safe journey to the students who visit the Botanical Gardens. During their time at the gardens we introduce them to concepts of biodiversity and conservation through a variety interactive sessions around the gardens.

This year we had visits from 144 schools, for a total of 4319 participating students.

Field visits

We organized visits to local Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests and other places of interest such as the local waste management units. These trips helped students understand types of ecosystems, impacts of ecosystem destruction, the need to conserve indigenous forests, the importance of avoiding encroachment into water bodies, impacts of waste accumulation and safe disposal of wastes. Stress was also put on wildlife protection and stopping cruelty to animals.

Awareness camps

We offer innovative programs that facilitate refinement of habits, attitudes, values and skills. The following camps were organized in the academic year 2012-2013:

Date	Camp	No. of participants
01.05.13	Summer camp	55
18.07.13	NSS camp	38
21.07.13	JRC Camp	42

Plastic-Free Birthdays

One of our effective programs this year was “Plastic-Free Birthdays”. Students often celebrate their birthdays in schools by gifting chocolates to their friends and school mates, resulting in hundreds of plastic chocolate wrappers that go to the landfill. To avoid this we launched the program in which we encourage students to avoid distributing chocolates and to instead distribute fruits like banana, jackfruit, amla etc. We conveyed the message to the schools linked to the Botanical Gardens that the best three schools will be selected each year, according to the number of students who choose plastic-free birthdays.

We had a good result for this program. Mr. Anand, an 8th standard student in Karratai PUMS was the first student who started distributing amlas on his birthday. From then onwards we have been receiving calls from school headmasters saying that their students have stopped distributing chocolates on birthdays and have shifted to fruits and other plastic free items.

Eco teacher training programs

The main content of our teacher training programs was to show how to impart environmental education to students during classes. Teachers were requested to make use of local flora and fauna of the tropical dry evergreen forests and take cognizance of local environmental problems. Along with the school visits, efforts were made to bring teacher groups within our circle.

This year we facilitated 7 teacher training programs for a total of 631 teachers.

Self-help group visits

Self-help groups have proven to be good agents of change in economic independence, women in particular. Women as primary harvesters of natural resources and chief home managers play crucial roles in efforts to promote environmental sanitation and sustainability. The main objective of our programs for the self-help groups was to help women realize that they can contribute significantly towards achieving environmental sustainability.

This year we had visits from 14 self-help groups, for a total of 343 member participants.

Political action

Even though organizations strive to bring change in the public mindset, the policy makers have a major role to play in enacting environment-friendly laws. We aimed at influencing a local decision maker and we succeeded in it. We invited the local union chairman a number of times for presiding over our education programs. He was very happy to be part of the education programs and even extended his help many times. Then we brought to his notice that the garbage dumping near the Puducherry Airport was carried out through streets of Tamilnadu territory. Then the chairman passed a resolution in the Vanur Union Council that garbage vehicles should not enter the Tamilnadu state area. As a result garbage dumping and burning near the Airport has been stopped.