In the forested landscape of the Central Highlands of Chhattisgarh State of India, generations of Gond and Baiga tribes employed their skills and knowledge as agriculturalists, and as gatherers and hunters of forest produce. They complemented a diet of seasonal delicacies with sweet potato, millets and maize grown through shifting cultivation. Deep in the Maikail Hills, these tribal communities used and cultivated the land, not to degrade it but to extract resources in sustainable ways to satisfy essential needs.

Over millennia, the rural culture, stories and worldview became intertwined with the landscape which they are still part of.

However, their current lives in a rapidly developing India are disrupted and their communities are becoming vulnerable. Marginalization, climate change induced weather discrepancies to growing crops, and difficulties in shifting from a subsistence way of living to financially benefiting from their natural resources – are posing problems and contribute to their vulnerable status.

In some areas for example, poor and uninformed land use planning coupled with commercial exploitation by traders, resulting in unsustainable extraction of local forest resources, is reflected in the local ecology; an abundant landscape of rich forests is now rapidly deforesting and degrading – meaning, the growing local population is unable to live from their land, forcing families to migrate or survive with minimum nutritious food.

Next to this, there is a need in India for more integrated landscape management. India’s protected areas (PA) provide essential habitat for biodiversity but cover only 5% of the country. And almost 30% of India’s forestland is degraded. In this way, PAs are islands separated by densely populated multi-use landscapes. Combining the skills and knowledge of forest-dependent communities like the Gond and Baiga tribes and the Forest Service to restore native forests is an opportunity to restore biodiversity habitat. Aligning this afforestation with livelihood opportunities allows landscape restoration to go hand-in-hand with sustainable economic development.

The Central Highlands Restoration Project is a multi-stakeholder initiative to design and implement a holistic approach to land management in the Central Highlands of Chhattisgarh. The project is a collaborative effort between local Gond and Baiga communities, Samerth Charitable Trust, Commonland, IKEA Foundation, The Nature Conservancy India, United Designers, and Global Business Inroads. The project strives to find solutions for communities and nature to thrive together. By 2025, the aim is to restore 2,000 hectares and develop sustainable market linkages for 1,000 families living in the landscape.