Just 60 miles south of the vibrant coastal Indian city of Mumbai in Maharashtra, two distinct worlds emerge. The bustling city — full of skyscrapers, restaurants, hotels, shopping districts, countless tuk-tuks, and modern cars — falls away as unpaved roads, palm trees, goats, cows pulling carts, and small open-air markets and restaurants come into view.
In the Raigad district, Alibaug connects Mumbai to a network of rivers branching off of the Arabian Sea. The coastal area is home to 21,000 hectares of mangrove forests, one of Earth’s most natural protectors against the impacts of climate change, which include unpredictable monsoons, rising tides, cyclones — or hurricanes — and even tsunamis, while also acting as carbon sinks that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their soil, plants, and other sediment, known as blue carbon.
Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) — awarded a grant by Apple in 2021 — is exploring the area with a plan to safeguard the future of these mangroves by creating alternative, sustainable industries in the local communities that cultivate and benefit from the biodiversity and resilience of the mangrove ecosystems. Conservation agreements will provide sustained support to village members in exchange for conserving the land and transitioning the local economy to one that relies on keeping the mangroves intact and healthy.
AERF will also apply learnings from Conservation International’s pilot blue carbon project in Cispatá, Colombia, launched in 2018. “The fight against climate change is a fight for the communities around the world whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by the crisis, and that’s where we’ve focused our work — from Colombia to Kenya to the Philippines,” says Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. “Our new partnership in India continues this momentum, helping a community benefit economically from the restoration of the mangrove forests that protect against the worst impacts of climate change.”
Karanjveera is a small inland village home to many farmers and fishermen — whose catch typically includes crabs and small shrimp — and their families. Namdev Waitaram More is a village elder and expert on traditional fishing methods. At 75 years old, he has lived peacefully alongside mangroves his entire life, and respects their protective qualities that have kept salt water from entering their paddy fields. More and his cousin are now helping connect other community members with AERF to discuss salt marsh and mangrove conservation in the village. “Mangroves act like a sponge,” he says. “The people are connected with the mangroves here. If they are gone, our dykes will go, and our paddy fields will also go. Because we’re connected through our food, our dykes, and our mangroves, we are surviving.
Usha and her son, Tushar Thakur, are farmers from Hashiware, a village along the Amba river whose agricultural land has been submerged in salt water since the local dyke broke in 1990. The land is now its own mangrove forest, but remnants of the past sprinkle the area, as abandoned homes spring out of the muddy waters a few meters from the river’s bank. Thakur was one of the first village members to sign a conservation agreement with AERF to protect the mangroves. Since 1996, mangroves have covered the agricultural land that once belonged to farmers in Hashiware. ”With our work and awareness around the importance of mangroves,” AERF’s Godbole explains, “and opportunities to create sustainable income-generating activities, we’ve provided hope to the coastal communities in Raigad…