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In­dia: Palk Bay Cen­ter from pro­ject to in­sti­tu­tion

What is at is­sue:

It began in 2005 with the man­grove re­for­est­a­tion on the Tamil Nadu coast in south­ern In­dia. Ved­ha­ra­jan Bal­aji, founder of the OM­CAR Found­a­tion, mo­bil­ized the coastal com­munit­ies to raise seed­lings and gradu­ally re­plant the de­for­es­ted coast. Since then, the Light­house Found­a­tion has sup­por­ted the pro­ject in In­dia.

But that's not all: In or­der to achieve a sus­tain­able use of the coastal re­gion in the fu­ture, so­cial and eco­nomic factors are cru­cial in ad­di­tion to eco­lo­gical re­quire­ments.

In 2011, Bal­aji foun­ded the "Palk Bay Cen­ter", which brings nature and sus­tain­ab­il­ity closer to chil­dren and adults and which has gained spe­cial im­port­ance as a so­cial meet­ing place for the people of the re­gion. Today, the centre is an in­sti­tu­tion and start­ing point for pro­jects to im­prove both the liv­ing con­di­tions of the people on the Tamil Nadu coast and the eco­lo­gical con­di­tion of the re­gion.

The dir­ector of Om­car Found­a­tion, Dr. Ved­ha­ra­jan Bal­ajii, in­tro­duces his work.

What's hap­pen­ing now:

September 2024

Con­ser­va­tion and com­munity work are cur­rently the fo­cus. The fo­cus is on the en­dangered dugongs and the im­port­ance of seagrass beds and man­groves.

Man­grove plant­ing will con­tinue and de­vel­op­ment on the ground will be car­ried out us­ing drones to cap­ture de­tailed im­ages for ana­lysis.

OM­CAR shared its ex­per­i­ence in dugong and seagrass meadow con­ser­va­tion with in­ter­na­tional del­eg­ates. Par­ti­cipants were in­tro­duced to eco-friendly seagrass res­tor­a­tion tech­niques us­ing bam­boo frames and jute ropes and taught local fish­er­men the im­port­ance of these eco­sys­tems for their live­li­hoods.

Com­munity con­sulta­tion meet­ings in Pon­nagaram and Mu­thura­japuram con­tin­ued to doc­u­ment the needs and chal­lenges of vil­la­gers who de­pend on seagrass re­sources for fish­ing and daily wages. Meet­ings with vil­la­gers for whom in­tact seagrass beds are es­sen­tial for fish­ing and daily live­li­hoods con­trib­uted to the de­vel­op­ment of sus­tain­able solu­tions for seagrass man­age­ment in the fu­ture.

Man­grove seeds con­tin­ued to be sown and the seagrass nurs­er­ies were sup­por­ted. The han­dover of hand­craf­ted, tra­di­tional boats to fish­er­men in Val­lavan­pat­ti­nam is in­ten­ded to sup­port sus­tain­able fish­ing prac­tices.

Goat donation
Women and their families from the fishing villages of the region receive female goats. The first fawn is donated to other families as agreed.
Another seagrass rehabilitation site dedicated to the largest seagrass species at Palk Bay.
Video from PBC recent meeting in April 2022. We invited fisher communities with their families to spend half day for explaining our work.

What we have achieved:

More in­form­a­tion:

More in­form­a­tion

Mangroven

Man­groves – mas­ters of sur­vival on salty ground

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