No Firewood, No LPG: How We Saved Our Village’s Forests & Became Carbon-Neutral |
Originally reported and written in March 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.
In Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district lies the village of Nivaje. As much as 48% of its area is covered with forests, and like other villages, this region, too, was dependent mostly on forests to burn firewood for cooking. “But now that’s history,” says village Sarpanch Vaishnavi Palav.
“Now other villagers look towards us with envy, as we are not dependent on firewood, nor do we own LPG cylinders, which have witnessed a drastic increase in cost.”
Today, Nivaje is on the path to possibly become the state’s first carbon neutral village. Over the last decade, the village, which has around 350 households, has reduced its carbon footprint through a change in habits and consumption. It is no longer dependent on fossil fuels for cooking meals, and farmers have abandoned synthetic farm chemicals, instead taking to biogas slurry as manure. They have also planted scores of bamboo trees — a grass that sequesters carbon dioxide from the air.
Located 22 km from the Kudal station, Nivaje presently has active 140 biogas units, adding to the total number of 9,000 in Sindhudurg district, thanks to the initiative and efforts of BGP (Bhagirath Gramvikas Pratishthan), an NGO run by Ayurveda physician couple, Drs Prasad and Harshada Deodhar, who have been working in the villages of Sindhudurg since 2004.
The first biogas unit
Harshada recalls that their maiden visit to Nivaje was spurred by concerns raised by local Anganwadi workers about incidents of malnutrition among the children. When they first visited the area in February 2002, they heard that two days prior, a herd of elephants had strayed here from the forests of Dodamarg, which is contiguous to Karnataka’s Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary, killing two people.
“Rather than making it a man-animal conflict, we stressed to the locals that the tuskers’ appearance showed that the village was rich in biodiversity and there was a need to conserve it,” she notes.
Meanwhile, most households at the time collected branches of trees, bark and twigs from the neighbouring forests to fuel their kitchen........