Agriculture and Environment
Working with Nature
Kamis 6 Desember 2018

First published : 27 November 2017

 

INDIA – This early November, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) forum held a meeting of countries to prevent and suppress hazards from global warming. Landscape management was one of the topics discussed during the meeting since it was considered as a good strategy in addressing climate change and capable of improving food security and nutrition.

 

The meeting was held in Bonn, Germany and attended by more than 50 countries, which means that sustainable landscape management is an issue not only in Indonesia but it has also been implemented since a few eyars ago in a number of countries.

 

In the same month, Business Watch Indonesia had the chance to visit Nilgiris, a region in India that has started to adopt sustainable landscape management. Nilgiris is located in Tamil Nadu, Southern India state and is one of the main tea producing regions in India. Tea is one of the superior commodities in India and the country is the world second biggest tea producer after China.

 

Tea plantations in Southern India stretch far from the north to the south along Western Ghats, one of the regions that UNESCO has designated as the world heritage site for biodiversity conservation. Sharing boundaries with conservation areas, tea plantations in Southern India, including Nilgiris, have been asked to contribute to the conservation of the surrounding areas.

 

Tea plantations in Nilgiris have maintained some of the natural features that have been there before tea plantations were developed. This is what makes tea plantations in Nilgiris different. Havukal tea plantation, for instance, still maintains the boulders in the plantation areas. The stones help prevent soil erosion and form a natural network of stone drains that allow rain water to run through the entire plantation areas and finally pooled into a river in the plantation.

 

Some tea estates, including Havukal and Korakundah, also share boundaries with protected forest areas. In some of the points in the tea estates, some wildlife species are still found in abundance, including lions and apes. Therefore, the government has requested the tea estates to also be responsible for conserving the protected forest and protecting wildlife in areas around the estates. The protected forest areas are fenced with wires.

 

Landscape management has also been conducted by improving tea cultivation practices. Integrated pest management is applied in tea cultivation in Southern India to reduce the use of pesticide. Pests’ natural enemies are used in such management. Some estates have even practisedorganic tea cultivation.

 

Waste reduction has not only become an issue to tea farmers and tea sector stakeholders. The government has also promoted waste reduction among communities, including reduction of plastic, which is evident from the widely distributed posters in various areas of Nilgiris that say “Plastic Free Nilgiris”.

 

What have been adopted in Nilgiris may not be the same with what has been done in Central Java. However, it clearly shows and becomes an inspiration to the communities and stakeholders in Central Java that working with nature is not impossible.