Thresholds in Tapestries

Collaboration with: The Forum for Law, Environment, Development & Governance (FLEDGE)

In this studio, the Western Ghats is a threshold that allows the SW monsoon to come through, a moisture-laden wind that drops large amounts of rain between June and September on its way to the Himalayas, a ground that reveals veins, strata and ore of coveted minerals, a catchment of rain that inspires conduits of water and hydropower to cities on the Arabian Sea and the Deccan Plateau, a biodiversity hotspot that calls attention to an endangered planet. In this studio, the Western Ghats is a dynamic tapestry of rain and rituals, myths and practices, people and politics, all enmeshed in temporal, dynamic knowledge.

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The objective of this studio is to devise a new approach/model of inquiry, investigation and engagement that may inform ways of engaging through everyday practices that are synchronous with the environment and give privilege to situated knowledge.

The PBR, apart from serving as the chronicle of local biodiversity, is to be used as a document that provides economic and development opportunities for local communities. The PBR is intended to generate a dialogue around external pressures/forces that could bring adverse changes in the landscape and rich culture, as well as to facilitate adaptive co-management. However, in the current state, the PBR could, at best, are seen as a publication that merely lists the biodiversity (largely flora) and is weakly used as a mechanism for promoting conservation, sustainable use and documentation of biodiversity, within scientific and economic frameworks. The potentialities of the PBR, as an idea, are thus curtailed due to lack of awareness on how to use the PBRs for socio-economic and cultural aspects of local people.

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With such a progressive idea as the People’s Biodiversity Register, it is important to tap its full potential, to do more than just document biological diversity from local peoples. It is imperative to gather and record knowledge in its contextual complexity and local dynamics, in order to understand, plan and manage places and resources in a manner that will perpetuate diversity (natural and cultural) in the coming generations, in multiple accessible forms and processes.

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This project presents the opportunity to re-think, re-imagine and re-design the way knowledge is perceived, recorded, interpreted and represented, and shared.

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Project Concept: Deepta Sateesh, Arpitha Kodiveri, Malvika Tewari (DEL Laboratory 2014).