Sierra Gorda Brings Social Impact to Carbon Sales: Social and Environmental Value Combine for Impact | SOCAP.

by: Kevin Doyle of Good Capital

A Mexican people’s movement in an arid rural area is about to come to market with some of the highest priced and heavily validated carbon and ecosystem services on the planet.

Because it creates a unique mix of social and environmental value, the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve’s luxury niche carbon offset has a hard time telling its story to donors who are often focused principally either on the planet or on the people, but less often both.

That’s not to say that Sierra Gorda (SGBR) has not been recognized; they are a Schwab Foundation awardee, an Earth Island grantee, and recipient of honors from the UN, the Mexican government, and foundations going back 15 years.

Reputable groups such as Oliver Karius’ Lichtenstein-based LGT Venture Philanthropy have bought carbon offsets from them.

But the new $20 price per ton on carbon offsets that Sierra Gorda plans to roll out after an expected validation is different. Only one ecotourism group and a couple of European groups are selling carbon offsets near that price. To get that premium, SGBR will have to explain the deep value they create, and in the process, perhaps bridge the gap between planet-focused and people-focused impact funders.

That’s not simple; planet-focused investors and donors typically only look at the impact on the planet, and are only coming to understand sustainable developing world agriculture as an ally in their efforts to save animals and the environment. People and poverty alleviation-focused funders, the core of the SOCAP community for the last three years, mostly look at social impact. Sierra Gorda offers both.

We plan to take a deep look at Sierra Gorda’s unique value at this year’s SOCAP/Europe as a way to span that divide through helping both groups understand the holistic value of the SGBR carbon premium, and what they call SEROI: Social and Environmental Returns on Investment.

Sierra Gorda is hopeful that the UN Foundation, a long-time backer, will be among their first carbon offset customers and will help them explain the social and environmental value of their ecosystem services.

“We are the only group selling carbon and ecosystem services that is made up of poor people who plant trees and clean out creeks,” said Pati Ruiz Corzo, director of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda. Corzo is also the remarkable woman who began the effort in an area about the size of Rhode Island, a five-hour drive north of Mexico City.

“We are winning against climate change,” says Laura Perez-Arce, Corzo’s collaborator for the past dozen years. The Kyoto Protocol’s carbon metrics are geared toward large plantations with 500 hectares, whereas the real genius of Sierra Gorda is that it enlists 35,000 local poor people in 638 communities working their on own plots as small as 1/3 of a hectare as well as on public land. The locals work in waste and watershed management on behalf of themselves and their larger community, and, as it turns out, on behalf of their planet. “These other reforestations schemes, they get scientists to build the models. We have been here hundreds of years and will be here in 30 years. Who can say they will be doing that in 30 years in (commercial reforestation)?”

Sierra Gorda is certified by government groups; from the village, to the county, to the state, and to the Mexican nation. And that approach also flies against traditional top-down carbon offset efforts.

Having reclaimed the land, Sierra Gorda is adding sustainable livestock farming that produces high-quality and high-margin cattle while also replenishing the soil using the methodology pioneered by Allan Savory in Southern Africa.

Sierra Gorda has already sold around $5 millions of carbon offsets and ecosystem services to manufacturers, Spanish rental car companies, and governments in the voluntary, philanthropic, non-regulated market. But with an audit putting the actual cost of their carbon at $19.50, their new price captures the true cost and value of what they do. “We want to stop depending on subsidies from our government,” Perez-Arce says. “We want to recover our labor costs, the infrastructure to manage small reforestation on tiny plots.” A 16 percent sales tax currently imposed by the Mexican government keeps them from offering a financial return, but supporters are suggesting there could be a way around that for a group with this unique track record.

A new U.S. based non-profit created by Perez-Arce, Carbon Neutral Planet, is nearly ready to offer services to individuals and groups to reduce their carbon footprint. The group also has more than a dozen ecotourist resort opportunities that it has helped create in its area and more than a dozen up-and-running microenterprises.

“We have a solid model that can be replicated by other poor people in other places,” Corzo said. “We have an attractive story and a mechanism for financing conservation and fighting poverty. We need to hold the line on our price.”

To do that, they will have to get people to view the value of what they are doing from two lenses: impact on the planet and impact on the people. We want to help them at SOCAP/Europe, but we need your help to do it.

Measurements of the atmosphere and sunlight in South-Central Texas began on 04 Feb 1990 from a field outside my rural office. The data include the total ozone column, total water vapor, optical depth (haze) and direct UV-B. In 1994 various full-sky measurements of sunlight, including UV-B, and photographs of the solar aureole (the glow around the sun caused by aerosols in the sky) were added. 

Fig. 1. Solar UV-B at or near solar noon at South-Central Texas from 1994-2011 on (a) days without clouds at sun and (b) clear days only.

Figure 1 includes two charts that show the UV-B measured at or near solar noon on days when clouds were present but did not block the sun (higher UV-B) and clear days with very few or no clouds (reduced UV-B). (Not included are days when I was away.)

The chart that shows all days (Fig. 1.a.)  indicates much higher UV-B caused by scattering from clouds. For details of this phenomenon, see Mims and Frederick, 1994. Note that this chart shows a significant reduction in cloudiness beginning in 2002.

The chart that shows UV-B on clear days (Fig. 2.b) has much less noise. The gradual reduction of UV-B over the years is primarily due to the gradual recovery of the ozone layer after the significant reduction in ozone that occurred after the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991. Noise in the clear sky data is caused by ozone fluctuations and seasonal dust and smoke events.

The UV-B radiometer that collected the data described here was made possible by funds from a 1993 Rolex Award.  

Reference.
F. M. Mims III, and John E. Frederick, Cumulus Clouds and UV-B, Nature 371, 291, 1994.

During the looming Persian Gulf crisis of 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, demand for my carpentry skills dried to a trickle. I needed work, or at least something to do. I decided that if I couldn’t find gainful employment I could at least volunteer to try to help someone else. I recalled my time in the Peace Corps and one man in Sucia, Ecuador who had changed his life because he gained the mobility of a bicycle. I saw bikes every week out on the curb on trash day. Why not collect a dozen unwanted bikes an send them back to Ecuador? Seemed easy enough.

Fast forward twenty years and 129,477 bikes later. Nope, it wasn’t easy. I was wrong about that, but it sure has been effective and fun. P4P has become the life’s work I didn’t know, back then, that I had been looking for. It’s more than just collecting old bikes. It’s economic development, small business generation, micro-credit financing, import/export regulation, international shipping and commerce… and the list goes on. We’ve made positive interventions in the lives of tens of thousands of families, helped lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty, transformed local economies, encouraged education, and spawned a group of clone organizations now doing the same all over the world.

But what of the next twenty years? The immediate future of P4P is written in two parts. First is the highly specialized system that, with the help of many good people domestically, produces our initial product: containers of bicycles, parts, and accessories, along with sewing machines, for international shipment. The second is our overseas distribution partners and an insatiable demand for mobility. With funding, our domestic production system could easily produce more bikes in the next twenty years than it did the first and our partners, current and future, are ready and willing to take them all. There are dozens of good partnerships around the world, waiting—we just cannot produce enough to satisfy their needs.

P4P is a charity and charity requires donation. We have great potential—but the total number of bicycles we can deliver overseas is very firmly based upon the amount of funds we allocate to collection, not our potential. Our greatest need by far is not assistance with the cost of shipping containers of bikes; those are the glamorous big-ticket items and are relatively easy to solicit funds for. P4P’s needs lie with the costs of collecting the bikes initially. Basically, it is the cost of running a trucking company in New Jersey. It’s not sexy; it’s hard to raise funds for maintenance and diesel fuel, but it’s the U.S. expenses that fill the containers we ship. Those production costs are eternally underfunded. This is the chief limit to what we can do internationally and is the greatest threat to P4P’s future existence.

A longer reading of the future is hard to do. One thing is certain: an increasing percentage of our bikes have been heading East, as opposed to South, and this trend will continue. Central America has accounted for 67% of the bicycles P4P has ever shipped. But a bicycle market has been firmly established there now and normal “for profit” bicycle shops are beginning to be able to satisfy the market. Going forward, a smaller percentage of our bikes will go there. Meanwhile, Africa has accounted for 18% of our bikes shipped. And even though shipping costs are higher, the proportion of bikes we ship going to Africa has increased dramatically in recent years. Likewise in Eastern Europe, which remains poor but is rapidly liberalizing. Only 2.5% of our total bike output has ever been sent there, but that percentage will significantly increase in the next ten years.

Looking back at the last twenty years it is natural to ask: was it worth all the effort? Yes, it was. In fact, it’s felt like raising a child. I’ve been lifting and banging my knuckles on bikes for twenty years now. I don’t believe I’ll still be running P4P twenty years from now. However, we have put in place the necessary structure so the organization can and will continue regardless of who is doing the lifting and banging. P4P has been my third child, unruly and obstinate at times, but with a good heart. February 11th, 2011 will mark its 20th birthday. Happy Birthday. You’re now an adult. Continue making us proud.

Sept 15, 2010:

The first camera traps have now been set out in the Argut Valley, near the Russia-Mongolia border and thought to harbor the Altai’s best snow leopard population. It’s a very remote area — I had to ride a horse for 40 kilometers over difficult trails, along a surging glacial river with cliffs towering high above us.  12 hours on a saddle, enough to give one a sore bum and very stiff knees, especially if one’s cowboy knowledge comes from the movies! Just how do horses walk across river rocks without sliding or falling all over the place?  These ones, almost as large as Arabian stallions were truly amazing.

The river, along with the nearby Katun (which in turn feeds into Russia’s longest river) is a favorite for white-water rafters. However, the Argut has a reputation for being highly dangerous and thus is recommended only for the most experienced rafters (most are domestic visitors right now, riding on strange pontoons rather than the rubber rafts we are familiar with).  High above we catch glimpses of ibex, a wild goat that is the main prey of snow leopards across its range in Russia, Mongolia and other central Asian states.  That’s a good sign — or should be.

Camped at the confluence of a large stream, which was too deep and fast-flowing even for these horses. Too bad for the best snow leopard habitat clearly was on the other side!   I slept under the stars beside some nice alder trees, the sound of rapids in background, golden eagles soaring overhead during the day, owls and bats at night.  Spent the next 5 days setting up cameras on high ridges, where we hoped they will capture leopard images, as well as any of the outsiders said to poach ibex in the area in the fall.  Let’s see that Sergei, Misha and the villagers I trained come up with.  They will return and check the cameras at the end of September, so watch our website for news.

Clearing hunting, legal and illegal, is deeply rooted in the Russian culture and psyche, for one so rarely sees wildlife driving the nicely paved roads or walking forest and grassland trails. This is why we are establishing a partnership with several schools to promote awareness. Hey kids, let your parents know that you want your kids to see snow leopards and ibex!  Frankly, I am ashamed by my generation, who seem to treat the Earth so recklessly.  We have to charge that — but need your help. Even small action can make a major difference, and help build momentum.  Our first event is Snow Leopard Day, set for next May.  My fantasy would be to connect kids on both continents, and include shamans or traditional elders and diviners in the process.

My next message will cover work in Mongolia — I crossed by road, quite an experience. All to collect the poop of snow leopards in the Altay-Sayan Mountains of Central Asia.

August 19, 2010:

Mongolia in summer is very different from winter-time. Warm, green, with puffy clouds and outdoor events and everyone heading for the countryside from the city.

Our group includes my partner Darla Hillard (SLC’s Education Director), Dr. Apela Colorado an Native America elder who specializes in networking elder healers, shamans and sacred place protectors across the globe, and Tony Acosta, a Mexican filmmaker, Erjen Khamaganova (program officer with The Christensen Fund) and I (SLC  founder and Indianapolis finalist). Our route is from Ulaanbaatar to Lake Baikal and the Altai region of Russia along Mongolia’s border, then back home via Ulaanbaatar.

We are here to network with elders and shamans with the aim of returning the snow leopard as a powerful spiritual force (see below for project description), and to train park rangers and villagers in camera trapping so that they might monitor snow leopard and prey populations.

Here in the Mongolian and Russian Altai, the indigenous communities have retained traditional knowledge and culture to a degree not found elsewhere in Central Asia. Nonetheless, guardians of the region’s sacred sites are under great environmental, political and religious pressures. The Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) is collaborating with the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) in a project focused on sacred sites and revitalizing communities to again promote strong, positive engagement with the high mountain ecology. Networking is one of WISN’s primary goals; as a way of keeping guardians in touch with others facing similar challenges. Networking also creates a critical level of cultural identity, global community, and the empowerment for the local guardians to continue their work of earth stewardship. The Conservancy will assist in building a body of educational activities and materials aimed at bringing back the snow leopard as central to the culture, and vital to the cascade of environmental relationships and consequences generated by a top predator.

Our journey started in Ulaanbaatar (UB) on August 4th, with meetings with community leaders and NGO’s involved in nature education and a visit to a shaman who serves as the protector of UB’s sacred mountain. We are traveling with Erjen Khamaganova of the Christensen Fund, who works to help Mongolians and Baryut people maintain their unique culture. Later, after breakfast (mutton spaghetti) at the International Children’s Center — Naidam, we talked about the waning nature awareness among Mongolia’s youth. They are attracted by western clothing, values and technology, texting on cell phones as I showed them images of one of the rarest cats in the world. But their attention was soon captured by a snow leopard caught on remote video in Ladakh, India as it wipes a camera lens with its paw (see film Silent Roar: in search of the snow leopard).

On Aug 7 we flew to the Russian city of Ulan Ude near Lake Baikal for the 500 km drive to the Eastern Syan Mountains and remote hamlet of Akha, a community that considers the snow leopard to be their protector animal. It’s the only part of Russia where the entire district is a national park, and where their own indigenous language is taught in school. But ibex, musk deer and other horned animals that provide the snow leopard with food have been very severely depleted due to poaching. Every household has a gun, and sees it as their right to hunt animals. Further pressure comes from illegal border trade with Mongolia and China.

We found a common language in talking about conservation, especially of school children. Students of the Akha school excel in science, having won many national prizes. They are the best means for educating their parents and returning their eastern Siberian mountains back to their former importance as far as snow leopards are concerned.

On Aug 12 we drove on to Irkutsk, on the Angara River that drains Baikal and is the world’s longest drainage, where I meet with Dr. Egevny Kosharev, one of Russia’s leading snow leopard experts whom I had met back in 1989 before the dissolution of the USSR. He emphasized the urgency to act quickly to save snow leopards and their unique mountain ecosystem, calling for cooperation and the public to voice their concern, and to act to remove corrupt officials. Economic conditions are slowly improving in the rural parts of Russia, so there is hope.

From here we flew to Novosibirsk, a major city north of the Kazakhzstan border for the 750 km drive to the Gorno-Altai Republic, considered by indigenous people to be the cradle-place of Russia’s snow leopard population. The landscape was flat wheat-lands with sunflowers, like Kansas or western Washington. We crossed a massive river, and entered a land of incredible beauty. Altai borders along the far west of Mongolia, and again and again, driving along well-paved roads, I imagined ourselves to be in Montana, with its rolling hills of pine and other conifers, interspersed with verdant perennial grasslands, clean-flowing streams and picturesque settlements. How different from my visits in the Himalaya, where I often have to trek by foot for a week just to reach the cat’s habitat!

August 14: Leaving the main city, our first stop was at the Uch Enmek Nature Park, an amazingly green and spectacular valley with three settlements, the main being Karakul. The last place named Karakul that I visited was located in Tajikistan, the far western limit of snow leopards. Now we are near the northern limits. Long days, warm mornings, late afternoon thunderstorms, ever-changing sky light, just like the white and black patterns of a snow leopard.

Last night, Darla and I had the honor of attending a special fire ceremony given by elders from Altai and Kyrgzstan, another important country whose snow leopard numbers plummeted with the fall of the USSR, and people’s desperate poverty — suddenly a snow leopard pelt was worth a fortune on the black market. Ceremonies honoring special animals and places were prohibited during Soviet times. So the local villagers have to re-learn their cultural heritage and indigenous customs. Many are amazed that the outside world shows such interest in the snow leopard, which the elders say is the guardian spirit of Karakul valley.

My next messages will cover how we and our partners are working with local teachers to promote conservation education, and a 5-day horse-ride into the Argut Valley which has the highest concentration of the cats. How many will we catch on camera-trap I wonder?

Global Action – CNN ireport on the Sierra Gorda and the 350 movement for the next step to changing public opinion and actions to reduce carbon emission.  Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda I.A.P.  have been mobilizing regionwide concern for the environment for the last 23 years and today the community members are coming to us with their concerns about the climate. The importance of raising awareness and a value in civic responsibility and participation has never been greater.

At Pedals for Progress, we recycle bikes. It is the core of our operations and it always will be. But there have been times we’ve shipped other recycled materials overseas, stuff like computer equipment or sports gear. One of these sidelines that’s closest to my heart is our sewing machines program.

Read more

Pedals for Progress opens a new partnership with PASS Albania, click on the link to read more: http://www.p4p.org/pass.html. Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and one of the forgotten ones. I think there is a lot of work we can do here with a committed local partner. I have high hopes.

This year rain in many parts of Jordan was very abundant. While this is usually a most welcomed event in the semi arid regions of Jordan, especially after several years of below average precipitation, this proved to be catastrophic for Petra. Monument 609 fell due to the heavy rain. It is a beautiful facade which was classified by Brunowe and von Damazewski as Proto Hegr type. Others have classified it in their own scheme of typology as Double Cornice Phase II, Hellenistic or Cavetto type. After a short field trip, I was able to find the photo for the monument in my database dating back to 1996. The reason for the field trip was that the monument has changed so much over the years that a recent photo (after the facade slid off its supporting background rock) could only be matched to the older photo after the visit. By comparing other nearby features in our database with their modern pictures an exact match was found. What one sees from the pictures is that in 1996 the colour of the facade was dark due to a protective patina. Often a hard material deposits on the surface of rocks thus giving them some sort of protection. However this so called desert varnish or patina is not safe from the natural weathering process that threatens stone. The recent photo shows that severe weathering of the facde has occured since 1996. True to the old wisdom, the facade has beautiful layered colours of red and white formed by a chromatographic process that is responsible for the formation of Leisgang rings. In sandstones this is a process in which differential deposition of coloured rings of minerals leads to very beautiful ring shaped colours of red, white, green and blue (depending on the minerals pesent in the rock),  often in contour like formations. The trouble is that this a symptom of serious damage. Normally the beutifully coloured sandstone can be scratched into powder and rubbed off with your finger.

Now what has happened to monument 609. A close examination of the sandstone that forms the backbone rock shows that in an area where the red sandstone type (Precambrian) predominates, there is an unusual deposit of white Ordovician Sandstone within the matrix of the rock. It so happens that the white vein or deposit lies parallel to the surface of the facade and forms an interface between two layers of the red type. In our earlier studies and confirmed by those of Fitzner and Heinrichs form the Aachen Geologic Institute (http://www.stone.rwth-aachen.de/download.htm ), Ordovician sandstone is more porous (about 14%) than Precambrian (about 10%). This sudden variation in properties creates a weak spot or region, highly susceptible to weathering. To make matters worse another vein of white sandstone lies at 90 degrees to the first one and cuts through the facade itself. Over the years water action with the salts that it always carries, not only has affected the surface of the facade and changing its colour, but has hit the white vein deposit in a very drastic matter. While this was not observed from the front of the monument and was hidden from an observer in front of the facade it has been taking hold over many years. During winter time rain  dissolves salts that naturally occur in nature and carries them into the pores of the rock. It also dissolves the cementing minerals that give the rock its structural strength.  In the dry season the water evaporates at the surface depositing salts that due to their expansion break the cementing agents. As the surface water evaporates more of the water in the deeper of pores of the rock migrate to the surface and dries of with the same detrimental surface deposition of salts. The results in this case is that the patina has been weathered and the beautiful colours appear. A more important effect of this wetting-drying process is that the white veins are weakened (weathered) at a faster rate than the bulk of the backbone rock. Over the years the process has weakened bit by bit those veins. During the wet cycle the material expands. In summer the material contracts as it dries. This breaks further the cementing material of the rock. When heavy rain came after  several year of drought, the veins got so much of a shock (dissolution of salts and cementing minerals as well as material expansion due to the wetting process) could no longer carry the heavy weight of the facade (I estimate roughly 500 tons of mass) and the monument slid down to the ground suddenly but smoothly. at the interface the rock was crushed into a fine flowery powder. In other spots the rock was torn apart and sheared by the falling mass. The facade while falling also broke into two main pieces. This happened exactly where the 90 degrees vein lies and the white surface where the two parts split, a testimony to the role of inhomogeneous materials in this serious event. The massive facade fell on a camel (poor thing), that was left to shelter from the rain by its owner, and killed instantly.

Lessons learnt:  Accidents like this are threatening to monumnts and to life. The facade lies in an area that is rarely visited by tourists and park managers. It lies out of the way from the tracks normally taken by humans. Only a few Bedouins probably haunt the area. While it was possible to detect problems for the monument form the changes in the surface appearance of the facade, there was no way to predict that the facade was endangered or to anticipate when catastrophe was going to occur. Weathering is not just a surface phenomenon. It occurs deep inside the rock and such techniques that only look at the surfaces of facades might prove useless in risk assessment and risk management. The shear size of the site and its complex weathering profiles makes any monitoring and intervention steps a very demanding and costly operation. Once more my database and its GIS system has proved itself very useful in identifying the monument that has been destroyed and has brought to light possible problems that need serious attention and must been addressed as soon as possible. Ms Tahani Salih from the Petra Arcaheological Park was the first person to identify the number of the monument. Nevrtheless, the field visit I made together with the data in the database confirmed unequivocally the identification.

I have just returned from the most amazing trip tracking some of India’s traditional breeds in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Thanks to the efforts and enthusiasm of several of my friends and colleagues in the LIFE Network I was able to meet with a wide variety of livestock keepers – nomadic, semi-nomadic, settled; male, female; poor and affluent; young and old; landless and land-owning – who all shared a tremendous passion and pride in their breeds. This trip has filled me with hope, even conviction, that India’s long ignored local breeds will survive and thrive, even as socio-economic patterns evolve, because they are developing new utilities as providers of organic manure, healthy milk and even companionship.

Kangayam Cattle

In Tamil Nadu, Karthikeya Sivasennapatty and other member of the Senaapathy Kangayam Cattle Research Foundation www.kangayambull.com introduced me to the Kangayam draft cattle breed that is kept by the Gounder community and linked with the Korangadu pasture, a traditional sylvipastoral system enclosed by a live fence. The Kangayam cattle was traditionally used for lifting water, ploughing, and pulling carts, but its future importance may well lie in providing organic manure and in milk for health conscious families.
The breed has ritual significance and it is used for the game or sport of jellikut, a type of bull wrestling contest that can mean both fame and money for successful participants (although also death). Traditionally a girl is given a cow and a calf by her parents when she gets married and moves to her in-laws and surprisingly, this custom is still prevalent, even if the girl is highly educated.
The Kangayam Foundation is doing a yeoman’s job of promoting the breed by organising shows and motivating the traditional breeders. This is having an effect on local politicians and policy makers – a brochure about the newly created district of Trissur, devotes a whole page to describing the Kangyam cattle as local heritage.

Bargur Hill Cattle

From the Kangayam breeding tract in the plains, we ventured into the MM Hills to meet the Lingayat that have been stewarding the Bargur hill cattle breed for centuries. For this leg of my trip I was accompanied by Mr. Vivekanandan of the NGO SEVA and by a young lawyer, Mr. E.N. Sivasenapatty who is the Secretary of the Bargur Hill Cattle Breeders Association.
This is a densely forested area full with wildlife, including elephants and large cats, and the Bargur cattle with its coat colour resembling a spotted dear is part of the eco-sysem. The traditional system is for them to be kept in the forest for about 7-9 months, and near the village or the rest of the time. For this purpose they have received a grazing and penning permit from the Forest Department since time immemorial. However, this year, the penning permits have been cancelled and there is great worry and concern among the community how they will be able to sustain their cattle. Fortunately, the Lingayat recently established a Biocultural protocol about their role in biodiversity conservation that refers to the various laws. Now is the time to see, whether such rights are actually invocable and implemented.

Coimbatore and Mecheri Sheep

Next, Dr. Kandasamy, a retired professor from Tamil Nadu Veterinary University and animal breeding expert took over the baton and introduced me to Coimbatore sheep which are kept by the Kurumba in totally migratory systems. While the women stay in the village, the men take the flocks to graze on harvested fields of paddy and other crops. In the night they are penned in the fields, and the land owners pay for this service. The Coimbatore sheep is a wool breed, but now wool prodution is no longer remunerative. The women have all but given up the practice of weaving kamblis, allthough the older women still have the skills and occassionally weave on order. The younger women however all work in the textile factories of Coimbatore.
While the population of Coimbatore sheep has declined, the Mecheri sheep, a hair breed is thriving. It is excellently adapted to the Korangadu pastures and provides reliable income to poor and uneducated people – many of them women – due to the booming meat market. Of course, raising Mecheri sheep is dependent on the survival of the Korangadu pastures. Dr. Kandasamy expects that rising property values may put much of the extremely biodiverse Korangadu – which are basically a community conserved areas – under pressure.

Vechur Cow

Kerala is an extremely fertile area and for 50 years cross-breeding has been promoted heavily. This had led to the virtual extinction of the local Vechur cow, an animal that is only about 90 cm high, by the late 1980s. At this point in time, Prof. Sosamma Iype and a dedicated team of students stepped in for a systematic rescue effort. They scouted all over the state, eventually locating about 30 animals and then started multiplying them. Now the population is back to about 1500 head and this small cow has carved out a niche for itself in the increasingly popular zero-input farming. It is kept by highly educated families in their backyard to provide manure for growing household vegetables and for milk. More information is available at www.vechur.org.
The Vechur conservation Trust has expanded its labours to save Kerala’s other indigenous breeds as well. Among these are the Ankamali pig, the Malabari and Attapady goats, the Kasargod cattle, and the Kuttanadu ducks which are also kept in migratory systems. As I could see for myself, and have detailed in an upcoming article, all these breeds are a boon to landless and peri-urban livestock keepers, especially women. Why cross-breed, if there is such perfectly adapted bio-cultural bounty is already available?