ATREE Celebrates 25 Years of Environmental Research With Two-Day Festival
The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is hosting a series of events in Bengaluru on August 18 and 19. The festival is free and open to everyone.
The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a non-profit research organisation focused on conservation and sustainability, is marking its silver jubilee with a two-day festival on 18 and 19 August at the JN Tata Auditorium in the IISc campus, Malleswaram.
Under the broad theme ‘Life and Lives’, the event is open to the public and includes a range of programmes including discussions on the state of conservation science and sustainable development, debates on some of the most current and contentious environmental issues, book launches as well as film screenings and traditional performances.
The line-up of speakers includes ATREE’s Founder-President and Chair, Kamaljit S.Bawa, who is the first Indian to receive the Linnean Medal in Botany for his pioneering work on the biodiversity of forests in Central America, the Western Ghats and the eastern Himalayas. Earlier this year, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Sharachchandra Lele, Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy and Governance at ATREE, will deliver the keynote, ‘Bridging Disciplines, Bridging Roles: Inter and Trans-Disciplinary Challenges in Environmental Research’.
Naturescapes, Urbanscapes and Waterscapes
ATREE has categorised the wide variety of events into three showcases, each focusing on a different aspect of environmental change. Nitin Sekar, Lead of WWF-India’s Elephant Conservation Programme, will discuss ‘why we conserve species that kill people’ as part of the Naturescapes showcase on 18 August.
On August 19, Urbanscapes features Anne Feenstra, former Dean of Architecture at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He will talk about the search for better balanced and healthier urbanscapes through scenario-thinking. There will also be presentations by Chandni Singh, senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), and Anindya Sinha, professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS).
The Waterscapes segment will feature a talk on ‘Stressed and Insulted Waterscapes: Countering Mal-Development and Climate Change through the Nexus Approach’ by Nepal’s former Minister for Water Resources, Dipak Gyawali. There will also be a ‘Rendezvous’ session on equitable water use hosted by Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Dean of the School of Environment and Sustainability at IIHS.
Other panel discussions include one moderated by Rohini Nilekani on ‘What lies ahead? Challenges and opportunities for Samaj, Sarkar and Bazaar’, based on the collection of essays she recently released as a book. She will be in conversation with K VijayRaghavan, former Principal Scientific Advisor for the central government; Harini Nagendra, professor at Azim Premji University; and Shloka Nath, Acting CEO of the India Climate Collaborative under Tata Trusts.
Cafe Controversial
These wide-ranging talks are not all. One of the most anticipated events are the three cafe-style debates where the audience can participate and weigh in with their opinions. The three ‘controversial’ subjects are ‘Cafe Vriksha — To Plant or Not to Plant Trees’, ‘Cafe Compassion — To Feed or Not to Feed Animals’ and ‘Cafe Organic — To Turn or Not to Turn Organic’. These events will see experts speaking for either side of the arguments and interactive sessions with the audience.
Interactive Exhibits, Book Launches & More
Translating ATREE’s deep domain knowledge into more accessible forms, the silver jubilee celebrations will see the launch of a number of important books including ‘Ullam’, a book for school students around the Vembanad lake in Kerala to know more the life around them; ‘Checklist of Indian Plants’, a momentous collation of India’s flowering plants; and ‘Snakes and Lizards of the Sky Islands of the Western Ghats’.
On Thursday evening, ATREE will host four indigenous art forms performed by communities the institution works closely with. This includes Villupaattu, a form of musical storytelling popular in temple festivals in Tirunelveli; Kaniyan Koothu, which is performed exclusively by the Kaniyan tribe from the southern districts of Tamil Nadu; Chavittu Nadakam, a colourful Latin Christian classical art form that is mainly performed in central Kerala; and Gorukana, a folk dance of the Soliga tribal community in southern Karnataka.
Throughout the two-day event, ATREE is also exhibiting work by various artists including Nirupa Rao, Sangeetha Kadur and Rohan Chakravarthy; and screening more than 25 films.
There are interactive exhibits including an audio booth called ‘Who’s Calling’, where festival attendees will get the chance to test their knowledge of sounds from the natural world. Researchers have put together a list of calls belonging to a range of species from frogs to large mammals.
ATREE is also hosting a board game contest; participants will have the opportunity to create a game that tackles complex environmental issues. For more information on this, please contact boardgame@atree.org.
For the full schedule, please visit https://bit.ly/Atree25.
If you are a journalists who would like to cover the event or interview one of the speakers, please get in touch with Kaavya Kumar (kaavya.kumar@atree.org, 9995864562) or Anjana Balakrishnan (anjana.balakrishnan@atree.org, 9740082666).
