Policy Brief: Conserving Maharashtra’s Savannah Grasslands

ATREE’s Centre for Policy Design, on behalf of AREST, and The Grasslands Trust wrote a policy brief that sums up the benefits of grassland ecosystems and lists six recommendations.

Photo credit: Kalyan Varma

Tropical grasslands and savannahs are important for millions of people whose pastoralist livelihoods depend on this natural ecosystem. It is home to diverse forms of wildlife including the blackbuck and the Great Indian Bustard. Savannah grasslands are also key to addressing climate change because they sequester huge amounts of carbon.

Despite these vital benefits and the contribution of grasslands to India’s economic and ecological security, these habitats are declining rapidly. In fact, they are considered ‘wastelands’.

We mapped existing legal frameworks, conducted a detailed stakeholder analysis and identified high-priority areas in the state for immediate interventions. We have also compiled a range of implementable and viable recommendations for grassland conservation to become a reality in Maharashtra and in India.

This blog post is a summary of the brief, which can be read in full here.

Protect Grasslands for its People

Maharashtra has an impressive diversity of pastoralist livelihoods which rear indigenous sheep, goats, cows and buffaloes. In India, pastoralism supports 1.3 crore cattle, 56 lakh buffaloes, 27 lakh sheep and 1.06 crore goats. Of the 1.3 crore pastoralists in India, nearly 20 lakh depend on Maharashtra’s grasslands for livelihood.

Photo credit: Kalyan Varma

Protect Grasslands for Climate Action

India has made many commitments on the world stage to sequester carbon, reduce emissions as well as restore degraded lands and halt biodiversity loss. This makes carbon sinks a national priority. And grasslands are important carbon sinks as they sequester 146 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.

During wildfires or droughts, carbon stored underground in grasslands is less likely to be released back into the atmosphere. Moreover, unlike plantations of trees, grasslands sequester carbon in more water-efficient ways.

Photo credit: Kalyan Varma

Protect Grasslands for Biodiversity Conservation

Many of the native species that call Maharashtra’s grasslands home, are flagged as threatened, endangered or critically endangered in the IUCN Red List. As grassland habitats get diverted for other uses, these grassland-specific species are increasingly getting affected.

Clockwise from top left: Blackbuck (photo credit: The Grasslands Trust); Indian grey wolves (photo credit: Mihir Godbole); fan-throated lizard (photo credit: Anup Deodhar); and painted francolin (photo credit: Palash Thakkar).

Mapping exercise to identify high-priority zones for conservation

In order to identify grassland areas that should be prioritised to achieve the goal of biodiversity conservation and agro-pastoralists’ welfare, we carried out a prioritisation exercise using Ecological Niche Modelling using MaxEnt.

Read more about our methodology in the policy brief.

Map of priority areas for conservation of grassland specialist species in Maharashtra. The colour gradient from light blue to dark blue shows areas of high (for 8–10 species) to extremely high (for 11–15 species) conservation priority. This map was prepared by the ATREE-Ecoinformatics Lab on September 28, 2022. Pastoralist routes and grazing data is sourced from the Centre for Pastoralism (CFP) and the ONE layer is from Madhusudan and Vanak (2022). The base layer is Esri Terrain.

Here are six policy recommendations we identified for developing an effective management plan for grasslands conservation in Maharashtra:

• Grasslands are not wastelands. It is important to amplify scientific evidence that shows ecological value of grasslands and address the identity crisis that is preventing effective interventions.
• Management of grasslands falls under different government departments. An inter-ministerial agency can enable more effective governance
• Grasslands support pastoralist livelihoods, which is a carbon-efficient form of agriculture. It is important to recognise pastoralism as a separate management system and key to mitigating climate change.
• There is also a need to devise a national policy on grassland management and grazing, that outlines principles of managing grasslands in their own right.
• The socio-ecological complexity of grasslands require standardised indicators that facilitate effective decision-making on conservation, restoration and sustainable use of grasslands.
• Initiate long-term ecological monitoring programmes to monitor species population, distribution and changing ecological processes in savannah grasslands.

Edited by Kaavya Kumar

Read the full policy brief on savannah grassland conservation in Maharashtra here.

If you have any questions, please write to anuja.malhotra@atree.org or avanak@atree.org.