The Ecological Restoration Alliance invites you to their next webinar – Fostering the Jugalbandi of People and Nature: Reflections from Central India – where Dr Amrita Neelakantan will summarise the decade long story of building an inclusive Network for Conserving Central India.
We hope to see you there. You can register for the discussion using this link, or by scanning the QR code on the poster below.
Date: June 25, 2025
Time: 4 pm onwards
Venue: Zoom Meeting
About the webinar:
From a handful of tiger conservationists navigating the impact of National Highway 7 in Kanha-Pench, the Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI) has grown into a community of researchers, organisations, and local leaders working across central India.
Today, NCCI works to foster the ‘jugalbandi’, or interplay, between people’s livelihoods and ecological integrity by linking diverse knowledge systems and creating opportunities for joint action.
Why did a wildlife centric network decide to engage with ‘non-environmental’ issues? How has building bridges between people from conservation, law, agriculture and livelihoods benefited the central Indian landscape? Is there something that the restoration network can learn from the NCCI?
Join us as Dr Amrita Neelakantan summarises the decade long story of building this inclusive network. In this talk, she will highlight the NCCI’s experience of mediating the tension between a diversity of goals within the network, and of brokering collaborative, landscape level efforts like Bagh Chaal (habitat connectivity) and their agrobiodiversity roundtable around Kanha National Park.
About the Speaker:
Dr Amrita Neelakantan is the executive director of NCCI. She is a conservation scientist with over 19 years of experience focused on human-nature interactions and connectivity conservation. Her doctoral research around Kanha National Park emphasized the importance of stable incomes in achieving food security and sustainable forest use for both resettled and non-resettled communities. A founding member of the Network for Conserving Central India, she plays a key role in advancing efforts in connectivity and biocultural conservation. Her past work spans global biodiversity hotspots, including extensive fieldwork in Ecuador, Kenya, and Madagascar, and she has led multi-country initiatives to integrate development and conservation goals.
See you on the call.