Green Heroes: How green is my valley

Nestled amid the sprawling slum of Dharavi, the Maharashtra Nature Park Society provided the ideal setting for a conversation with Harsh Valechha. One of the panellists at the TedX Dharavi held on Sunday, the young man is credited with giving Haiti’s reforestation programme a major boost after the Caribbean country was ravaged by an earthquake in 2010. “I stayed in Haiti between 2014 and 2015 as part of an initiative that began in 2010. Some 40,000 saplings were planted in a span of five years,” says the financial consultant-turned-forester-turned farmer.

During his one-year stay, Valechha’s role also involved tackling widespread deforestation. Firewood for cooking and a thriving timber business had reduced huge swathes of Haitian countryside into barren lands. “We partnered with an NGO which makes solar ovens and urged a group of villagers to try it for cooking. Once the pilot project was successful in Anse-a-pitres village in southwest of Haiti, neighbouring areas too began expressing interest.”

Concurrently, Valechha’s team was also incentivising people by planting fruit and nuts-bearing plants around their houses. “Since villagers now had a reason to water the plants, it resulted in a green corridor. 

After returning from Haiti, Valechha shifted his focus on natural farming. “In October 2016, I bought an acre of dry land in the hills of Kadambara in north Kerala through crowd-funding. It’s surrounded by Adivasi settlements whose traditional vocation is agriculture, but they have given it up for “lucrative” jobs in the city because of acute water-scarcity in the region.”

Valechha has named his farm Gaia Grid through which he will revive the age-old methods of adivasi farming. He wants to grow crops, harvest water, check soil erosion, plant fruit-bearing saplings and conserve nature in and around his farm. “Acres and acres around my land has become fallow for the same reasons that I saw in Haiti. I hope that my success with the land will inspire adivasis to return to their primary vocation.”

Right now Valechha is just observing how his land interacts with the natural elements like sunlight and rainwater. “You just can’t jump into farming without knowing the soil intimately,” he says. “The websitewww.thegaiagrid.org spells out my philosophy. At Gaia Grid we believe in the possibility of a harmonious co-existence of all forms — living and non-living. Our dream is to create a space to explore nature as an intrinsic part of being and to cultivate the power to nurture ourselves both physically and emotionally with the help of organic farming, sustainable community living and workshops in self development.”