Eco India: How coffee is solving Western Ghats' biodiversity crisis

Every monsoon, for more than three to four months, heavy rains lash the region of Malnad in Karnataka. These mountains are part of the Western Ghats and known for its rain-fed tropical evergreen forests. Despite being one of the 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world, the Western Ghats today, however, are not what they used to be. A slow degradation has robbed it of its status of an undisturbed forest. Even patches that appear to be green could in fact be degraded, scientist Anand Osori points out. If you look around, you'll see that the canopy is a little bit open. There will be not many large trees. You'll see that it's covered in grasses. It's covered with not much leaf litter. You will see invasive plants without too many native species that are growing. In accordance with the Paris Agreement, India has a commitment to create an additional carbon sink of about 3 billion tons by 2030. It aims to do this by enhancing forest cover. And central to achieving these targets is the regeneration of native plants and tree species. Anand and his team of researchers have been faced with this tall task of regeneration since 2023. A task by no means an easy one for various reasons. Not enough healthy native tree nurseries, or the absence of an effective system of seed connection. Now, if we went into a forest patch and we found seeds of a species that we're interested in, and we collected large numbers of seeds from there, now that can be defined as unethical because by taking out those large numbers of seeds, we might potentially be reducing the natural regeneration of that species in that location. Over and above the fact that we're taking away food sources for animals, insects, etc. that depend on those seeds. The attempt to come upon a better plan made the team realize that the answer lay closer to home than expected in coffee plantations. Spread over 3,000 square kilometers, coffee plantations make up for almost 25% of the total protected area of the western Ghats. They are part of a matrix of other plantations like tea, cardamom, and teak. Although coffee cultivation and expansion was one of the reasons why much of the forest cover has been lost over the centuries, they play an equally positive role in the ecosystem. In many ways, coffee resembles to some degree natural forest ecosystems. And today, coffee actually plays an important role as an ally to national parks and wildlife sanctuaries to support conservation in the western Ghats. The 500-acre Harley Estate belongs to Chandni Purnesh, a fifth-generation coffee planter. This is actually a coffee agroforest because it resembles a natural forest ecosystem. The game-changer in an agroforest are these canopies of shade trees, whose primary role is to protect coffee plants from sun and rain. Unlike regular plantations, an agroforest hosts a variety of native trees and is thereby a potential source of native seeds. We have identified over 60 species of native trees that are on the plantation. Just out of curiosity, I had done a biodiversity survey when I first started spending time here. I think we've lost count of the number of moths we identified and insects and other smaller animals. Unlike any other forest system, collecting seeds from agroforest floors is actually a necessity. A coffee estate undergoes regular cycles of weeding and pruning, through which seeds tend to get lost or destroyed, which is why seed collection is considered more of a rescue here. This is one of the trees. You can see it's a jackfruit, autocarpus heterophyllus. Also, you can see lots of seeds that have fallen here. So, you can see lots of seeds are getting damaged as well. I think it's very important to collect these kinds of seeds that are going to get damaged and we'll grow them in our nursery. Vijay Kumar is the project coordinator at NCF. The NCF has been collaborating with coffee estates in the region, like Chandani's, to be able to connect native seed species that could then be grown in nurseries. Between 2023 and 2024, the team rescued more than 18,000 seeds and seedlings from about 56 native tree species. 10-kilometer drive from Chandani's estate brings us to the Kadamani Tea Estate, where NCF operates one of its nurseries. So, we have around 70 to 75 species that we grow in our nursery. Every care is taken here to monitor the health and growth of the rescued seeds and saplings. But challenges remain. At the present stage, given the reality that our nursery space and resources is a limiting factor, more often than not, we're able to collect more species and more seeds and more seedlings than our nurseries can handle. If we're able to find ways to expand nursery availability, then we'll be able to collect even more seeds and seedlings. There are some plantations, like the Narmada Coffee Estate, that are trying to make nurseries more accessible. An agroforest used by NCF for seed collection, it also has a large nursery with a capacity of 1 lakh native saplings. We have close to about 49 species of native species here, of which I think about 13 of them are quite rare or endemic. So, our intention was to create a large nursery, because we have a large area and we need to fill them with plants. NCF actually wanted support when they saw us already doing something like this. It just made sense to collaborate with us rather than replicate something on their own elsewhere. Collaborating with NCF on restoration efforts has already shown results. Our ones we've planted. Sohan Shetty, manager of the estate, tells us. So, this is a one acre plot at the edge of Narmada Estate. And last year, we removed the coffee from here and we planted about 250 forest saplings. But what's very interesting is, we found close to about 300 native species that have regenerated on their own, through bird droppings and other forms of dispersal. That kind of is like an equal match, so to speak, which kind of doubles the progress. So, if you see on this side, this is an established robusta coffee plot. On their part, coffee estates themselves are veering towards enhancing biodiversity. The benefits are wide ranging, from ecological to brand building. We tell our buyers that the coffee they're buying or they're consuming is contributing or is preserving the habitat for, you know, these many species of birds and animals. And we're hoping that they are, since most of them are overseas buyers, they're very conscious about what they're drinking and where it's coming from. We have divided our entire property into smaller microblocks of five acres or less. So what happens is that every microblock will then give you a different flavor profile, simply because of the trees that are growing there, the animals that are there, the smaller things, you know, the soil composition changes. And the minute the soil composition changes, the flavor of the cup itself changes. While restoration in the Western Ghats has only just begun, a model like this offers a powerful example. An example of how a small, thoughtful intervention, guided by science and nature, can bring us more answers than we could hope to imagine. All of this that we have today, we're only guardians of this land for as long as we're here. We don't own anything. We don't, you know, it doesn't belong to us. You know, I hope that we're able to educate more people on the effects of these things. But I still hope we can do a lot more. Thanks for watching Eco India. If you like the story, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to Scroll.in on YouTube.