We created Jaltol, an open-source tool, to offer easy access to data to help understand, diagnose and intervene better. — Much of India is hot and dry. It rains for a few months a year, during which farmers can grow rainfed crops. For the rest of the year, the soil is not moist enough to grow crops without irrigation. Smallholder rainfed farmers with 1–2 acres simply cannot earn enough from…

Under protective irrigation, tankers are used to transport water from the local village tank to farms during critical dry spells. — By Lakshmi Pranuti, Surabhi Singh, Veena Srinivasan Sustaining soil moisture is the biggest bottleneck to improving agricultural productivity in India. In much of India, it rains for only a few months a year, during the monsoons. For the rest of the year, the soil is too dry to grow anything…

We need high-quality reviews of our work to ensure that what we are doing is backed by science. — We set up CSEI as an ‘impact ecosystem builder’ to scale research-backed solutions. One of the key functions we play in building impact ecosystems is ‘research synthesis’ — summarising the state of the science to build consensus among actors. One question we have faced is how do we establish the…

Commodity products and a living labs approach. — By Veena Srinivasan Lantana camara is an invasive weed, whose spread is strangling India’s forests. Introduced by the British, as an ornamental species, lantana reproduces aggressively and hinders the regeneration of native plants and grass species. Because lantana is unpalatable, its spread reduces forage for wild herbivores. Lantana also impacts…

This International Women’s Day, CSEI pays tribute to Malin Falkenmark, Joan Rose and Sunita Narain — Illustrations by Sarayu Neelakantan Water is essential for every aspect of human existence. On the one hand, populations and thirsty economies are still growing in much of the developing world. On the other, there is increasing consciousness on the need to preserve and sustain critical ecosystem services without which life…

Learning new skills and unlearning old habits — 2021 has been a steep learning curve for us. We had to learn new skills and unlearn old habits. We polled our entire team, from field staff to research assistants to initiative leads, to ask them what they had learned in 2021, that was surprising to them. We got some…

With eyes set on the future, we look back at how far we have come ATREE launched the Centre for Social and Environmental Innovation (CSEI) in September 2019, recognising the need to translate research into impact. CSEI would design solutions for “first mile” agents — citizens, consumers and businesses. As…

What CSEI does to build innovation capacity in the team — Innovation capability has been defined as an organisation’s ability to identify new ideas and transform them into solutions. Much has been written on innovation in the context of individual (for-profit) firms. Typical characteristics of innovative organisations are responsiveness, flexibility, management’s ability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external resources.

Why CSEI plays the role of an accessible technical partner — Humanity is facing a crisis. We need science-based solutions. Humanity is at a crossroads. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century, with potentially disastrous impacts on humankind (Read CSEI’s response to the IPCC report)…