This region spans vastly different landscapes, cultures, and contexts but shares a common thread: communities deeply tied to their land, facing mounting pressure from climate change, industrial land use, systemic marginalisation, and finding ways to restore what’s been lost.
Commonland’s work in the Asia-Pacific focuses on two very different but equally important areas: tribal and farming communities restoring forests and livelihoods in Central India, and an ecosystem of partners restoring land and healing Country across Western Australia.
India The Central Highlands Restoration Programme (CHiRP) works with tribal and farming communities to restore forests, build sustainable livelihoods, and regenerate landscapes. Women's self-help groups are leading nursery creation and forest conservation. Farmers are transitioning to regenerative practices through the Kavir Kisan network. And indigenous knowledge is being woven together with modern conservation to drive long-term change.
Since 2015, Commonland has worked with an ecosystem of partners - a diverse range of individuals and organisations, including Indigenous land managers, regenerative farmers, impact investors, ecological-corridor creators, and systems-change practitioners - to advance holistic landscape restoration and healing Country across WA. Now, the Eco-Systems Innovation Lab is bringing together a microcosm of system stakeholders for a year-long transformation journey.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, land is not something to be bought and sold, and Country is not a term to simply describe an area. It’s Country with a capital “C”, or boodja in Noongar — the Aboriginal people native to Western Australia — and it holds cultural and spiritual significance as a living entity that encompasses land, waters, skies, people, ceremony, and story.
In the heart of a changing landscape live the women of the Baiga tribe, stewards of a long-standing, symbiotic relationship with the land. For generations, they have nurtured the forest, and in return, the forest has sustained their way of life.
Now, as industrial pressures degrade the land they once relied on, these women are rising to meet the challenge.
This article was first published on the Ecosystems Innovation Substack by John Stubley, Sol Slattery and Shenali Perera. Follow Ecosystems Innovation for more insights from our colleagues in Western A ...
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