Coexistence In Practice
A series of online talks about how coexistence plays out in different landscapes, context and across species.
Previous talks
Rethinking the Nonhuman in our Anthropocene: Field notes from the Sundarbans
By Dr. Annu jalais
As Climate Breakdown becomes a reality that is experienced (thought in varying degrees) all over the world, our complicated ‘human:nonhuman entanglement’ needs urgent attention. All around the globe, interdisciplinary groups of scholars are working on these ‘entanglements’. However few have centered their studies looking at nonhumans from more local understandings of these creatures. Following social scientists such as Descola (1996; 2008; 2013), Pálsson (1996; 2013), Baviskar (2018; 2019), Aiyadurai (2016), who have studied the intimate relations humans from various cultures have shared with animals, this paper will, (a) momentarily dwell on the social science discussions around Climate Change; (b) briefly touch upon the history of the different forms of culturally informed ethics around the idea of ‘nature’ and ‘nonhumans’ in anthropology and history; and (c) offer some examples on the social, cultural and political symbolism offered by the nonhuman in the Sundarbans.
Dr. Annu Jalais is an environmental anthropologist currently serving as an Associate Professor at Krea University. Her work focuses on the human–animal interface, environmental justice, religious identity, gender, caste, and migration. Her primary area of research is South Asia, specifically Bangladesh and India, while her zone of interest extends to Southeast Asia and China, particularly around Indian Ocean exchanges in the religious, cultural, and environmental realms. She is the author of Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans (Routledge, 2010) and co-author of The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim Migration (Routledge, 2016). Dr. Jalais is deeply committed to making academic work more relevant and collaborates with individuals and organizations dedicated to social justice and change.
Humans, Elephants, Vulnerability and Coexistence: A Reflection
By Dr Paul G. Keil
Coexistence research is commonly motivated by the precarity faced by wildlife and humans living together. Yet, there is scope for further unpacking the experience and concept of vulnerability and how it shapes our concept of coexistence. Drawing on ethnographic research on human-elephant relations in Assam, this talk will reflect on corporeal susceptibility, how vulnerability informs people's notion of elephant agency, the need to distinguish the nuances of power (and powerlessness), and the ethics of vulnerability in 21st century histories and socio-ecologies.
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Dr Paul G. Keil's regional and ethnographic expertise is in Australia and Northeast India, with research interests informed by more-than-human ethnography, anthropology, cognitive science, and environmental humanities. He has published on a variety of human interactions with dogs, wild pigs, and elephants. Keil's research questions revolve around interspecies teamwork, shifting perspectives towards animals, recreational hunting, co-engineered ecologies, uncertainty in human-animal relations, interspecies aesthetics, and sharing place with wildlife.
Reimagining Conservation: Why Wild Animal Welfare Matters
By Aditya S.K.
Aditya S.K., Asia Outreach Coordinator at Animal Ethics, will present a case for anti-speciesism and emphasize the importance of integrating wild animal welfare into conservation efforts. Traditionally, conservation has focused on protecting species and ecosystems, but what if we also considered the well-being of individual animals within those ecosystems? Aditya will argue that we need to adopt a paradigm that sees wild animals as sentient beings rather than merely components of biodiversity.
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The talk will also address speciesism—the notion that we often prioritize certain species over others—and challenge us to rethink our approach to conservation in ways that reject speciesism. Aditya will also highlight practical ways conservationists can support wild animal welfare, demonstrating how small but meaningful interventions can lead to significant positive changes. He will explain why these efforts may be more achievable than many people assume and India, with its rich history of concern for living beings, can play a pivotal role in advancing this field.
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Aditya S.K. has been serving as an Asia Outreach Coordinator for Animal Ethics since 2018. He holds a background in Animal Protection Law from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research. Aditya has also previously worked with various animal advocacy organizations to promote moral consideration for animals in India and around the world.
Understanding the Prospects of Measuring Human Wildlife Coexistence: A Conceptual
Framework
By Dr Avantika Thapa
In this talk, Dr Avantika talks about how conservation is transitioning from land sparing to land sharing, emphasizing human-wildlife coexistence as land becomes scarce. International frameworks like the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) stress coexistence but lack measurable indicators for assessing it. To fill this gap, a proposed framework introduces three continuums—wildlife space use, activity patterns, and human attitudes—allowing for the calculation of a coexistence score. This approach enables standardized assessments and cross-site comparisons, helping researchers better understand and model human-wildlife interactions in shared landscapes.
Born and brought up in a small town in the outskirts of Darjeeling, Avantika has received academic training in the field of zoology. After studying the distribution patterns, habitat and behaviour of pheasants and other wildlife species in Darjeeling for my PhD, she came to the realisation that human behaviour is also an integral part of any wild animal’s habitat. This realisation made me turn towards humans living near wildlife habitats, their way of life and their behaviour towards wildlife. She aims to detangle the complexities of human-wildlife conflict through the lens of ecology, animal and human behaviour to facilitate human-wildlife Coexistence.
Elephants Driving Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity
By Dr Tarsh Thekaekara
Elephants range much beyond protected areas or even natural habitat boundaries, interacting with humans across a vast geographic scale, and causing very significant damage. Based for the most part on our work at the human elephant interface in Gudalur, I make the case that this focuses on human-elephant interactions, draws in multiple disciplines, as well as a much wider set of stakeholders, including bureaucrats and politicians. Elephants are almost forcing researchers to think more about disciplinary boundaries, and build collaborations across multiple stakeholders and government departments. Can this move us towards a more holistic approach to conservation - not saving pockets of forests, but living well with a whole earth?
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Tarsh is a researcher-conservationist interested in more human inclusive models of nature conservation. He co-founded The Shola Trust in 2008, The Real Elephant Collective (a social enterprise) in 2015, and is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Human-Wildlife Coexistence, Transdisciplinary University. His area of research and intervention include work on Lantana camara, primarily looking at how communities can use the invasive plant in various ways. He is also particularly interested in how people and elephants share space, and finding ways to minimise negative interactions. Most of his work is in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (across Tamilnadu, Kerala and Karnataka), but he is also keen on promoting human-wildlife coexistence at more national and global scales.
Multiple narratives of a "Big harmless fish"
By Sahamatha
The narratives we construct about human and non-human beings significantly inform our interaction with the environment. Along with personal stories, collective narratives shared across cultures and societies also play a crucial role in shaping human behavior and interaction with the world. This talk draws insights from coastal Karnataka’s fishing communities to explore how lived experiences, spoken language, and belief systems shape narratives around shared spaces and how these narratives in turn shape interaction with non-human beings. It also asks how uncovering these beliefs and stories can provide critical lessons for refining environmental policies and perspectives.
Sahamatha is a science education researcher and educator. Her interests lie in interdisciplinary research - exploring the interface of natural and social sciences. She did her master’s degree in Physics from the University of Mysore. She has a passion for immersing herself in the cultures of the places she visits, listening to local stories, songs about the land, wildlife, and communities.
Changing Ecologies, Transforming Lives: Complex Human–Macaque Lifeworlds in the Indian Anthropocene
By Dr. Anindya “Rana” Sinha
In this talk, Prof. Anindya Sinha will briefly narrate stories of how the lives of our fellow nonhuman primates – the bonnet and rhesus monkeys of southern and northern India respectively – are changing forever and how they are being forced to survive in human-altered habitats by even transforming themselves into strangely human-like monkeys!
Anindya Sinha, also known as Rana, is a researcher and faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies and the Transdisciplinary University in Bangalore, with affiliations to nine other institutions in India and the UK. His research spans behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, evolutionary biology, and urban ecologies, focusing on nonhuman species and their interactions with humans.
Tiger Corridors and Livelihoods in Conservation Landscapes of a Peopled Central India
By Dr. Amrita Neelakantan
Over the last decade, Dr. Neelakantan has lived and worked in central India - the heart of India, where humans and tigers coexist. In her talk, she's excited to share some central Indian stories and recent scientific results from the Network for Conserving Central India. Her talk will discuss the 'Jugalbandi' in central India via building scientific consensus for tiger corridors and working on rural livelihoods as a vital consideration for wildlife conservation in human-dominated central India. She hopes to spark discussions about - 'what is coexistence?' and 'who decides how we coexist?'.
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Dr. Amrita Neelakantan is a conservation scientist with 11 years of engagement in central India. She's the Executive Director of the Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI) and a member of the working group of the Coexistence Consortium.
Direct Intervention Tech in Reducing Conflicts and Improving Coexistence with Various Species
By S.R.Ayan
Scientific studies show that with an increase in human population, there has been an increase in human-wildlife interactions, especially in densely populated countries like India, which often lead to conflicts. Often these interactions end up causing a larger conflict that is detrimental both for humans and wildlife and thus to overcome these, technological solutions play a major factor. The talk addresses the tech solutions that have direct intervention in either altering the behaviour of wild animals in a non-invasive methodology or providing insights to humans to better manage the interaction, which could largely reduce the conflicts and improve the coexistence.
Ayan is the Founder and Director of Katidhan, a startup working in the agri-tech and wildlife tech space building technological solutions to help farmers overcome their crop losses.
How do we decide baselines for restoration? Insights from 10,000 years of disturbance.
By Meghna Agarwala
As conservationists, we aim to conserve forests so that wildlife may have suitable habitat for existence. Yet, forests are not a static entity and may change through time due to climate, fire, herbivory and human action, and these changes may occur at very long time periods. The forest we are seeing today may be fairly recent, and the wildlife we see in the forests today may reflect the forest composition of the past. This makes it difficult to understand what “forest” should be conserved for wildlife. Using Central India as a case study, in this talk, Meghna Agarwala explores this relationship between forests, climate, and human impact.
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Meghna Agarwala, an Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at Ashoka University, employs ecology, remote sensing, and paleo-sciences to address long-term and large-scale forest dynamics, exploring their connections with human-wildlife interactions.
'Whose coexistence?’ Animal, spirit and human agency in Arunachal Pradesh
By Sahil Nijhawan
Through a series of vignettes from Arunachal Pradesh, Sahil Nijhawan explores how spirits mediate human-wildlife coexistence and what happens when outside interventions alter spirits themselves and associated beliefs.
Sahil Nijhawan is an interdisciplinary conservation anthropologist and has worked in Latin America, Southern Africa and India. His work integrates ecological methods and newer technologies with traditional ethnographic approaches to understand wild animals, people, and the relations between the two.
Reinventing nature: Rhinoceros conservation in Kaziranga, 1948-1974
By Biswajit Sarmah
Join Biswajit Sarmah as he takes us through the history of Kaziranga National Park, highlighting the rising cultural value of the rhino among the Assamese elite and the era of ‘total protection’ by the late 1960s.
Biswajit Sarmah is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Krea University.
Living with bees
By Apoorva BV
Join Apoorva BV as he delves into the intricate world of bees, shedding light on their life-cycle and behaviour. In addition, he talks about the impacts of the decline in bee populations and offer solutions to coexist with these essential pollinators.
A seasoned beekeeper, Apoorva also touches upon the art of beekeeping in urban spaces.
Apoorva is the chairman of The Hive, and the co-founder and director of HoneyDay Bee Farms.
How many tigers are too many tigers?
By Pranav Chanchani
In this episode of our #CoexistenceInPractice series, Pranav Chanchani reviews tiger population projections, caps and calls for culling to control their population. He then intersects these analyses with broader discourses about managing the human-wildlife interface and the system of decentralised forest governance in India. Pranav works with World Wide Fund for Nature - India, where he leads the tiger conservation portfolio.
Bicultural diversity and coexistence: A panel discussion
This International Day for Biological Diversity we delved into the concept of biocultural diversity, and how that influences the ways in which communities coexist with nature around them. Our panellists and fellows from our Coexistence Fellowship shared stories from across the country that highlighted the deep connections between biological diversity and cultural diversity.
This panel discussion was organised by the Coexistence Fellowship Programme in partnership with the Coexistence Consortium, British Asian Trust and University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology.
Lessons in compassion and coexistence with crocodiles
By Simon Pooley
In this talk, Simon draws upon his research on human-crocodilian interactions in southern Africa and Gujarat, to make a case for compassion in conservation science, particularly for those who must share landscapes with potentially dangerous animals. Simon is a long-term member of the IUCN SSC Crocodile Specialist Group, and a founder member of the IUCN SSC Specialist Group on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence for whom he leads a Working Group on coexistence.
Coexistence under threat in the Salai forest of Kuno
By Asmita Kabra
The forested landscapes of central India are home to many adivasi communities, each with their own traditional systems of habitat management. In this episode of Coexistence in Practice, Asmita Kabra describes the Sahariya Adivasi community's indigenous tree tenure system, that has withstood more than a century of colonial and postcolonial impulses of territorialisation by the state, and talks about how this system is crumbling under the onslaught of a more pernicious form of fortress conservation which is currently playing out in these forests.