In Tamil Nadu’s scrub and grazing landscapes, Rajiv Gandhi, President of the Tamil Nadu Federation of Pastoral Peoples Sangams (TFPPS), leads grassroots efforts to protect pastoral rights and restore rangelands that sustain people, livestock, and biodiversity. These vital landscapes promote socio-ecological resilience, biocultural diversity, and climate action. Pastoral communities lie at the heart of these efforts.

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Rajiv is a pastoral community organizer and  leader working to protect common lands, advance the Forest Rights Act, and strengthen pastoral livelihoods. He has established a Farmer Producer Organization (FPO) for pastoralists and publishes Kidai, a magazine dedicated to pastoralism. 

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Through the Champions programme, he will engage different nomadic pastoral groups rearing indigenous breeds of cattle, sheep, goat and duck to map traditional and current grazing routes for indigenous livestock and document constraints to pastoralism in Tamil Nadu, with the aim to build stewardship within pastoralists and further dialogue, and to provide platforms linking pastoral unions, Forest Department officials, and local Panchayats. His focus is using traditional grazing systems and local ecological knowledge as a means to promote healthy ecosystems where humans and nature coexist.

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