Programme

Yuvan is a nature-educator, writer, environmental defender and founder of Palluyir Trust for Nature Education and Research. He is the author of 3 books and is writing one on coasts, biodiversity and climate change (Bloomsbury, 2023). He is the recipient of the M.Krishnan Nature Writing Award 2017, the Green Teacher Award 2021, Emerging Leader in Environmental Justice Award 2021, among others. He also co-ordinates the ‘Farm, Environment and Society’ Program at Abacus Montessori School. His expertise in creating Earth-centric and Child-centric curricula is sought after by educational institutions across India. He is currently thinking about and making a curriculum for Climate-education in Chennai/Tamil Nadu.

Abstract

Citizen science for education and advocacy

Citizen science is growing in its impact on school/college education, public literacy and participation. It facilitates the three things most important for meaningful learning – direct participation/experience, relevance and interconnectedness (I’ll be giving examples of these from my own practice as well as others). It is reimagining/democratizing the processes of knowledge-making and sharing. It is also becoming a powerful tool for advocacy and conservation of wild spaces and species, in a bottom-up framework.

Hashtag Science: Citizen scientists and social media enable conservation monitoring of carnivores across India

The Wild Canids–India Project (WCIP) endeavours to map, track, and monitor wild canids and striped hyenas of India. When the project was launched in 2018, over 2500 sighting records were received directly from citizens and ~2500 more records collated from social media posts, web- portals and online blogs– also sourced through citizens. This information was used to generate the most updated and reliable distribution maps for dholes, jackals, wolves, foxes and hyenas in the country. This talk will explore how the project continues to directly engage with the contributors and support network with project outputs and updates.

Marine Life of Mumbai – Five years and five hundred species later

Marine Life of Mumbai started with a bunch of people turning up on one of Mumbai’s busiest shores to see what they might find there. A few hundred shorewalks later, the known diversity of Mumbai shores has gone up from species found few and far between to over 500. In this talk I discuss the evolution of Marine Life of Mumbai and working in the ever changing coastline of Mumbai.

Mobile application aiding in tracking the Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India

Tortoises and freshwater turtles (TFT) are highly threatened vertebrates, with 29 species native to India. However, there is a knowledge gap on distribution, population, and threats to TFTs, along with a lack of sensitization on their ecological role. So how can we acquire data on species-wise distribution, threats, and population dynamics of TFTs throughout a huge country like India, along with improving their awareness among the masses? Addressing this, “KURMA Tracking Indian Turtles”, was developed as a mobile application to engage citizens in conservation by identifying, classifying, and reporting their TFT sightings, and consequently creating a national turtle database. This data has yielded useful insights into turtle distribution, critical turtle habitats, and threats. The talk explores how this initiative has evolved and how it continues to grow by directly engaging with citizens, researchers, and enforcement agencies.

Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India: A walk down the memory lane

Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India started as an initiative to document our poorly understood freshwater turtles. We started this citizen science initiative to map the presence of the freshwater turtles and tortoises and understand their distribution. 7 years after its initiation, we take a look at how things have been and what has changed for us and the freshwater turtles and tortoises.

Divers for Diversity : marine citizen science in India

REEFLOG is a citizen science program run by Dakshin Foundation aimed at the SCUBA diving community in India. The goal of REEFLOG is to use citizen science as a tool to increase ocean literacy among the dive community and encourage responsible tourist behaviour. The talk explores how the project engages our target audience in various stages of implementation.