Foundation for Ecological Security

21/09/2026

Learning from Landscapes' is a year-long citizen science journey. It invites communities to slow down and pay attention to the life sharing their landscape. This September, that attention turns to pollinators.

Bees and butterflies aren't the only ones at work. Wasps, beetles, and flies move through the same flowers, each interacting with plants in its own way. Bees are known to communicate the location of a good nectar source to others through a distinct pattern of movement, while butterflies rely on sensors in their feet to find the right plant to lay eggs on.

A community that pays attention starts to notice these differences. Which species shows up at which hour; how each one moves differently between blooms; how much of this activity happens after dark once moths take over.

This month invites communities, students, farmers, and educators to spend some time noticing these small, easily missed interactions in a field, a garden, or a single flowering plant nearby. Let's observe, document and connect with the Commons.

Scan the QR code or click here for September's full Citizen Science activities:https://fes.org.in/resources//2026/learning-from-landscapes-a-citizen-science-initiative.pdf

The learning doesn't stop here. Don't miss the webinar series that complements each month's citizen science theme with practical learning from experts and practitioners.
Stay tuned for more updates on this month's webinar!

18/09/2026

Every well tells a story. Together, they tell the story of our groundwater.
A single water-level reading tells us what is happening in one well, on one day. But when communities keep returning to the same wells, before and after the monsoon, year after year, these individual readings begin to tell a larger story.
Through Napo Jal Bachao Kal (NJBK), communities across hundreds of villages are monitoring their wells and building a shared understanding of groundwater. The strength of this effort lies not in one measurement, but in the continuity of community-led monitoring.
Over time, the readings help reveal patterns across the landscape: where groundwater levels rise after the monsoon, where recharge is limited, how different seasons affect water availability, and how these patterns change from year to year.
Mahuwa Village in Rajasthan offers one such example. Comparing pre- and post-monsoon readings from 2025 shows a clear seasonal recharge response across the landscape. A longer record can help the community understand these changes better and use this knowledge while planning for water.
Because groundwater data is not only about numbers. It is about building knowledge of the landscape, together, and using that knowledge to make informed decisions for the future.
This World Water Monitoring Day, we celebrate the communities that are making the invisible visible one well, one reading, and one season at a time.

16/09/2026

The first Pastoralist Community Conference commenced last week, bringing together Asian pastoralists from India, Bhutan, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan on 11 September 2026.
While Day 1 focused on pastoralist women, youth, knowledge and governance systems, Day 2 featured stories of collective action: organising for pastoral rights, restoring grazing Commons, and building new economic opportunities rooted in traditional knowledge.

A recurring message throughout the day was clear: collective action through federations, village institutions and community-led governance -secures land, water and a future for pastoral communities.

We thank all the pastoralists who shared their lived experiences, knowledge and journeys with us, and everyone who contributed to creating a space for learning and exchange.

15/09/2026

For rural communities, democracy is also about having a voice in decisions around the Commons like the land, water, forests, pastures and other shared resources that sustain everyday life.

Gram Panchayats, as institutions of local self-government, have an important role in protecting, restoring and governing these resources. But meaningful stewardship needs spaces for dialogue, peer learning and collective action.

The Conference of Panchayats (CoP), initiated in 2024, brings Panchayat representatives and officials together to reflect on their role as custodians of Commons and identify practical actions for their protection and governance.

Today, across 5 states, 13 districts and 304 Gram Panchayats, 662+ representatives and officials have participated in these conversations.

Because custodianship is not simply about ownership. It is about responsibility, participation and accountability. When communities have a voice and local institutions have the space to act, democracy becomes a lived experience.

This Democracy Day, we celebrate the people and institutions strengthening local democracy through the stewardship of our Commons.

13/09/2026

Water security, forest rights, farm incomes, waste: few of these problems sit inside one department's mandate, or one organisation's project. The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and Collaborating for Resilience (CoRe) run a certification programme for practitioners who have to work across them, built around workshops, mentoring and application in their own field contexts. Four cohorts of development sector practitioners have completed it so far.

An assessment across all four brought out ten lessons about what makes this work sustain, and what makes it hard. These are the last five, and they have less to do with the workshop room and more with what participants walk back into: the history their organisation carries, the politics of the places they work in, and how funding landscape is evolving.

When FES and CoRe designed this program, collaborative governance was still an emerging practice that few organizations had the frameworks to deliver on. It is now a condition in many funding conversations, and organizations across the country are being asked to collaborate and co-design without always having the tools. Over four cohorts, 78 practitioners from 18 States and Union Territories have built those tools and carried them to an estimated 2,000+ more.

The first five lessons are in our previous post.
Sounds interesting to you? Stay tuned for more updates on our upcoming 5th Cohort.

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13/09/2026

The Community Conference is back this December. It is a virtual space for communities to come together and share their stories of governing and caring for shared resources. We are back with its fifth edition from 2nd to 4th of December, 2026.

Last year a total of 155 community representatives participated in the virtual conference. This included speakers from Mozambique, Uganda, Peru, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Thailand, Malaysia, and from 17 states and one Union Territory of India.
Join in to hear stories from Commons across the country and the world.

12/09/2026

Since 2022, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and Collaborating for Resilience (CoRe) have run a 4- to 6-month program that trains practitioners to bring communities, government, civil society, and researchers around a shared table, and to facilitate collaborative action.

Earlier this year, we paused to reflect on what the program has enabled. An assessment across all four cohorts, with 35 survey responses and 11 in-depth interviews, brought out ten key learnings. Some lessons have already changed how FES runs the program. Others are about things a training cannot fix on its own.

Here are the first five. What changes when practitioners finally have a structure to work with. Why the principles stay useful when people move sectors and jobs. And why confidence, junior staff, time, and trust decide whether any of it lasts.
Five more follow in our next post.

Sounds interesting to you? Stay tuned for more updates on our upcoming 5th Cohort.

11/09/2026

09/09/2026

Mr. Subrata Singh, Executive Director, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), speaks on the journey of the Community Conference since its start and the initiation of the first Pastoralist Community Conference.

The First Pastoralist Community Conference starts tomorrow! What are you waiting for? Register and join us for two days of stories from the ground on local governance, knowledge systems, lived experiences, struggles for rights and collective action.

See you there!

Link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CC_513uJSXGx0DMiPtXePw

International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists
Central Asia Pastoralist Alliance - CAPA
International Land Coalition
Land Rights Now