India is rich in cultural heritage and traditions of conserving forests are well known across India. Community’s perception about biodiversity and forests has been manifested through traditions like sacred groves ranging from few acres to many acres covering range of ecosystems and habitats. The sacred forests or sacred groves-as they are known popularly- are representatives of regional biodiversity and often serve as reference sites for biodiversity conservation. They not only harbour great species diversity across all taxa (plants, birds, butterflies, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles) but also provide critical habitat to important large forest birds such as Great pied hornbill and Malabar pied hornbill. AERF has built its community based conservation around this age old practice of participatory conservation and developed long term conservation approaches that are based on early work of revival of these sacred groves. These groves are facing many threats like clear felling of large trees for temple renovation, acculturation. Sacred forests are gene banks of extra-ordinary importance for humanity. Our early successes in conservation and restoration of sacred groves laid the foundation for our future strategies to achieve conservation on the ground. Sacred groves conservation remains the flagship program of AERF.
Main activities through this approach;

• Carbon stock estimation of selected sacred groves from North Western Ghats
• Bird surveys of sacred groves in the North Western Ghats
• Study on amphibian diversity in sacred grove of Kundi
• FAIRWILD certification of medicinal trees from sacred groves in the North Western Ghats

Making conservation a viable land use option for local communities is a serious sustainability challenge in the globalized world. AERF has successfully tested incentive based mechanisms using Conservation Agreements in the Northern Western Ghats . These agreements ensured safeguarding of biodiversity rich forests on privately owned lands of poor farmers from Northern Western Ghats and could provide tangible economic benefits to the poor land owners. Forests in the Northern Western Ghats are facing threats in the absence of any legal protection from Government. In order to avoid deforestation and conserve important plant areas, AERF launched India’s first ever incentive-based forest conservation initiative in 2007 for saving forests on private lands in this region . At the same time AERF used this opportunity to engage meaningfully with the private sector and to ensure that sensitized companies will invest in conservation. AERF promoted protection against clear felling through legally binding agreements for conservation with local communities. Till date Conservation Agreements helped secure 4000 acres of community forests in the Northern Western Ghats till 2026. Conservation agreements help us secure commitment of the local communities to long-term conservation, achieve outcomes at landscape level and provide the window of opportunity to develop initiatives for sustainable utilization and management of biodiversity

• Assessment of ecosystem services and valuations
• Agro-forestry based on multi-purpose native species
• Innovative value chains to enhance the value of these protected forests

AERF has demonstrated that value chains and entrepreneurship enhance value of biodiversity and facilitate perception change among key stakeholders. Using enterprise as a delivery mechanism for conservation has been proved to be successful in creating a win- win situation for both communities & conservation. Community perception of use of forests is singularly related to harvesting timber and/ or wood for fuel needs. However AERF demonstrated that forests could be more beneficial, can provide higher economic returns through value additions and development of sustainable supply chains. In order that value chain approach is socially and ecologically sustainable, AERF undertook comprehensive ground work for successful implementation of FAIRWILD certification. The certification process helped communities to understand the nuances of managing activities related to medicinal plants collection in a professional manner. It also brought significant transparency in supply chain development, ownership of resources and benefit sharing of revenues generated from collection and processing of non-timber forest produce. Importantly, the development of certified supply chain was backed by long term purchase agreement with UK based company –Pukka Herbs. AERF also became the first organization in South Asia to achieve international FAIRWILD certification for two supply chains in the Western Ghats.

• Darwin Initiative
• http://www.cepf.net/news/top_stories/Pages/Using-incentives-to-support-communities-and-conservation.aspx
• https://www.kent.ac.uk/dice/news/index.html?view=1755

For AERF, green entrepreneurship means building on skills and knowledge of local communities with respect to forests and biodiversity for development of high value new products which in turn will create positive impacts for conservation. AERF has been building partnerships with private sector for supply chain linked investment in conservation. e.g. agro-forestry, high value medicinal plants, natural oils, honey. These initiatives are in progress, with potential to scale up in the coming years

Key findings fromground-level work needs to be fed into policy since it provides possibilities to scale up the good results for positive change. AERF has been constantly using the approach of supporting and feeding the conservation policies through its strong partnerships with government bodies such as State Biodiversity Board (SBB), department of forest and civil society organizations working on governance issues. AERF has been working as a nodal organization to strengthen the implementation of Biodiversity Act at village level through its continuous work with communities for formation of Biodiversity Management Committees and building their capacity to understand importance of biodiversity in 50 villages in Ratnagiri district. AERF also uses existing legal framework for strengthening conservation in Northern Western Ghats.

Capacity building of diverse stakeholder groups – local communities , civil society organizations , educational institutes and private sector – is one of the key strategies used by AERF to increase the constituency of conservation and scale up impact of its work. The Foundation has developed partnerships with many notable institutions across the globe for this very purpose.Notable few are - Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and reputed educational institutes from India such as SPJIMR, University of Pondichery and Azim Premji University.

In the globalized world private sector plays a very important role in developmental initiatives as well as negatively affecting the natural resources they use. Businesses and biodiversity as well as ecosystems are linked. All businesses affect ecosystems and rely on critical provisioning services and regulatory services these ecosystems provide. Therefore it is important to engage with private sector for creating a common understanding and awareness about biodiversity forests and ecosystem services. AERF has been working with a number of private sector companies to generate awareness to build partnerships for investments in conservation of biodiversity and to collaborate for monitoring, measuring and accounting as well as compensating the adverse impacts for the benefits of communities and natural resources. The following are few companies with whom AERF has been working for this purpose:

• Daikin Industries Ltd. , Japan
• Credit Suisse India
• Pukka Herbs , U.K.
• Dynamic Remedies Pvt. Ltd.
• Praj Industries.
• Vanaz Engineering Ltd.

Research aimed at understanding conservation problems, planning of meaningful conservation action and communicating impact of conservation action is the philosophy behind AERF’s Applied Biodiversity Research program. AERF has been engaged into conducting research to develop thorough understanding of both social and economic dimensions of conservation before testing any innovative solutions or scaling up successful demonstration. AERF’s research chiefly contributes to increasing conservation and economic value of the forests in the Northern Western Ghats. Research activities include population assessments of threatened and endangered tree species, biodiversity assessments for avoiding destructive development, development of value chains for promoting sustainable biodiversity use and documentation of traditional knowledge of local communities associated with natural resources.
Some of the most recent researches carried out by AERF are:

• Study on monsoon flora of 10 sacred groves in the North Western Ghats
• Conservation and protection of giant specimen of Chukrasia tabularis in Chafavali sacred grove
• Plantation of native species for restoration of 4 new sacred groves in Ratnagiri district