Banas Dairy – Kamalakkannan Srinivasan – 2025

Summary

Kamalakkannan Srinivasan advanced a community-owned agroforestry model to build climate resilience and rural livelihoods in Gujarat.

Goals

Banas Dairy, Asia’s largest milk cooperative, onboarded Kamal to develop a scalable, climate-resilient agroforestry and sustainable-livelihoods initiative across Banaskantha district, Gujarat. The project aimed to restore degraded community grazing lands by creating large-scale mixed-species agroforestry. Kamal’s goal was to design a replicable model that generated environmental, social, and economic value, such as a strengthened year-round fodder supply, and a sustainable revenue stream through produce and green finance tools like carbon financing.

Solutions

Kamal approached this challenge from three lenses. First, he conducted extensive field work, staying at villages for weeks at a time to understand the local needs, ecology, and land and infrastructure availability. Second, he partnered with SDAU (Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University) to create a climate-resilient indigenous forest model with a mix of fruit-Timber-Fodder trees. Third, he liaised with the community, Panchayat, and other stakeholders to establish the proof of concept for the model on the ground. This resulted in planting more than 10,000 saplings with a 99 percent survival rate in two villages of Banaskantha as a pilot. To scale the pilot further, he negotiated partnerships with CSR organizations and alternative green financing organizations, securing funds. Kamal also proposed a school-based nursery network to produce saplings locally. The objective is to reduce the costs and environmental footprint of saplings, while building environmental awareness in tomorrow’s climate leaders.

Potential Impact

Kamal’s work serves as the baseline for a Hariyalu Banas initiative by Banas Dairy. Banas Dairy envisions covering thousands of hectares of degraded land with community forests. This will result in creating large green corridors that will improve livelihoods for over 5 lakh dairy farmers. This pilot serves as a blueprint for integrating community forestry rooted in traditional benefits of shade, fruit, and fodder with modern climate-finance opportunities.