Sanarpatti Reforestation & Farmer Resilience Project

2,000 Tree Saplings for Southern India

AEA is raising funds to support the Women's Education Development Society (WEDS) in Southern India to plant 200,000 saplings in the Sanarpatti block of Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu, India to restore green cover, build local resilience, and create a future income stream for local households from fruit-bearing trees.

Sanarpatti block sits at the foothills of the Sirumalai Hills in Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu, South India, a region once covered by dry deciduous forest and savannah woodland. Decades of population growth and unmanaged extraction of forest resources, particularly since 1947, have stripped the hills and surrounding valley of tree cover. Since 2001, the block has experienced measurable climate change effects directly tied to this deforestation: average temperatures have risen by roughly 0.5°C, monsoon rainfall has become erratic, and droughts and heat waves have become frequent. Because agriculture is the primary livelihood in Sanarpatti, this shift has made farming increasingly unreliable and unprofitable. As a direct result, an estimated 80% of the block's cultivable land, spanning roughly 5,000 hectares held by 2,100 farming households, now sits fallow, and many families are being pushed toward out-migration in search of other income.

Women's Education Development Society (WEDS), a grassroots nonprofit founded in 1992 and long focused on organizing women farmers in this district, has worked directly with these households to identify a locally-driven response: a large-scale, community-planted reforestation effort using fruit, medicinal, shade, and hardwood tree species suited to the region's degraded and drought-prone land. Farmers have already indicated a willingness to dedicate fallow plots to this effort and have expressed a preference for species, including mango, jackfruit, tamarind, neem, teak, rosewood, and others, that will restore green cover while also, over time, generating income and food security for their own households.

Farmer groups across Sanarpatti block have already been identified and local households have committed to participating in the tree planting project, chosen tree species and formed a program implementation and monitoring committee.

This project directly serves the 2,100 farming households on approx. 5,000 hectares of land and engages local schoolchildren aged 8–14 through environmental education classes, and mobilizes an estimated 500 community volunteers who take part in the planting events and ongoing tree care. Funding is needed to purchase saplings and tree planting labor and materials so this community-driven project can move forward. Funding goal: $25,000