Kochi: India’s Purnima Devi Barman, an Assam-based wildlife biologist, is one of the five ‘Champions of the Earth’ for this year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced on November 22.

The annual awards are the highest environmental honour that the UNEP confers on individuals and organisations whose actions have a “transformative impact” on the environment.

Barman has been working with local communities – women, specifically – in Assam for more than a decade now to conserve the greater adjutant stork, an endangered wetland bird whose numbers have been declining due to habitat destruction and cutting down of nesting trees. The entire team is “extremely honoured” to win the award, Barman told The Wire.

Also Read: A Biologist’s Army of Women and Their Quest to Rescue an Outlandish Bird

UNEP received a record 2,200 nominations from around the world this year for its Champions of the Earth award. Barman is one of just five to win it. The others are Arcenciel, a non-profit in Lebanon that works on waste management; Constantino (Tino) Aucca Chutas, who has pioneered a community reforestation model in Peru; Cameroon’s Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet, for her work on women's rights and gender equality, and the importance of securing land tenure for women to restore ecosystems; and economist Partha Dasgupta of the United Kingdom, who has been honored in the ‘Science and Innovation’ category for his work on the economics of biodiversity.

Barman won the award this year in the ‘Entrepreneurial Vision’ category, for her trail-blazing work in protecting the greater adjutant stork, called ‘hargila’ in Assamese. Hargilas are five-foot-tall birds that dwell in wetlands in some parts of southeast Asia including India and Cambodia. There are only 1,200-odd hargilas remaining in the world, as per a 2016 IUCN Red List update which lists the bird as ‘Endangered’. In India, hargilas are found in Assam and Bihar. Assam is home to the largest population – around 1,000 individuals – of these birds, according to Barman.

Barman, the senior project manager of the Avifauna Research and Conservation Division of Aaranyak, a Guwahati-based NGO, felt the need to develop a community-based conservation programme in 2007, when she witnessed locals cutting down large trees on which the birds were nesting. Chicks fell to the ground, but the logging continued. There was a reason for the logging: the birds’ foul-smelling faeces would drop down to the ground from tree branches, into peoples’ courtyards and gardens.

Barman knew that the hargila needed to be protected because the birds play a vital role in the wetland ecosystems they inhabit. The carnivorous birds are “cleaners of the ecosystem” and play a significant role in the food chain in terms of nutrient cycling and ecosystem regulation, she told The Wire.

Woman power for the hargila

To increase awareness about the birds and their ecosystem functions, Barman began conducting awareness campaigns for local communities. But she found that women stayed in the background: they didn’t attend these sessions. It was when she attended a traditional baby shower in one of the villages she was working in that an obvious connection dawned on her: the link between pregnant women and mothers, and the nesting hargilas. So she started organising baby showers for the hargilas, likening the birds’ motherhood to human motherhood.

“Education begins from home, from our mothers,” she told The Wire. More women, therefore, needed to be at the forefront to take up the hargilas’ cause, she said.

Women did indeed begin to take interest in the hargilas. They formed an informal women’s group to take this message forward. That was how the now-famous ‘Hargila Army’ was born. The Hargila Army, now approximately 10,000 strong, is a growing sisterhood that aims to increase awareness about the greater adjutant stork, and why they must be protected. Women participating in the initiative have to bring their families – husbands, children, parents – on board too, explaining to them why the hargila is important, and why it should be protected.

Barman and her team have also come up with novel means to weave the bird into popular culture, including local traditions. They include stories about the birds in popular folk songs, Durga puja processions, and have even introduced hargila motifs into the weaving of gamochas or traditional cotton towels. Barman also began studying and monitoring specific hargila nests across Assam to learn more about the birds’ breeding and nesting behaviours.

All these efforts appear to be paying off. 

For instance, in the adjacent villages of Dadara and Pacharia in Kamrup district along the banks of the Brahmaputra, the number of hargila nests has risen from 27 to 250 over the last 15 years, Barman told The Wire. But breeding success is still very low because chicks often fall to the ground and die. Barman and her team are trying to address this by rehabilitating fallen chicks. So far, they have rehabilitated 400 hargila chicks, she said.

‘Beyond honoured’

“Purnima Devi Barman’s pioneering conservation work has empowered thousands of women, creating entrepreneurs and improving livelihoods while bringing the greater adjutant stork back from the brink of extinction,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP, in an online statement.

Her work has "shown that conflict between humans and wildlife can be resolved to the benefit of all. By highlighting the damaging impact that the loss of wetlands has had on the species who feed and breed on them, she reminds us of the importance of protecting and restoring ecosystems”, Anderson added.

“I am beyond honoured,” Barman told The Wire on November 22. “We are all honoured, our communities, our Hargila Army, and the hargila bird.”

Barman hopes to extend her study of hargilas into areas where they were recorded historically through mentions in folk and local stories to understand why they do not occur there anymore. For instance, even communities in Kolkata in West Bengal have references to hargilas in their stories, she said.

Barman’s work has won her several accolades over the years. In 2017, the government of India awarded her with the Nari Shakti Puraskar, the highest civilian award for women in the country; she also won the prestigious Whitley Award – often called the ‘Green Oscar’ – the same year.

Since its inception in 2005, the Champions of the Earth award has recognised 111 laureates, including 26 world leaders, 69 individuals and 16 organisations.

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