Featured picture courtesy: Shutterstock (For representational functions solely)
Within the tribal villages of rural Maharashtra, the arrival of the monsoon as soon as meant baskets of freshly harvested millets in each dwelling. These hardy, nutrient-rich grains sustained households for generations, preserving them fed and wholesome. However right now, shifting rainfall patterns and the lack of native seeds are threatening not simply the harvest, however a lifestyle.
‘Pragati Abhiyan’, a Nasik-based nonprofit, is working to deliver these grains — and the vitamin they carry — again into native diets. “Any answer or resilience-building effort have to be tailor-made to satisfy the precise wants of those communities,” says Pranay Karuna, Affiliate Director at Dasra, a Mumbai-based philanthropic basis.
Commercial
“This implies defending indigenous information, native seeds, and pure sources. From planning to execution, the work should take into account all of the completely different challenges these communities face. By specializing in farming and constructing native resilience, Pragati Abhiyan connects the results of local weather change with social inequalities and reveals why options have to be tailor-made to native wants.”
For Dasra, this strategy just isn’t new. Over the previous 25 years, the inspiration — co-founded by Neera Nundy and Deval Sanghavi — has directed greater than $330 million towards social causes, supported over 1,500 nonprofits, and positively impacted roughly 170 million lives. One among its simplest methods has been to construct alliances with like-minded organisations.
From the 10to19 Alliance, which empowers adolescents, particularly women, to make constructive life decisions, to the Nationwide Faecal Sludge and Septage Administration (NFSSM) Alliance, which works with governments and municipalities to handle liquid waste, collaboration has usually been on the coronary heart of Dasra’s work.
It was whereas working inside the NFSSM Alliance that Dasra started to note important intersections with local weather motion. “Our work on faecal sludge and septic administration additionally meant tackling issues like methane emissions and constructing city resilience,” Pranay recollects. Methane is without doubt one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and poorly managed faecal sludge releases a considerable amount of it. “This made our accomplice organisations counsel making a collaborative effort to handle the larger situation of local weather motion.”
To discover this, Dasra spoke with 40–50 organisations in its community that have been working in climate-adjacent areas, looking for to grasp what a devoted local weather alliance might seem like. They already knew find out how to construct alliances, however they needed to listen to instantly from companions about priorities inside the local weather house.
What emerged from these conversations was the ‘ClimateRISE Alliance’ (CRA), launched in early 2023. Bringing collectively civil society organisations, assume tanks, middleman teams, and funders, the CRA goals to form “an India view” on intersectional local weather motion, create a typical vocabulary, and allow multi-stakeholder engagement for essentially the most weak communities. A design grant from the Rainmatter Basis supported its institution. In the present day, about 70 organisations are a part of the CRA, with Dasra serving as its secretariat.
Commercial
From solo efforts to a typical desk
One of many first organisations to hitch the CRA was ‘Janaagraha’, a Bengaluru-based nonprofit that has spent the final 20 years working to enhance the standard of life in Indian cities by collaborating with residents, governments, and concrete native our bodies.
“Our organisation has been a part of the CRA since its inception as a result of we firmly consider that remodeling our cities and addressing local weather points can’t be performed in isolation,” says Prarthana Ramesh, Affiliate Director at Janaagraha. “The CRA affords us a possibility to collaborate with like-minded companions. It brings collectively numerous stakeholders, from civil society organisations and donors to revolutionary startups, to collectively tackle the local weather disaster.”
One among Janaagraha’s key focus areas is bringing local weather motion to the native degree in cities and cities. This implies discovering methods to make it a part of on a regular basis governance and tackling ongoing points like flooding, warmth, and poor air high quality. “We wish to assist cities take cost and reply higher to local weather challenges,” Prarthana provides. “That’s central to our work with the CRA — giving city areas the instruments and methods they should act successfully.”
One other early member was ‘Saahas’, a Bengaluru-based nonprofit specialising in stable waste administration. On the time, Saahas was working with gram panchayats and municipal our bodies in northern Karnataka to strengthen native waste methods. Whereas reaching out to the Rainmatter Basis for challenge help, they learnt concerning the CRA’s formation.
Archana Tripathi, CEO of Saahas, remembers the turning level. “Once we approached Rainmatter Basis and requested their help, we learnt about an alliance that was being put along with Dasra anchoring it. Regardless of working for years within the stable waste administration sector, we realised that the local weather house is way broader and that we have to collaborate with different organisations engaged on completely different climate-related points similar to air air pollution, liquid waste administration, rainwater harvesting, and comparable topics.”
For Archana, becoming a member of the CRA was about extra than simply networking. “We noticed this alliance as an actual alternative to find out about what others on this house are doing and to assist construct a coherent narrative round local weather. When you have the Incapacity Community Alliance (DNA) for organisations engaged on disabilities, there was no devoted platform or alliance engaged on local weather points. Becoming a member of the CRA was a step in the direction of filling that hole.”
Commercial
How the alliance works on the bottom
The CRA’s power lies in its potential to deliver completely different varieties of experience to at least one desk. Its work is organised into a number of streams — technique growth, capability constructing, information sharing, and collaborative advocacy. Inside these, focus teams tackle particular themes similar to gender, agroecology (sustainable farming that works with native ecosystems), rural growth, livelihoods, conservation, and restoration. Many of those areas overlap, making the alliance itself a climate-focused community.
“Our strategy is collaborative, not about one organisation taking a grant to run a challenge,” explains Pranay. “We deliver collectively stakeholders round a selected situation or thought, involving those that have already got related experience, ongoing initiatives, analysis, or sources. This pooling of data and capability permits us to handle advanced local weather challenges in a coordinated and built-in manner.”
A transparent instance of this strategy is ‘Doh Shaher, Ek Rupayan’ (DSER – ‘Ten Cities, One Imaginative and prescient’), a convergence programme led by Assam’s Division of Housing and City Affairs (DoHUA) to advertise sustainable urbanisation in 10 giant cities and cities. The programme covers important climate-related elements similar to stable waste administration, ingesting water, sanitation, blue-green infrastructure, city planning, and extra — bringing them collectively as a substitute of working in silos.
Janaagraha, as an anchor accomplice, has been conducting subject visits in Assam to grasp the geography and determine wants. “A few of the accomplice organisations concerned embrace Saahas, Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) Society (decentralised wastewater therapy), Centre for Water and Sanitation (CWAS), Kushaagra Improvements Basis (waste administration options), Hasiru Dala (waste administration), and Institute for Transportation and Improvement Coverage (ITDP) India (public transport), alongside native teams like Purvca Basis (city mobility) and The Halfway Journey (decentralised waste administration),” says Prarthana.
For the CRA, working with native organisations like Purvca is important. “What works in Purvanchal might not be appropriate for city Assam or coastal Karnataka,” Pranay explains. “Every area wants options designed for its personal circumstances and challenges. We consider local weather motion must be owned collectively by native communities and the federal government, with native our bodies, district administrations, and grassroots organisations working collectively.”
Prarthana provides, “Our function as Janaagraha, as one of many anchor companions, is to onboard and facilitate companions throughout these elements, however not in a siloed manner. The CRA connects us with the most effective minds throughout sanitation, stable waste administration, blue-green infrastructure, city planning, mobility, and concrete transport. We deliver these specialists collectively to assume creatively and reimagine what urbanisation can seem like for these cities and cities. We purpose to assist the federal government construct inner capability to vary the present narrative, in addition to introduce components of innovation into their planning and considering processes.”
Commercial
A key a part of the DSER challenge is creating ‘Metropolis Motion Plans’ — short-term, bottom-up imaginative and prescient paperwork created with citizen enter, reflecting native contexts and aspirations for the subsequent 25 years. These plans listing sensible initiatives and initiatives, aiming to be residing paperwork that evolve with the cities as a substitute of gathering mud like many long-term grasp plans.
To organize these plans, inputs are gathered instantly from residents by subject visits and workshops. The objective is to seize each knowledge and lived experiences from communities in weak districts — understanding how local weather change impacts them, and the way they’re responding. In June 2025, as an example, Dasra and Janaagraha led an immersive subject go to to Tezpur and hosted a workshop in Guwahati.
Representatives from over 11 civil society organisations — together with CRA companions and native teams — joined native authorities officers from departments dealing with ingesting water, sanitation, blue-green infrastructure, and transportation. These strategic discussions have been paired with on-ground visits, giving all stakeholders a clearer image of how these providers are managed day after day.
Opening doorways to new frontiers
For Saahas, the CRA opened doorways that had lengthy been out of attain.
Archana Tripathi says they’d at all times needed to work within the Northeast however struggled to safe funding or a sensible entry level. “About two and a half years in the past, we began work in Assam by another funding. In the present day, we’re lively in a few places within the state. Due to the CRA, we are able to scale our work in additional cities as a result of alliance companions have come collectively.”
At the moment, Saahas operates in Assam’s Jorhat and Majuli. With Janaagraha taking the lead, the state authorities has been proactive in its help. “On our personal, we wouldn’t have the clout to speak to state authorities and persuade them to again us,” Archana says. “Being a part of the alliance has helped us discover our footing in Assam. Now, we’re additionally on the technical committee in Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh, for stable waste administration. ”
Commercial
Not all CRA companions work in city areas. ‘Farmers for Forests’, a Pune-based nonprofit, focuses on defending and restoring forest cowl in shut collaboration with rural communities. Co-founder Krutika Ravishankar says one in all their greatest challenges has been sustaining collaboration with governments — the most important gamers in forestry and agriculture.
“Any form of collaboration with the federal government actually permits impression at a a lot bigger scale than one organisation can do alone,” she says. “However it may be difficult. There’s a number of follow-up, doc sharing, and legwork concerned earlier than you deliver them on board. The CRA has been actually serving to us collaborate higher with governments — whether or not it’s guaranteeing that the calls with them get performed often, the notes (from our conferences) are maintained, or paperwork they should additional our initiatives are created. We’ve been in a position to work extra successfully with CRA than working alone as a result of this can be a collaboration that we’re envisioning with a number of states.”
Authorities requests also can stretch an organisation’s capability. Krutika recollects how completely different departments have requested them for every thing from carbon finance consultancy to monitoring elephants, organising and working cell science laboratories, creating climate-relevant curricula, or supplying two lakh saplings for plantation drives. “The CRA is aware of precisely which accomplice to strategy for every request, so we are able to deal with our core experience,” she says.
Their initiatives — from restoring mangroves in Raigad district to stopping deforestation in Gadchiroli district — usually contain coordination with different CRA companions like Reap Profit, Know-how for Wildlife, Grasslands Belief, and EarthFokus Basis.
Crafting India’s local weather story
For a lot of nonprofits, the day-to-day calls for of their work depart little time to construct giant, multi-stakeholder collaborations. “Real collaboration is usually tough as a result of devoted sources like funding, employees, and time are hardly ever accessible,” says Prarthana Ramesh of Janaagraha.
“Efforts like outreach, bringing numerous stakeholders collectively, guaranteeing everyone seems to be aligned, and having a catalyst or facilitator to drive the challenge ahead are extremely difficult. The CRA has successfully stuffed this hole for a lot of nonprofits like us. It has enabled us to construct partnerships, collaborations, and coalitions extra simply, with out always worrying about shedding focus or struggling to safe funding. Consequently, our core work stays unaffected, and the alliance acts as an enabler, making collaborative efforts extra possible, environment friendly, and impactful.”
One of many alliance’s most formidable undertakings is the creation of a ‘Local weather Narrative Hub’ — a collaborative platform to “construct India’s personal local weather story,” as Pranay places it. The concept is to craft narratives tailor-made to completely different audiences, utilizing numerous codecs: media protection, social media campaigns, collaborations with creators and influencers, and using artwork to have interaction city audiences.
“Our focus is to shift the local weather narrative from simply carbon footprints and greenhouse fuel emissions to tales that spotlight communities’ lived experiences,” Pranay explains. “We wish these tales to resonate regionally and be shared globally — at boards just like the UN Basic Meeting, COP, and Local weather Week in New York — guaranteeing India’s voices are heard.”
Krutika of Farmers for Forests believes this shift is important. “No single organisation can tackle all points of local weather. The CRA permits inter-organisation collaboration, which is important for built-in, large-scale options. Wanting forward, alliances like CRA will likely be key to transferring your complete local weather sector ahead.”
In simply its first 12 months, the CRA has proven how coordinated motion can bridge sectors and geographies — from millets in Maharashtra to mangroves in Raigad, and sustainable urbanisation in Assam. By linking native realities with nationwide methods, and guaranteeing each accomplice’s voice is heard, it’s working to make local weather motion not only a coverage objective, however a shared mission throughout India.
