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The Knowledge We Dismiss, the Future We Endanger

2026-11-10 · By Dr Sivaramakrishna | Founder, SAKTI

An Open Letter to World Leaders, Research Foundations, Universities, Philanthropies and Businesses | COP31 — Dr Sivaramakrishna of SAKTI argues that Indigenous and rural ecological knowledge must be recognised in climate action. Drawing on South India, he calls for equal research partnerships, locally led regeneration, stronger community rights and investment that values livelihoods, languages and ecosystems alongside carbon.

Dear Leaders, Researchers, Philanthropists and Fellow Citizens,

For decades, my work with Indigenous and rural communities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana has revealed a troubling contradiction: those who know their landscapes most intimately are often the least heard when decisions are made about those landscapes. Their knowledge is dismissed as folklore; their defence of forests, rivers and wetlands is too readily described as resistance to development. Yet what if their warnings expose failures in our own understanding?

Our languages are living archives of ecological knowledge. Across coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana and the Eastern Ghats, occupational vocabularies record thousands of terms for soils, seasons, irrigation, fish, forests, tools, materials and ways of working. These are not relics of a vanishing past. They are records of observation, adaptation and practical intelligence, shaped over generations. When a dialect disappears from public life, a way of reading the landscape can disappear with it.

Consider the words beela and tampara, used locally for spring-fed and swampy wetland landscapes. In the controversy over a proposed thermal power project around Kakarapalli in Srikakulam district, failure to recognise such local ecological realities became part of a wider conflict over land and water. The project proposals were ultimately shelved. A landscape can become invisible in official records before it is destroyed on the ground.

Consider, too, the fishing communities of the Andhra coast. At Pentakota, customary mapping recorded fishing grounds, depths, fish, birds, nets, estuarine resources and pollution. Such knowledge is not a rival to satellite imagery or marine forecasts. It is an essential complement, especially when information systems are inaccessible, delayed or disconnected from the daily decisions of small-scale fishers.

The problem is not simply the loss of words. It is the loss of rights, authority and continuity. Community boundaries, water sources, sacred places, forest uses and customary institutions must be recognised in governance. Research that extracts knowledge without strengthening the people who hold it only deepens the injustice.

This is why the wider idea of the “unreasonable regenerators” matters. Across South India, natural farmers restoring degraded soils, women reviving household nutrition gardens, communities protecting wetlands and enterprises pursuing fairer regenerative supply chains are already demonstrating practical climate action. Their experience confirms what community knowledge has long taught us: resilience is ecological, economic, cultural and political at once. We cannot regenerate landscapes while erasing the memory and agency of their custodians.

As COP31 convenes in Antalya, I appeal to those who control research agendas, public policy and finance to act—not merely to praise local knowledge in speeches, but to change institutions and investments.

I urge six commitments:

  1. Recognise and protect knowledge. Support community-governed documentation of dialects, oral histories, occupational vocabularies and customary geographies, with consent and safeguards against appropriation.
  2. Put rights before projects. Make customary resource use and community participation central to environmental assessment, land-use planning and implementation of existing legal protections.
  3. Build equal research partnerships. Bring local knowledge holders together with linguists, anthropologists, ecologists and climate scientists to define questions, interpret findings and share benefits.
  4. Finance locally led regeneration. Provide accessible, long-term support for Indigenous institutions, women’s collectives, fishers, farmers and artisan livelihoods, without burdensome intermediary structures.
  5. Connect science with lived intelligence. Design climate forecasts, disaster preparedness and adaptation systems in languages and formats that communities can use and improve.
  6. Measure dignity as well as carbon. Judge success by secure livelihoods, healthy ecosystems, protected rights, strengthened languages and the decision-making power of communities.

I invite research foundations and universities to help develop a community-led programme in the Eastern Ghats, the Deccan plateau and the Andhra coast: to revisit occupational vocabularies, map changing ecological conditions and customary uses, and connect local observations with contemporary climate science. Its priorities must be determined with the communities concerned, not imposed upon them.

We must not romanticise every inherited practice, nor reject scientific advances. We must create conditions in which different forms of knowledge can question, enrich and correct one another. Above all, we must stop treating the people who defend their environments as obstacles to progress.

The question before us is simple: will we recognise the intelligence of those living with ecological change before their knowledge, rights and landscapes are irreversibly damaged?

The future of climate resilience will be shaped not by technology alone, nor tradition alone, but by justice in whose knowledge counts and whose voice decides.

With urgency and hope,

Dr Sivaramakrishna

Founder, SAKTI | Andhra Pradesh, India

https://sakti.in/aboutus.html

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