From flood to flow
Minni Jain, will deliver this seminar entitled "From flood to flow" at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen. She is Director for Earthlinks UK and Tarun Bharat Sangh India 'Flow' Partnership.
Abstract
Across the world, floods and droughts are making headlines all the time, villagers watching helplessly as the river waters rise or disappear. One village in the UK piloted a different approach to dealing with their twice a year floods by working upstream to build simple water retention and damming structures. After five successive years of flooding, this year the village remained dry.
In India, similar water retention structures have been built at various points in a dry, arid and barren landscape in Rajasthan state of India and after just a few years, seven rivers have been regenerated and brought back to life.
There has been immense concern surrounding the recent floods this winter across the UK. On the other side, there is immense concern at the appearance of drought and the dwindling of fresh water sources in many parts of the world. On the face of it – they seem like opposite ends of the escalating world 'water' problem. How can they be connected and resolved?
The thinking behind only looking to big technological solutions to such systemic problems misses the obvious solutions of working locally with nature. Traditional wisdom both from the East and the West shows us that not only are these two polar opposites connected, even the solutions for their resolution can be the same, reviving and managing flow in man and nature.
This talk will introduce us to some of the hugely successful, innovative, grassroots ecological thinking that is tackling complex systemic problems, working live on the ground, transforming the landscapes of flood and drought back to flow – especially in India.
Biography
Minni Jain is the Director for the Earthlinks UK (registered charity in the UK) and Tarun Bharat Sangh India ‘Flow’ Partnership, which enables solutions to systemic problems of flow through working locally with communities, nature and scientists. Her work includes helping create clean water systems as locally controlled initiatives; initiating local sustainable food projects; women’s empowerment from the personal and pioneering experience of breaking many social taboos that exist for women in India. She is also the Research and Design Editor for the Holistic Science Journal.
