(Left) Nuklu Phom (Right) Nuklu's efforts started paying off when the village council and student leaders including the church understood the concept and they also started introducing alternative livelihoods to manage their own resources.
In conversation with Whitley Award winner Nuklu Phom
Vishü Rita Krocha
Kohima | May 13
As a young boy, Nuklu Phom who hails from Yaongyimchem village under Longleng district was very close with his grandfather and the people of that generation in the early 1980s. “We were very young and they would tell us about wild species, the amount and the number of species,” he recollects.
Several years later, when he came back home after earning a master’s degree in Theology, his grandfather was no longer there but he vividly remembers what he said about wild species in his childhood—“If this trend continues for another 10-15 years, all these species will be extinct.”
“This was exactly what happened”, the 48-year-old conservationist narrates to The Morung Express as he shares his journey to winning the prestigious Whitley Awards 2021 that carries £40,000 for his work- ‘Establishing a biodiversity peace corridor’. To quantify this, he says, “If we look at the depleting environment- the production of horti products, the quality of food that we were getting- all these were going down.”
A course in Environment & Ecology, which he did while pursuing his master’s degree had further motivated him to voluntarily take up some of the subjects in the college he was teaching in. “I prepared some curriculum and started to speak to the faculty and students and that’s how I kept on picking the momentum to stress on the depleting environment and I think gradually people heard me,” he relates.
Eventually, he was invited to speak in different workshops and seminars while he was simultaneously using the church platform to sensitize people by personally volunteering to prepare sermons, skits and dramas for the whole of Nagaland to be used during the World Environment Day. During this period some ten years ago, he also requested the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) to set aside every first Sunday of June as World Environment Sunday.
Driven by passion in the field of conservation, he prepared the liturgy containing sermons, prayers, reflections, and also designed dramas (that can be translated into different dialects) for use in about 1500 churches across the State. This was a regular feature under his initiative and ran for about 5 consecutive years.
Nuklu Phom served as the executive secretary of Phom Baptist Christian Association for 2 tenures (10 years). When he retired from this service, he was only 44 years old. He then got an invitation to work outside. “It was a challenging moment because I have a family to take care of including 3 daughters. So to work outside and get a good salary was quite entertaining and persuading but I decided to I should invest more time in my passion,” he says. This decision, he further expresses, was a ‘turning point’ in his life.
Biodiversity Conservation
Carrying on with his passion, by 2010, they had set aside a huge forest area for biodiversity conservation. This had eventually earned ‘Lemsachenlok Society’ the India Biodiversity Award 2018. The Society, where Nuklu Phom is the chairman, was also recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme on November 2, 2015 for their efforts towards conserving the Amur Falcon (Falco Amurensis) and is a recipient of the Governor’s Gold Medal Award 2021.
A significant initiative that Nuklu Phom undertook was bringing his entire village jurisdiction under restricted forest area wherein hunting is banned in the entire village throughout the year.
Initially, the first three years were very challenging, he notes. But his efforts started paying off when the village council and student leaders including the church understood the concept. They have experienced the impact of the depleting environment, eventually affecting the water systems. “The water level was going down, the harvest was not as it was in the past”, he points out.
This is when they also started introducing alternative livelihoods to manage their own resources.
From hunting with guns to shooting with cameras
“We also started a small health and micro finance program; also emphasized on village education by reviving the Morung system of education and we engaged hunters in identifying wild species. Earlier, they shot with guns, but we applied a new mechanism for them to shoot with cameras and binoculars,” he recalls.
This eventually helped them convince the hunters. More importantly, Phom states, “within a span of two years, the species started regenerating, and we could hear the birds, the barking deer and different wild species.” Seeing this with their own eyes generated more interest in the minds of the people both young and old to join in the venture.
The other area, which he believes has qualified him to come this far is the huge forest area where the Amur Falcons started roosting in, by 2010. “Those areas where Amur Falcons roost were not used for Jhum cultivation, so it became a very conducive environment ecosystem even for Amur Falcons,” he shares.
Working around this initiative, he remembers carrying their own lunch boxes and going to the jungle, and among other activities, starting to build their own watchtower. People always thought we got funds for Amur Falcons, but we never received any fund except for the satellite tagging of the Amur Falcon, he says.
‘Establishing a biodiversity peace corridor’
He exudes hope that Whitley Fund for Nature Award “will further the success of the Biodiversity Peace Corridor and create a network of reserves managed by indigenous people.”
“It is an immense honor for myself, our team, our State of Nagaland and our country, India,” Nuklu states, adding that “WFN’s support will further enhance our vision towards uniting communities, policymakers and scientists, respecting wildlife and transforming lives.”
During these difficult COVID-19 times, he further says, “the award is even more important because it will support the sustainable livelihoods for people.”
“I thank God for the conviction laid in my mind for this mission in safeguarding the environment and granting me with good health and sound mind to endeavor in this journey,” he expresses.
The immediate vision of the Biodiversity Peace Corridor, he says, “is to bring communities across borders to join the Biodiversity Peace Movement. This cradles ‘Peace among Communities, Peace with Nature’. The movement is to live in harmony with the entire eco system so that each harmonizes the other. With the Biodiversity Peace Corridor implemented, there are prospects to bring in research scholars to collect data on the flora and fauna and document them for further intensive research,” he shares.
