Prof. Ranjit Chatterjee from Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya led the sessions, combining theory with practical demonstrations. Hosted at Sundarban Bari community space by Sundarban Jana Sramajibi Manch (SJSM), with support from IIT Kharagpur and development practitioner from the Centre for Development of Human Initiatives (CDHI), Jalpaiguri, the training reflects an action research approach.

Lecture Session on vermicompost conducted by Prof. Ranjit Chatterjee. Photo: Tapas Mondal

The focus on vermicompost and trellis stems from their climate-adaptive benefits, especially in the Sundarbans, where post-cyclone saline flooding compromises agricultural land. Vermicomposting requires minimal land, can be done in household courtyards using vermi-bags or tanks, and uses household organic waste, producing harvests in 2-3 months. Trellis cultivation involves growing crops in boxes or trays filled with soil from pond beds or foundational tree soils like Banyan and Pipul, allowing cultivation without land. Professor Chatterjee emphasized that both practices enhance soil health through organic fertilization, fostering beneficial microbial activity and avoiding the degradation caused by chemical fertilizers.

Lecture Session on trellis cultivation  conducted by Prof. Ranjit Chatterjee. Photo: Tapas Mondal

During the first session, participants—including SARSA members, community mobilizers, fishers, and farmers—learned about three production models: vermi-pits, vermi-tanks, and vermi-bags, tailored to different resource scenarios. The training covered the entire process, from sourcing red earthworms and preparing organic waste to managing moisture and harvesting three marketable products: worms (sold at ₹1200/kg), vermi-wash, and vermicompost. Strategies for adding value, like branded packaging and direct marketing to local government offices, were discussed to promote livelihood diversification.

The subsequent session focused on trellis cultivation—how to grow vegetables in small boxes and trays, ideal for landless or small-landholders. Since these trays do not contact soil directly, they are free from soil-borne diseases and salinity risks. Participants learned to prepare cultivation beds, select suitable crops, maintain the system, protect against pests, and access markets. Vermicompost is a key ingredient in preparing the soil within these trays, enabling the simultaneous use of both practices by utilizing one’s own compost. Harvests from trellis cultivation can recur every 2-3 months, allowing for crop rotation and income generation throughout the year. Prof. Chatterjee also explained organic pest control methods, including neem leaf water spray, mustard cake, sugar apple leaf spray, and indigenous plants like Bishkati. He stressed maximizing harvest utilization for household consumption, local sales, income, and food security.

Hands-on training sessions on vermicompost and trellis cultivation by Prof. Ranjit Chatterjee
Photo: Tapas Mondal and Souradip Pathak

This intervention was co-envisioned in the ENGAGE July 2026 on-site workshop by the community collective members, agricultural scientist-expert, grassroots organization, local institution representatives, and academia, aiming to develop sustainable pathways for local resilience through scalable, equitable practices rooted in ecological realities. By empowering landless and asset-limited households, especially women, with vermicompost and trellis farming skills, the project supports a resilience strategy that recognizes localized agroecological solutions as vital responses to climate challenges in the vulnerable Indian Sundarbans.

Aims: The workshop aimed to cultivate cross-learning within diverse knowledge systems, deepen partnerships, and identify pathways for scaling commons-based agroecological practices across the region.

Objectives: Four major objectives are -a) Strengthening the canal-fishing experimentation, b) Connecting government programmes with local initiatives, c) Enhancing more-than-fishing livelihood practices through agroecological processing and marketing and d) Advancing transformation through the scaling initiative.

Methodologies: The participatory approach adopted. The mutually designed methodologies are- i) Designing the in-situ framework, ii) Participants and rationale for participation, iii) Participatory mapping and co-learning and iv) Reflexive analysis.

In-Situ Workshop: The July workshop is best understood not as a periodic review of the Collective Canal Fishing Experimentation (CCFE), but as a moment in which the project paused to ask what had been learned, whose knowledge had shaped the work, what remained uncertain, and what kinds of collaboration might be useful next. The workshop brought community mobilisers and households into conversation with scientists, practitioners, development actors, government officials and researchers. More importantly, it created a practical setting in which these different positions could meet around a common concern: how canal fishing and related agroecological activities might contribute to livelihood security while remaining socially and ecologically viable. The workshop also marked the beginning of a set of plans of Strengthening Water Governance (SWAG) under the Transformation Accelerating Grant (TAG) of the SOR4D programme. The broader goal of this next phase is to support the transition towards climate-resilient livelihoods by building on local governance and collective capacities, strengthening access to markets and institutional support, and exploring possibilities for wider uptake of commons-based agroecological practices. In this sense, the July 2026 workshop offered a vital space in which experimentation, reflection, collaboration, and action continue to shape one another.

Workshop outputs: The major outputs from this workshop are -a) detailed project report, b) participatory methodological output and c) an expert profiling. These deliverables will help consolidate the insights generated during the workshop and provide a structured basis for subsequent project activities. In addition, the team discussed a brief yet comprehensive immediate action plan, outlining the key follow-up activities, responsibilities, and priorities emerging from the three-day workshop.  Thus provided an important opportunity to move from discussion and reflection towards documentation, coordination, and a clear roadmap for the next phase of the project.

Way Forward / Action plans: Four major future plans emerged from this workshop – (i) Plan for operationalization: Develop a preliminary production layout in August and initiate the process of seeking necessary approvals towards setting up the mini processing unit of agro-ecological products. (ii) Knowledge brochure: Prepare a brochure on vermicomposting as one of the project’s tangible knowledge outputs and training from UBKV / North Bengal Agriculture University. (iii) Formation of a new enterprise-focused group:  In addition to the five existing canal-fishing experimentation groups, form a separate group focused on enterprise development during the scaling-out phase. (iv) Events on value chain for five agroecological products: Conduct training/workshop on the market value chains of the five agroecological products- organic honey, blue tea, hibiscus tea, lentil dumplings and vermi compost.

Photos: In-situ workshop at Kumirmari, Indian Sundarbans, 24-26 July 2026

On 3 July 2026, in a classroom of the Faculty of Geography and History at the University of Barcelona, researchers from different corners of the world gathered around a question that sits at the heart of the ENGAGE project: who is transformative research for, and who gets to take part in it?

The occasion was Panel P105, ‘Transform-agencies’: A political ecology (PE) praxis through experiments in engaged ethnography, convened by ENGAGE team members from IIT Kharagpur at POLLEN 2026, the Political Ecology Network conference on “Diverse Origins, Multiple Futures”. The panel brought together researchers working across South Asia and beyond to reflect on how methodological experimentation can reshape relationships between knowledge, power and action.
About the panel

The conversation was closely connected to a central premise of ENGAGE: resilience cannot be built through solutions imposed from outside; it has to grow from situated knowledge, lived realities and sustained engagement among communities, researchers, practitioners and institutions. ENGAGE approaches the Sundarbans as a complex social-ecological system and works towards understanding its plural ‘riskscapes’ while supporting situated adaptive practices through transdisciplinary knowledge co-production. Its living-lab approach brings historical ethnographic inquiry into conversation with experimentation, allowing research to move between understanding, learning and action. It was this movement – from research about communities towards research with and alongside them – that the POLLEN panel sought to make visible. The panel’s starting point was political ecology’s longstanding concern with power, rights, justice, identity and agency, but it also asked a more reflexive question: who gets to produce knowledge, who gets to listen, and what kinds of relationships are created through the research process? The panel therefore foregrounded participatory cartography, sensory ethnography, photovoice, visual practices and transdisciplinary collaboration as more than methodological techniques. They were considered possible ways of unsettling conventional research hierarchies and opening space for different forms of participation, accountability and agency.
Layout and presentations

Presentations addressed collaborative knowledge-making and future-making; coastal dispossession and development frontiers in Bangladesh; fishworkers’ activism in West Bengal; ‘inhabitant interviewers’ and agroecological transitions in the Indian Sundarbans; human–more-than-human entanglements; comics and speculative political ecology; photographic and interdisciplinary collaborations; brackish-water governance; informal street vending; participatory and visual methods; sound art; and youth-led climate praxis. These studies suggested that transformation can emerge through seemingly modest shifts in how research is conducted—who asks the questions, whose senses and stories are taken seriously, what forms knowledge takes, and how research relationships are sustained.

The panel’s format was itself an experiment in this spirit. Rather than treating presentations as discrete pieces of knowledge, the convenors created opportunities to connect them. Participants used a shared Miro board to map recurring themes, approaches and methodological possibilities across the presentations. The second session culminated in a roundtable organised around four questions: which concepts need rethinking; which methods deserve further experimentation; where opportunities for transformative research might lie; and what collaborations could emerge from the conversation. The intention was not to arrive at a single definition of transformative research, but to create a space where its possibilities could be collectively explored. Sessions were designed as conversation rather than a procession of talks. Short pauses invited reflection on what kind of praxis each study practised. The day closed with a roundtable on concepts needing rethinking, methods deserving experimentation, opportunities for transformative research, and collaborations taking shape.

The “cone of possibilities” framed a discussion of speculative political ecology

Carrying forward

The exchange in Barcelona also reinforced an important aspect of ENGAGE’s work: transformation is not necessarily synonymous with scale, novelty or a ready-made solution. It can begin with recognition—with taking local knowledge seriously, making visible practices that are often overlooked, and creating relationships through which different actors can learn from one another. It can also involve uncertainty, negotiation and reflexivity: recognising that transdisciplinary work brings institutional barriers, epistemic differences and ethical questions alongside its possibilities. For ENGAGE, then, the panel was more than an opportunity to present project experiences to an international political-ecology audience. It was a way of carrying the project’s questions outward and bringing new questions back. By placing the everyday practices of knowledge co-production, experimentation and engagement in dialogue with diverse political-ecology experiences, the panel opened a wider conversation about what research can do. At its heart was a simple but demanding proposition: if the socio-ecological futures we seek are more just and resilient, perhaps the processes through which we produce knowledge about them must also become more collaborative, reflexive and transformative.

A hand-drawn riverine landscape on screen

The researchers left Barcelona with new questions, new collaborators and a shared sense that praxis begins with listening. These conversations will keep shaping how ENGAGE works with communities across the Sundarbans.