Drivers of the transformation

• In the dense forests of Kerala, at the foot of the Western Ghats, lives a man who can see the future. When the monsoon is particularly heavy and the Meenachil River, which is vital to the region, threatens to burst its banks, the country's disaster management officials do not call the national observatories first - they call him, Eby Emmanuel. His forecasts are more accurate than those of the country's best scientists. He doesn't need magic, a degree in hydrology or expensive technology. All he needs is a plastic beaker and a funnel - and the help of his countrymen.

What Eby Emmanuel, 51, has built along the river of his childhood is one of India's most successful citizen science programmes. His flood forecasts have saved hundreds of lives - a number that is likely to rise as the Meenachil becomes increasingly unpredictable. It originates in the green mountains of the Western Ghats and flows from there to the Arabian Sea. Over its 78 kilometres, it swells into an impressive river with dangerous undercurrents and fans out into a wide delta in its final stretch. In her award-winning novel 'The God of Small Things', author Arundhati Roy immortalised the Meenachil as both the giver and taker of life.

For the local people, the mighty river has always been the determining factor in their lives. Even hundreds of years ago, the Meenachil regularly overflowed its banks. Farmers looked forward to the annual floods, which irrigated and fertilised their rice fields. To protect themselves from the river's vagaries, they settled on higher ground. But in the 1990s, progress moved in. The nouveau riche built their villas on the low-lying floodplains, straightened the riverbeds and bulldozed natural overflow basins.

The three-hour drive from the coastal city of Kochi to Eby Emmanuel in Poonjar is a testament to the wealth brought by water. The hinterland is a seemingly endless collection of sprawling estates, usually greeted by one of the region's distinctive, lavishly decorated wooden mansions. Beyond, the view is lost in the deep green of rubber, coffee and pepper plantations. This is the blessing of the water. But along the way, traffic often grinds to a halt in narrow passages that barely squeeze through the debris of recent landslides. This is the curse of water.

During the south-west monsoon (see Monsoon) between June and August, Kerala receives around 85 per cent of its annual rainfall. At best, camera crews fly in to shoot those iconic love scenes where the hero dances around the love of his life in the pouring rain, showing off his hard-earned six-pack under a shower-transparent shirt. At worst, people die in the floods. Sadly, the latter is becoming the norm.

Every year, hundreds of people in India lose their lives in monsoon-related floods and landslides. In particular, the meandering backwaters of the Meenachil become a deadly trap for the people of the region. With its countless bends and more than 150 watersheds, the river is a highly complex hydrological system that cannot be accurately mapped by the Indian Meteorological Department's only four government monitoring stations. In the hilly terrain, it can be dry in one place, while just a valley away the sky opens up as if on Judgment Day. If there is no station at that location, no one will know about the downpour. If this happens unnoticed in several valleys, the Meenachil can swell into a deadly torrent, flooding entire areas a few hours later and dozens of kilometres to the west. As it did most recently at the end of July 2024.

Eby Emmanuel stands on the flat roof of his house, surrounded by the rain-soaked trees on his property. He is not a scientist, but has been working as a "full-time volunteer social entrepreneur" in the service of his region for more than 30 years. He is not paid for his work. He relies on the support of his family and neighbours. As the son of a panchayat president, he is deeply rooted in the community that funds his life and projects. He lives with his wife, two sons and his mother in a large ten-door wooden house. It dates from the time when the family lived comfortably off the surrounding rubber plantations. Today, most of the land has been sold and the rest is jungle 'and doesn't bring in a cent', says Eby Emmanuel, beaming from ear to ear.

Even as he speaks of the great suffering that the water brings, a deep connection and love for the nature that surrounds him shines through his stories. The solution to the Meenachil's problem, he says, is obvious: more gauging stations. But this one river in the south-west of the country is by no means the only challenge facing the Indian state (link: https://www.brandeins.de/themen/india/india-a-country-on-the-move). Understandably, the government cannot install a rain gauge in every side valley.

Fortunately, people live in almost every corner of the country. And among them is Eby Emmanuel, around whom, in a local Whatsapp group around 2017, the idea was born to start taking measurements themselves, instead of complaining about the inaction of the government. The group brought together committed residents who had been active in environmental protection since the 1980s. Back then, it was illegal sand mining by construction companies that led to the formation of the Meenachil River Protection Council. The eco-alliance still exists today. The exchange in the Whatsapp group, with around 250 scientists, is exceptionally disciplined. Clear questions, direct answers, no side discussions, no politics, no religion. Eby Emmanuel is particularly proud of this. Almost as proud as he is of his early warning system.

It dates back to 14 August 2018. On that day, the chat group is particularly active. More and more members from the upper reaches of the river are reporting heavy rains. Black clouds as high as 15 kilometres hang over the whole of Kerala. Within a very short time, more and more reports of extreme downpours come in from the headwaters. It quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary Monsoon Thursday, but a particularly dangerous situation.

Group members from the lower reaches of the river are quickly informing their neighbours, grabbing their essentials and heading for safety. Eby Emmanuel keeps the fire brigade informed and coordinates the volunteers. Thanks to this rapid response, no lives were lost in what later proved to be Kerala's worst flood since 1924. Across the state, nearly 500 people died, more than a million lost their homes and property damage was estimated at nearly four billion euros. For Emmanuel, the nightly drumming of the rain on the roof of his house, which used to cradle him so comfortably to sleep, lost all its romance, he says. At the same time, it was the awakening of his measuring programme.

A few days later, the refugees can return to their homes, or at least start to rebuild. What remains is a great sense of gratitude for the warnings from the chat group, and the question: what now? The event had shown the power of hyper-local messages from individuals. The group debates and decides to set up their own early warning system. They buy a handful of rain gauges out of their own pockets and start experimenting.

The following year, in 2019, 23 stations had been installed, and today there are more than 200. All at their own expense. Like any group in India, this one needed a long name and a complicated organisational structure. They decided on the Meenachil River and Rain Monitoring Network (coordinated by Eby Emmanuel) as part of the Meenachil River Protection Council (headed by Eby Emmanuel), which is affiliated to the Citizen Climate Education Centre Bhoomika (headed by Eby Emmanuel). In short, Eby Emmanuel has his hands full.

But two hands are not enough. As the stations do not read themselves, at least as many volunteers are needed to check them daily - or hourly, if necessary. Each region has its own representative, to whom neighbours send their data via Whatsapp. The regional representatives are often retired and respected civil servants or, in the case of P.C. Jose, a retired bank manager. He welcomes us into his spacious living room, surrounded by his family, and proudly shows us the fruits of his perseverance: a seemingly endless series of measurements, meticulously recorded in a large, bound book. He talks with great passion about how the project is not only saving lives, but also fostering an unprecedented understanding of the environment in the younger generation.

But when the 71-year-old raises his eyebrows and, with a stern gesture, talks about the people he has to admonish for reporting the data, it becomes clear why he has this job in the first place. There's a certain authority about him that you don't want to cross carelessly. Once he has reminded all the reporters, he notes down their data and passes it on to Emmanuel. When the sun is shining, Emmanuel records the levels in an even bigger book. When the weather is bad, he also posts hourly reports on Facebook and in a Whatsapp group that local journalists can access. These warnings alone reach tens of thousands of people - and, through their neighbours, almost everyone living near the river.  

All this takes a lot of time, but little money. The standard rain gauge costs just under four euros and is virtually indestructible. It consists of a grey plastic cylinder with a blue plastic funnel on top. When it rains, the funnel directs the water into the beaker, which has a scale on the inside showing the amount of rainfall. That's it. The more sophisticated version is larger and has a glass measuring cup with a slightly more precise scale. It costs about 45 euros. The technology is very simple. What makes the system so powerful is its sheer size and the discipline of the people involved.

According to Emmanuel's calculations, about 150 stations are needed to cover all the relevant bends in the river. But there is no upper limit, he says, more measurements are more accurate than fewer. The problem is not so much money. What is lacking is the time to train the volunteers. So he and his helpers are currently training schoolchildren to act as multipliers. Just entering the water level data takes him more than four hours a day. Although he doesn't like it, Eby Emmanuel is the heart of the system. All the vital lifelines run to and from him. If he were to stop working tomorrow, the project would be in danger of collapsing.

This makes it all the more important to make the project self-sustaining. For example, he and his helpers have painted a colour scale, from harmless green to dangerous red, on the piers of 13 key bridges for anyone passing by to see. The paint cost only a few euros, but the information it provides is invaluable.

One of the people involved in the project from the beginning is climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll. He is a researcher at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, a lead author of the renowned IPCC reports, and an important voice in climate research for his work on the Indo-Pacific. He grew up on the Meenachil and bathed in it as a teenager. He has been part of Emmanuel's Whatsapp group since 2019. He says: "The latest IPCC reports call for collective action, involving local communities and administrations. The Meenachil River and Rain Monitoring Network is the best example of this. It has already been proven to save lives. It works so well because it is participatory, involving schools and local people. The project is doing its best to work with the local authorities." Koll has been supporting the project for several years as a funder and scientific adviser. He hopes others in India will follow suit. Until recently, he says, no one in the country paid much attention to water levels. But that is changing fast.

The only good thing about the floods these days is that you no longer have to convince people of the need for such environmental projects, says Eby Emmanuel: "People always need drama and disasters before they become active. At least now they are." --

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To series: India – A country on the move