Archana Godbole

Founder

Founder of Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF)

Archana Godbole is the founder of Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF)[1], an Indian non-profit working on environment and rural & agriculture from Pune.

Archana Godbole is an Indian botanist and conservationist and the founder-director of the Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF), a Pune-based non-governmental organisation working on biodiversity conservation in the northern Western Ghats.

She founded AERF in 1994 with Jayant Sarnaik, with the aim of connecting conservation research to practical sustainable development. The organisation is particularly known for its work on sacred groves — patches of forest protected by local religious custom — and for conservation agreements with private forest owners in Maharashtra.

Early life and education

Godbole trained as a plant taxonomist and ethnobiologist. She began visiting the Western Ghats in search of sacred groves in the late 1980s while working for the Botanical Survey of India and studying for her doctorate. She later spent six years working with indigenous communities in north-east India, documenting traditional knowledge relevant to sustainable natural resource management.

Career

Godbole has developed AERF's programmes over some three decades of fieldwork. Her work covers sacred forest conservation, agreements to conserve privately owned forest, green enterprise development, food security, and partnerships with businesses intended to bring biodiversity considerations into mainstream commerce. Since 2011 she has led the Northern Western Ghats Conservation Network.

AERF has been a partner of the World Land Trust since 2015, and Godbole is listed by the Trust as the organisation's chief executive. She served for nine years as a civil society observer to the Climate Investment Funds at the World Bank, and is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas specialist group on cultural and spiritual values of protected areas. She spoke at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2025.

Recognition

Godbole received a Whitley Associate Award in 2007 for her long-term work on the conservation of sacred forests in the northern Western Ghats. She is a LEAD Fellow, and was an invited non-governmental representative to the Clinton Global Initiative, where AERF's commitment on safeguarding forests and biodiversity in the northern Western Ghats was recognised at the 2011 annual meeting.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF)

AERF works on sacred-grove conservation, mangrove restoration and applied biodiversity research across the Northern Western Ghats, coastal Maharashtra and central India, partnering with indigenous and forest-dependent communities on nature-based livelihoods and green entrepreneurship.

Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) reports the following, on its own site:

13,000 acres of threatened privately owned terrestrial forests brought under conservation agreements
1,791 acres of privately owned mangroves under long-term conservation management
9,950+ eco-chullahs distributed among forest-dependent communities
25,000+ forest-dependent people empowered through conservation interventions