Living Lab: The Community Resilience, Adaptation and Climate Knowledge [CRACK] Centre

Our Living Lab is a real time in-situ experimental hub for community level socio-ecological research and innovation. Its also an interpretation centre for adaptive learning and knowledge economy towards ‘Change Management’ in the climate milieu. Its actually a nucleus of shared values in Development Alternative (DA) and participatory action research (PAR) at science-society interphase, and as well a venue for interactive discourses, seminars, workshops and exposure visits of scholars, nature lover, researchers and all stakeholders.

Living Lab is located in Tipligheri village of Lahiripur Gram Panchayat in Gosaba block, district Sundarbans (India). From Kolkata, the living Lab can be reached by road to first Godkhali ferry ghat, which is almost 100 km from Kolkata, and then by a river cruise of two to two-n-half hours, depending on the tidal cycles.

The components of the Living Lab include the following

• A cyclic design approach in the lush green campus, sustained by renewable energy in entirety and enabled with a state-of-the-art weather station having a one-minute data resolution, wind-energy driven cyclone early-alert system and 3R resource-management.
• A modern agro-forestry greenhouse, mangrove nursery, field testing facility for Climate Resistant Crops and an in-situ, in-vivo gene conservation centre for 50-plus land races of local rice.
• An extended dry-wet research laboratory for research scholars, climate data management system and interpretation centre
• Aquafarming centre for coastal Blue-carbon interventions and as well as women empowerment hub with gender-just farming tool bank.

Additionally, the CRACK centre has a small primary school for the local indigenous kids, named ‘Sabuj Pathsala’ (Green Kindergarten), for mainstreaming them in education and career building. It also has infrastructural facility to host 10-12 researchers in a modest in-house stay dorm.