blog-state: Kerala

For Sachith K K, former Panchayat President of Perinjanam, climate action did not begin with a disaster – it began with a belief. A belief in living without disturbing nature’s balance, and in the power of collective thinking. Conversations with friends about sustainable living slowly deepened, finding direction through T. M. Manoharan, then Chairman of KSERC and a native of Perinjanam. Those ideas took shape when Sachith helped organise an awareness programme on alternative energy, attended by nearly 300 residents. What began as dialogue soon became action.

That moment laid the foundation for Perinjanormam, a community-led solar movement that has transformed Perinjanam into a Solar Gramam. Despite skepticism around solar power, the Panchayat focused on trust and transparency. NRIs contributed early funds, cooperative banks enabled affordable loans, and clear agreements ensured long-term public benefit—including a free solar plant for the Panchayat office and a locally trained maintenance team.

Eight years on, 850 households are rooftop solar prosumers, cutting electricity bills by up to 80 percent and collectively reducing emissions at scale. Today, solar panels are planned alongside new homes, not added later. Today, the village stands as a success story of how community efforts can drive decentralised rooftop solar energy adoption.

This governance and community-led impact has been nationally recognised, earning the village of Perinjanam the Akshaya Oorja Award (2019) and the Maha Panchayat Award from MediaOne for excellence in community-driven renewable energy.

Each year, as tides rise along Kerala’s coast, fear quietly enters people’s homes. High-tide flooding is no longer an occasional inconvenience but a recurring crisis—damaging houses, contaminating drinking water, and disrupting livelihoods sustained over generations. The decline of traditional coastal agri-aqua systems such as Pokkali has further destabilised the fragile balance between land and sea.

In response, a collaborative initiative—Co-creating Community Resilience to Climate Change–Aggravated High-Tide Flooding in Coastal Kerala—emerged in 2021. EQUINOCT, Asar, and local CSOs partnered with fisher groups, farmers, and local governments to develop solutions rooted in lived realities.

“Nobody had any statistics on the extent, severity or impacts of high tide floods,” says Jayaraman Chillayill, co-founder and managing director of EQUINOCT. “So we devised a calendar, distributed across 10,000 households in 20 coastal panchayats in Ernakulam district, to record timing, water levels, and flood events. To translate this evidence into governance-ready insights, we developed SeaSight, a real-time decision-support dashboard for Panchayats and disaster management authorities.”

In September 2024, a special Gram Sabha in one of the panchayats, Ezhikkara passed a landmark resolution urging the state to recognise tidal flooding as a disaster—an action echoed by several other Panchayats. Two multi-stakeholder convenings of affected Panchayats followed. As a result of sustained efforts over five years, Kerala state cabinet recommended the inclusion of high-tide flooding as a state-specific natural disaster on 28 January 2026.

The initiative has been showcased by the Global Centre on Adaptation, the Girl Up UN Foundation, IIT Palakkad, CUSAT, and the SwitchOn SustainAgri Challenge.