Established 1981 · Visakhapatnam, India
A new IDEA is taking shape.
For more than four decades, IDEA has worked at the intersection of people, land, knowledge and ecology — with the Eastern Ghats as one of its principal landscapes of engagement and learning.
Integrated Development through Environmental Awakening (IDEA) has developed and documented work across indigenous knowledge, biodiversity and natural-resource management, sustainable agriculture and agroecology, community health, traditional food systems, community institutions and endogenous development.
We are now rebuilding IDEA’s digital home and institutional archive to bring together its research, publications, projects, field systems and historical records in a form suited to a contemporary research organisation.
Founder
Prof. K. J. N. Gowtham Shankar founded IDEA and provided the vision and intellectual direction that shaped the institution from its beginning. He passed away in 2023; his legacy continues to inform IDEA’s work and institutional memory.
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Biodiversity
- Agroecology
- Food & Nutrition
- Community Health
- Endogenous Development