SOPPECOM

Founded and based in Pune, Maharashtra, Society For Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) is a non-profit organisation working at the intersection of natural resource management, social justice, and participatory governance in rural India. Its core concerns include water, land, biomass, and renewable energy resources. For SOPPECOM, the questions of equitable access and democratic governance are inseparable from those of caste, gender, and class. Water resource management has been central to its work for over a decade, with a focus on helping communities form legally recognised, participatory user groups to manage shared ecosystem resources. In its early phase, the organisation ran action research programmes on sustainable land and water use, low external input cropping, and alternative technologies for buildings and water storage. SOPPECOM’s work has demonstrated that integrating different sources of water—whether ground or surface, local or exogenous—is critical for sustainable prosperity and equity. It has also worked extensively on watershed development, conducting research and policy advocacy across Maharashtra and beyond. The organisation supports women farmers through agroecology programmes across Vidarbha and Marathwada, promoting seed sovereignty, mixed cropping, and organic inputs to reduce dependence on costly external inputs. It maintains an explicit commitment to women, Dalits, and other marginalised groups.