ATREE’s new Centre for Social and Environmental Innovation (CSEI), was established Septemeber 2019. The Center is designed to capitalize on the organisation’s deep domain knowledge in ecology, environment and development, in order to innovate solutions that tackle socio-environmental problems at scale. The Centre's mission is to catalyse social innovation and foster collaboration by connecting consumers, social entrepreneurs and communities, and providing them with programming such as societal platforms, workshops, competitions and mentorship opportunities to accelerate their impact.

Food Futures Initiative

With India’s rich cultural and genetic diversity of foods rapidly disappearing and being replaced by generic hybrid varieties, knowledge of traditional foods is being lost. In addition to loss of agro- biodiversity, unsustainable forms of agriculture have led to soil and water degradation, and negative health impacts.
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The Food Futures Initiative (FFI) approach, from consumption to conservation, is markets- and demand-driven, and considers changing community aspirations to achieve sustainable outcomes.

Lakes Initiative

Bangalore lakes are shared environmental assets that need to be cared for by the community. Mira is a technology initiative that enables and empowers the community to participate in the sustainability and rejuvenation of lakes.

Nature- Scaping

Satellite imagery shows that Bangalore’s green cover has been declining at an alarming rate. As Bangalore transitions from a green to a grey city, there is concern that the city is becoming “unliveable”.
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This initiative plans to to reverse this trend by empowering citizens and  architects to turn landscapes of lawns and palm trees into ecologically thriving, environmentally sustainable nature-scapes.

Lantana Initiative

India's forests are changing rapidly. One of the major contributing factors to this change is the spread of invasive species which hinders growth of other native plants and prevents movements of large mammals. One such species is Lantana - introduced to the subcontinent as a garden plant, today it occupies an estimated 13 million hectares in India.

The initiative hopes to address this issue by empowering the local communities, consumers, and the industries to adopt research based solutions and innovative economic models to mitigate and reduce the impact of Lantana.