The global financial crisis and threat of world-wide recession has focused attention on the need for looking at alternate avenues of increasing employment. At the same time, the other interlinked facets of societal crises, which have increasingly been urgent concerns over the past few years, such as “the substantial and multiple environment crises” and “the crises that result from failure to meet peoples’ demand for justice and fair treatment” of which gender inequities are a major component, need to be also addressed.

Cooperatives, which by their very organizational definition address the second of the two crises mentioned as well as play a significant role in employment generation, are also recognizing the need to maintain and enhance competitiveness, in an environmentally sound manner, along with social and equity considerations.

In India, social forestry, raw material production for bio-fuels, solid waste management through cooperatives and value-added projects of environmental import which involve recycling their bye-products are a few instances of cooperatives targeting environmental concerns as their primary business.

Instances of cooperatives addressing the problem of degradation of resources on which they survive, and on which their members depend for livelihood, are also to be found.

Many of these cooperative initiatives such as the social forestry cooperatives have also had large components of gender related programmes as well as livelihood generation investments for women. Women have been found to be more receptive to ecological ideas and to play a central role in nurturing such projects.

Since cooperatives are by and large, as also by definition, geared to providing employment to their members, they are self-sustaining entities and are likely to be insulated from shocks that have global roots.

The paper examines interventions by cooperatives in areas of environmental concern. It presents innovative case studies of cooperatives in India which are involved in business that, in addition to generating employment, is both environmentally and member beneficial, and includes components that target women-group livelihoods.