Snowchange has worked in the Koitajoki Catchment since 2017. The Koitajoki Restoration Project started in 2022 and the River Guardian Program kicked off in 2023. In early 2025, one of the river guardians mentioned that only after three years, people in the area have gotten aware of the restoration project and started seeing it as a truly good thing. Gaining acceptance is a slow process. In addition, long-term continuity in a river guardian’s own observations builds motivation as one can see the multitude of their own observations and already draw some conclusions based on them.

There is no “one size fits all” for being a river guardian. Some guardians especially enjoy joining the practical restoration actions, such as blocking the ditches of a drained peatland, or creating spawning sites for migrating fish, while others prefer to solely focus on their monitoring efforts. Offering several ways to participate helps keep many people with different interests and strengths involved. The guardians can also present suggestions of what they would like to have organized as part of the program, such as workshops. 

The River Guardian Program is based on the interests and motivations of the guardians themselves. The guardians choose the ways and methods they wish to participate in the program. They also choose whether they prefer to work solo, with family members or as a larger group of villagers. 

This is a different approach from more conventional citizen science or volunteer monitoring where scientists set the methods, protocols, and objectives of the monitoring efforts which are then followed by volunteers. A bottom-up community-based approach ensures that community-defined issues are addressed and allows a reciprocal dialogue between community members and the restoration project. River guardians are involved in planning their monitoring work as well as in interpreting the results. 

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is applied throughout the process, including when river guardians work with other community members, for example when conducting interviews. 

Scientific tourism constitutes the primary activity of the initiative. Over several days, visitors from various regions of the country and the world engage in scientific research  focused on data collection for whale shark conservation. A variety of activities are designed to encourage dialogue, reflection, and learning about the experiences of the day,  aiming to raise awareness and inspire attendees to share knowledge within their communities.

The CaaS model enables smallholder farmers and cooperatives to access solar-powered cold storage infrastructure without the burden of high initial investments and ownership. A technology provider (CoolCrop) installs, operates and maintains the cold storage units at or near the farmgate, and farmers or cooperatives pay a service fee to use the facility. This fee can be based on the quantity of produce stored, such as by weight or crate, or defined as a flat rate and is based on the total costs of installing, operating, maintaining, and financing the equipment. The viability of the intervention depends largely on selecting an appropriate pricing strategy, which covers operational costs while remaining affordable to formers, and furthermore the financial structure of the initial investment. Service providers earn revenue through storage and transportation fees, and potentially through net metering of surplus solar energy. Furthermore, the model promotes the addition of value-added services at the farmgate through the inclusion of services conventionally performed at packhouses. Solar-powered machinery for sorting and grading can be installed alongside the cold storages, creating an additional income stream for the service model. Farmers and cooperatives benefit from the reduction of post-harvest losses, preservation of quality and shelf life and the possibility to delay sales beyond market gluts, leading to improved income. 

In Himachal Pradesh, poor accessibility and weak road infrastructure expose storage providers to high operational costs. The management and maintenance of cold storage units remains the greatest hurdle to achieving economic sustainability. To address these challenges, the model includes a long-term strategy of distributing cold storage units clustered geographically. However, this becomes economically viable only after the model is scaled up and widely disseminated, requiring substantial upfront capital or external subsidies in the early phase.