The Evolution, Structure, and Impact of the Chipko Movement

Authors: Vandana Shiva and J. Bandyopadhyay

Presentation By: Lauren Richey

Satyagraha or Forest Satyagraha

• A political strategy started by Mahatma Gandhi.

• Started between 1930-31 as a result of the Forest Act of 1927.– Resisting new oppressive forest laws.

• Non-cooperative, non-violent, passive resistance movements, activities, and protests.

• Use of non-violent resistance as a political weapon instead of using firearms.

Colonial Impacts

• Changes in land tenure were introduced, thus transforming common village resources into private properties.

• Large-scale deforestation was occurring for non-local needs like expanding the railway network in India.

• Colonizers wanted to ensure control of commercial forest exploitation as a means to maintain revenue.

Chipko or Embrace-the-Tree Movement

• Started in the early 1970’s.

• Taking place in post-Independence India.

• First practiced in Garhwal Himalaya.

• Has now spread throughout most of India, especially in the hilly regions.

• Movement to protect forests from commercial felling.

Hug A Tree!

• Based on the 1960’s destruction of Himalayan forests through commercial exploitation carried out by private contractors.– Which became the major cause of

ecological instability in the Himalayas, an already vulnerable ecosystem.

• Survival of local populations and forest dwelling communities is directly linked with access to the forests.

• The movement attempted to stop the auctioning of forests for felling by contractors.

Justice, Ecological Stability & Women Power

• Historically, philosophically, and organizationally, an extension of the traditional Gandhian Satyagraha.

• Equipped with the Gandhian world-view of development which was based on justice and ecological stability.

• Growth of women-power and ecological consciousness.

Satyagraha & The Chipko Movement

• The Chipko Movement is an expression of an old social consciousness in a new context.

• Satyagraha and the Chipko Movement have both aimed to protect forests, preserve cultures, and maintain livelihoods.

• Forest Satyagrahas and the Chipko Movement have both arisen from conflicts over forest resources.

What differentiates Chipko from Satyagraha is its ecological basis…

• Arose from rapid ecological destabilization in the hills.

• Villages that were self-sufficient in food had to resort to food imports as a result of declining food productivity.

• Reduction of soil fertility in the forests.

• Water sources dried up as forests disappeared.

• Floods and landslides.

“What do the forests bear? Soil, water, and pure air”

• The Chipko Movement has become a national campaign.

• It is the result of conflicts over forest resources at the scientific, technical, economic, and ecological levels.

• Slogan of the Chipko Movement claims that the main products of the forests are not timber and resin but soil and water.

Forms of Development• Dichotomy between ecologically sound

development and unsustainable and ecologically destructive economic growth.

• Genuine development can only be based on ecological stability which ensures sustainable supplies of vital resources.

• Rethink forest management and protection.

• Himalayan forests as protected forests instead of production forests for commercial exploitation.

“Ecology is permanent economy”

• The threat to survival from ecological disruption is becoming a major concern for the future in resource use.

• And human survival in sensitive ecosystems, such as the Himalayas, is more severely threatened than other places.

Establish a new economy of permanence based on ecological principles…

• Chipko’s search for a strategy for survival has global implications.

• What Chipko is trying to conserve is not merely local forest resources but the entire life support system, and with it the option for human survival.

• Gandhi’s mobilization for a new society, where neither man nor nature is exploited and destroyed, was the beginning of this civilizational response to a threat to human survival.

Local and Global • “The spread of the message of an

alternative world view is crucial to the creation of a sustainable world, particularly in the context of a highly integrated global economic system. The ecological world view of Chipko provides a strategy for survival not only for tiny villages in the Garhwal Himalaya, but for all human societies threatened by environmental disasters.”