CASE STUDY
CHIPKO MOVEMENT
Abstract:
It is a case study which become a history for Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. About 300 years
ago, a ruler in Rajasthan decided to fell ‘khejri’ trees in his State to create lime. Local women led
by a Bishnoi woman, Amrita Devi, clung to the trees to prevent the felling of the trees that
formed the basis of the scarce resources on which they were dependent. The women were
ruthlessly massacred. It is said that the ruler later realised his mistake. The story however has
been remembered and was revived in the 1970s when severe tree felling for timber in the
Himalayas prompted local women, supported by people such as Sunderlalji Bahuguna and
Chandi Prasad Bhat, led a people’s movement to prevent deforestation by timber contractors.
They called their movement the ‘Chipko’ movement in memory of the event during which
women had clung to their trees and given up their lives. The movement followed the path the 300
Bishnoi women had taken three centuries ago in Rajasthan.
Chipko is a movement primarily begun and supported by local women in the hills of Uttarakhand
and Garhwal, where the women have had to bear the brunt of deforestation. They have not only
realised that their fuelwood and fodder resources have receded away from their ‘resource use
areas’ around their settlements due to commercial timber extraction,but that this has led to
serious floods and loss of precious soil.
Chipko activists have made long padyatras across the Himalayas protesting against deforestation.
The movement has been highly successful and has been primarily supported by empowering
local women’s groups who are the most seriously affected segment of society by deforestation.
The movement has proved to the world that the forests of the hills are the life support systems of
local communities of immense value in terms of local produce that is essential for the survival of
local people and that the forest has less quantifiable but even more important ecological services
such as soil conservation and the maintenance of the natural water regime of the whole region.
The ability of local women to band themselves together in the foothills of the Himalayas goes
back to the pre Independence days when women such as Miraben, a disciple of Gandhiji, moved
to this region and understood that it was the deforestation that led to floods and devastation of
villages in the valleys and in the Gangetic plains below. They also appreciated that substitutions
of oak and other broadleaved forests of the Himalayas by planting fast growing pine for timber
and resin was an ecological and social disaster which reduced the forest resources used by
traditional hill communities.
Issues:
What you think, The ethical basis of environment is Education/Awareness or both?
Chipko Movement is also an example of Women Empowerment? Is it an suitable
example for Women Empowerment?
In ancient Indian traditions people have always valued mountains, rivers, forests, trees
and several animals.. But now peoples just wasting them, even know we can get them
back again?
