SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

Meet the environment movement’s first tree huggers

The first Chipko action took place spontaneously in April 1973 and over the next five years spread to many districts of the Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh. The name of the movement “Chipko” comes from a word meaning ‘embrace’. The villagers hugged trees, saving them by putting themselves between the tree and the contractor’s axes. This was a direct action from the village women against a bureaucracy that was putting their livelihoods at risk for capital gain.

The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural communities as they provide direct provision of food, fuel and fodder as well as stabilising the soil and water resources

On that first day, Gaura Devi rushed to mobilise 27 village women to confront the loggers. Placing themselves between the trees and the loggers, she said, “Brothers. This forest is the source of our livelihood. If you destroy it, the mountain will come tumbling down onto our village.” She then placed herself in front of a gun brandished by one of the men, “This forest nurtures us like a mother; you will only be able to use your axes on it if you shoot me first.” After a three day stand off, they finally withdrew without having accomplished their task.

Following the first brave Chipko action in the early 1970’s, the resistance to the destruction of forests spread throughout India and became known as the Chipko Movement.

Community action achievements

The Chipko protests in Uttar Pradesh achieved a major victory in 1980 with a 15-year ban on green felling in the Himalayan forests in that state and from then the movement spread, north, south, west and east. It stopped clear felling in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas and generated pressure for a natural resource policy that was more sensitive to people’s needs and ecological requirements.

In effect the Chipko people created a socio-economic revolution by winning control of their forest resources from the hands of a distant bureaucracy whose concern was with selling the forest for making urban- oriented products.

“Ecology is permanent economy” Sunderlal Bahuguna

Community action to tackle climate change

There are many lessons to be learned from the Chipko movement. It demonstrates the power that lots of decentralised and local initiatives focusing on the same problem can have on policy decisions.

When it comes to tackling climate change we need to focus on the global issue of reducing carbon emissions and then take action that we deem necessary to achieve it from our communities.

Collective community action can act as a driver for new policies and as an indicator of policies failing or blocking change. We all face barriers to change and action against the causes of climate change. We must see these barriers as merely obstacles that together we have the power to get over, by which we will find a new path toward a sustainable low-energy society.