Major Environmental Movements in India

In India, particularly after the 1970s, a slew of environmental movements arose. These movements arose from a variety of individual responses to local challenges in various locations at various times. The growth of environmental movements is not limited to one region of the country. Bishnoi movement, Chipko movement, Save Silent Valley movement, Jungle Bachao movement are some of them.

Bishnoi Movement

Amrita Devi led this effort, in which 363 people gave their lives for the preservation of their forests. This was the first movement of its sort to establish the concept of hugging or embracing trees for their protection on an ad hoc basis. This moment is popularly known as the Bishnoi movement.

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Chipko Movement

• The Chipko movement in India is one of the world’s most well-known environmental movements. The Chipko movement attracted international attention to the Alaknanda drainage basin’s environmental problems in the midwestern Himalayas. The Chipko movement, which began in the pre-independence era to protect Himalayan forests from destruction, has its origins there
• During the early decades of the twentieth century, many protests against colonial forest policies were organised. The people’s principal demand during these rallies was that the forest’s benefits, particularly the right to fodder, be distributed to local people. In 1960, a massive road network was built in the area for border security purposes, in addition to taking on numerous other types of undertakings.

• All of this was devastating for the area’s woodlands as well as the overall ecology. The removal of trees and then rolling them down slopes weakened the higher soil, which was eroded even more during rain, resulting in the terrible Alaknanda flood of 1970 July, which wreaked devastation in the upper area of the catchment
• During the 1970s flood, Dasholi Gram Sarajya Mandal, Gopeswar, a social service organisation in Uttarakhand, came to help with rescue efforts
• The Mandal’s volunteers understood that land and forest, as well as man and forest, we’re all intertwined. Then they began teaching the public about the negative consequences of deforestation on the slopes, eventually forming a movement
• The movement’s name, ‘Chipko,’ is derived from the Hindi word ’embrace’. The people are alleged to have hugged, embraced, or adhered to the forest trees to keep them from being felled by the contractors. In a meeting in the Mandal on April 1, 1973, Chandi Prasad Bhatt proposed the concept of ‘loving’ the trees to fight tree chopping. The name ‘Chipko’ comes from a mutually agreed-upon tactic of clinging to trees as nonviolent direct action

Appiko movement

• One of India’s forest-based environmental movements is the Appiko Movement. The protest took place in the Western Ghats of Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district.The ‘forest district’ of Karnataka is Uttar Kannada, which is part of the Western Ghats

• The area has a lot of woodland and a good microclimate for income crops like black pepper and cardamom. The rich forest resources were used during colonial control; teak trees were chopped to build ships, and timber and fuel woods were brought to Mumbai
• The government began chopping trees for revenue after independence, and the forest department, which continued the colonial forest policy, transformed the tropical rainforests into monoculture teak and eucalyptus plantations
• Protesting plans to establish teak plantations, a group of Balegadde village youngsters wrote to forest officials, requesting that they not cut the natural forest. However, this request was turned down. The peasants then agreed to start a movement
• S. L. Bahuguna, the Chipko movement’s architect, was requested to gather locals to take an oath to safeguard trees by embracing them. People hugged the trees when the axe-men came down the Kalase forests in September 1983, and the ‘Appiko movement’ was born
• The Appiko movement was successful in achieving its goals of preserving current forest cover, replanting trees on degraded land, and harnessing forest riches while keeping natural resources in mind
• The Appiko movement rescued the people’s fundamental life resources, such as bamboo trees, which could be used to make handcrafted products that they could sell for a few rupees. It also preserved medicinal trees for local people to use

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Narmada Bachao Andolan

• The struggle against the Narmada River Valley Project is India’s most well-known environmental movement. The Narmada is the Indian peninsula’s greatest west-flowing river. In a sequence of falls, the Narmada weaves its way to the Arabian Sea across 1,312 kilometres through gorgeous forested hills, lush agricultural plains, and tiny rocky gorges
• The Narmada River Development Project, which involves the construction of thirty huge dams and several smaller ones on the river and its fifty-one main tributaries, is one of the world’s largest multipurpose water projects. The initiative will improve food production and hydropower generation in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra, as well as reshape the valley and the lifestyle of its population
• Dams and reservoirs will displace 1 million people and sink 350,000 ha of forestland and 200,000 hectares of agricultural land, according to estimates. The Sardar Sarovar Dam, which is now being built in Gujarat, is experiencing strong opposition from tribal tribes that hunt and graze in the forest gorges, as well as peasants who would be displaced by the reservoir’s inundation, which will submerge over 40,000 hectares of land and 250 settlements
• The movement’s current leaders, such as Medha Patkar, are seeking to provide adequate rehabilitation programmes for those who have been displaced by the project. Human rights advocates have been the articulators of anti-dam protests as a result of the state’s poor implementation of rehabilitation programmes. Their demands included the dam’s complete closure, as well as resettlement and rehabilitation benefits for the displaced people

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Conclusion

Environmentalists advocate for the long-term management of natural resources. The environment is frequently emphasised in the movements as a result of changes in public policy. Ecology, health, and human rights are at the heart of many movements