Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Chipko movement was an action of local peasants and villagers against state-contracted commercial forestry operations in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh from 1973 to 1981. Chipko achieved worldwide recognition thanks to the image of villagers non-violently preventing the cutting down of trees by clasping them in their arms. But more importantly, Chipko showed that peasants themselves were capable of successfully responding to the social dislocation caused by ecological degradation. Chipko has inspired other movements throughout the world. Located in the hills of northern India in the central Himalayas, Uttar Pradesh had been the site of many social struggles and popular uprisings against the Indian department of forestry, both in colonial times and after independence. By the 1960s, deforestation had led to major ecological disasters, especially the Alakananda flood of 1970. The movement began in the Chamoli district in 1973 and spread throughout the Uttarakhand Himalayas by the end of the decade. In Tehri district, Chipko activists would go on to protest limestone mining in the Dehradun hills in the 1980s as well as the Tehri dam, before founding the Beej Bachao Andolan or Save the Seeds movement that continues to the present day. In the Kumaon region, Chipko joined the general movement for a separate Uttarakhand state, which was successful in 2000. Key figures in the movement ... log in or subscribe to read full text