Chipko to Chamoli

Context: Nearly 50 years after it cradled the Chipko Andolan, inspiring a range of ecological movements and initiatives, Chamoli is once again challenged to protect its mountains, forests and watersheds.

About Chipko Andolan: local peoples’ yearning for control over their resources.

• A conservation movement: women from Garhwal village hugged trees to save them from cutting.
  • Identified with multiple concepts like eco-feminism, Gandhian Satyagraha, Van Bachao Andolan.
• Rationale: The forests had to be protected because they nurture watersheds, nourish the soil and keep rocks in their place, reducing chances of landslides.
  • Forests act as sources of manure for farming, fodder for animals and fuel for the kitchens; they are central to peoples’ lives and livelihoods

Associated concerns with the present development model:

• Development – Environment Binary:
  • While the liberal economy has brought new charms, it has also compromised carrying capacity of fragile ecosystem.
  • E.g. While the dissociation from U.P has brought jobs and building of dams in Uttarakhand (providing energy security), protests against these schemes are frequent.
  • Unsustainable development activities: like large-scale tree felling, blasting and tunnelling during construction further entangle the interplay between climate change and ecology.
    • The Ravi Chopra committee had incriminated the hydel schemes and called for an overhaul of the environment clearance procedure.
  • Viewed as a hindrance to Ease of Doing Business.
• Rising Himalayan heights and global warming: The Himalayas are an evolving mountain chain — the height of the ranges increases every year.
  • This results in unstable slopes, further impacted by glacial activities triggered by global warming.
  • According to a 2019 paper in the journal Science Advances, Himalayan glacial melting has doubled since 2000 compared to a 25-year period before the turn of the century.

Way forward: Nurturing the “alternative” notion of development

• Scientific establishments should expand the frontiers of our knowledge on the Himalayas.
• Reanimation of Chipko’s vision: by the civil society, political players and our knowledge establishments.

Conclusion: Eco-fragility must be respected and, at the same time, the environment-development binary must be transcended in practice.