what has the chipko movement brought about?: forest ......1. what is the chipko movement? there was...
TRANSCRIPT
Shinya Ishizaka
Working Paper Series No. 52
Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development StudiesRyukoku University
What has the Chipko Movement Brought about?: Forest Protection Movement and Environmentalist Network Formation in India
Mission of the Afrasian Centre forPeace and Development Studies
Poverty and other issues associated with development are commonly found in many Asian andAfrican countries. These problems are interwoven with ethnic, religious and political issues, andoften lead to incessant conflicts with violence. In order to find an appropriate framework forconflict resolution, we need to develop a perspective which will fully take into account thewisdom of relevant disciplines such as economics, politics and international relations, as well asthat fostered in area studies. Building on the following expertise and networks that have beenaccumulated in Ryukoku University in the past (listed below), the Centre organises researchprojects to tackle new and emerging issues in the age of globalisation. We aim to disseminatethe results of our research internationally, through academic publications and engagement inpublic discourse.
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Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies
What has the Chipko Movement Brought about?:Forest Protection Movement and Environmentalist
Network Formation in India
Shinya Ishizaka
Working Paper Series No.52
2009
Ⓒ2009Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies1-5 Yokotani, Seta Oe-cho, Otsu,Shiga, JAPAN
All rights reserved
ISBN 978 4-903625-83-6
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewsof the Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies.
The publication of the Working Paper Series is supported by the Academic Frontier Centre (AFC)research project “In Search of Societal Mechanisms and Institutions for Conflict Resolution:Perspectives of Asian and African Studies and Beyond” (2005-2009), funded by the Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ryukoku University.
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What has the Chipko Movement Brought about?: Forest Protection
Movement and Environmentalist Network Formation in India
Shinya Ishizaka
1. WHAT IS THE CHIPKO MOVEMENT?
There was a forest protection movement called the Chipko Movement in the northern
Indian state of Uttarakhand1 from 1973 to 1981. “Chipko” literally means “to hug” in
Hindi and is derived from the fact that local residents tactically stuck to trees in order to
prevent commercial deforestation. This movement has expanded in various manners to
the whole Uttarakhand area. It has finally come to a conclusion by fulfilling the
movement’s request to entirely prohibit commercial deforestation of living trees at an
altitude of 1,000m or higher in Uttarakhand State.
The Chipko Movement has spread out to other locations in India as well. For example,
the Appiko Movement started in southern Indian state Karnataka in 1983 (“Appiko”
means “hugging” in Kannada). The Chipko Movement got widely known on a
worldwide scale based on the image that local female residents were hugging trees.
Chandi Prasad Bhatt (1934-), a key person in this movement, was awarded the
Magsaysay Award (so-called “Asia’s Nobel Prize”) in 1982, while another key-person,
Sundarlal Bahuguna (1927-) was also awarded the Right Livelihood Award (called
“another Nobel Prize”) in 1987.
The Chipko Movement has finally come to a conclusion by attaining the outcome to
entirely prohibit deforestation, but it has also brought about other consequences in
addition to total prohibition of deforestation. This chapter will identify other
“outcomes” of this movement, which have not attracted as much attention.
A lot of researchers have worked on the Chipko Movement. In the 1980s, three different
viewpoints were presented to identify the basic characteristics of the movement. First of
1 Uttarakhand State, with the dimension of 53,483km2 and the population of approximately 8.5 million(as of 2001), is the headwater region of the Ganga (Ganges) in the western Himalaya mountainous area,which is located between the Tibetan Plateau and the plains of northern India. Uttarakhand was separatedfrom Uttar Pradesh under the name of Uttaranchal in 2000. Then, the name of the state was changed toUttarakhand in 2007. The state capital is Dehradun.
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all, Shiva and Bandhyopadhyay (1986) defined this movement as an environmental
movement and pointed out that Gandhians played important roles in this movement.
“Gandhians” mean social reform activists who spend simple and ascetic lives by
following to the ideals of M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948) who was the key-person of Indian
Freedom movement, while working to attain a nonviolent society at the grass-roots
level.2 Gandhians include Bahuguna and Bhatt mentioned earlier. In addition, Shiva
(1994 (1988)) emphasized the feminist aspects of the Chipko Movement. Guha (1999
(1989)) insisted that this movement was in a tradition of peasant movements in the
region.
Subsequent literatures on the Chipko Movement since the 1990s tend to emphasize a
gap between various discourses regarding the movement (including the researches
written by the aforementioned scholars) and local residents’ actual recognitions. For
example, Mawdslay (1998) argued local residents opposed the misappropriation by
outsiders of their forest resources and hoped for stable livelihood by obtaining
economic benefits from forest-related industries (lumber and resins) in their community.
In addition, Rangan (2000) described how the Chipko Movement has become
“mythicized,” while Linkenbach (2007) highlights a gap between the “representations”
of the Chipko Movement and the “ground realities” in local communities. These
researches place emphasis on analyzing witnesses on the movement and have revealed
in hindsight that the movement also had negative impacts on local residents. In contrast
with researchers in the 1980s that described brilliant “success” of the movement,
literatures since the 1990s have revealed that in fact the movement has ended up in
“failure.”3
In relation with these previous research projects, the present author regards it as
inappropriate to simply evaluate the success or failure of the Chipko Movement because
it was a multifaceted and multilayered movement. The Chipko Movement spread out to
various areas in Uttarakhand and showed different aspects in various locations. In
addition, a lot of local residents acted in the movement as stakeholders. For this reason,
each participant must have realized an “aspect of the Chipko Movement” in mutually
different ways. Different expectations were placed on the Chipko Movement to solve
2 For Gandhians in India, see (Ishizaka 2008, 2010). On the role of Gandhians in the Chipko movement,see also (Shepard 1987; Weber 1988; James 2000).3 For the Chipko movement, see also (Mishra and Tripathi 1978; Kano 1997; Kanazawa 2000; Mazane2001; Tanabe 2002). See also the reports of the movement written by participants: (Bahuguna 1979, 2008;Bhatt 1980; Kishwar and Banita 1990; Pahari 1997; Dogra n. d. a, n. d. b).
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various problems, such as environment, resources, livelihood (economic aspect),
autonomy (political aspect) and problems regarding women. The demand to protect the
environment, or the demand for forest protection4 finally yielded results but this does
not mean other requests were denied.
In addition, generally speaking, even if a movement has yielded some substantive and
concrete outcomes, people often forget or intentionally become unconscious of such
outcomes over the course of time.
For example, over time and over generations, people seem to gradually forget the fact
that the Chipko Movement has radically altered the landscape of this region. Recently, I
had an opportunity by chance to watch a documentary program “The Axing of the
Himalayas,” which was produced and broadcast by British broadcasting station BBC in
1982. The program included a shot in which trees in this region were cut down with
chain saws and rapidly flow in sequence down a waterway on a mountain slope. The
waterway is connected to a river on the valley floor, and dozens of trees are stacked up
on the river surface. The lumber is sent to downstream towns by with the river current.
When this scene was shot (before 1981), this was simply a frequently seen spectacle in
this region, but nowadays it is completely belongs to the past. Now, nobody can see this
scenery anywhere in Uttarakhand. In fact, I have regularly visited a lot of locations in
Uttarakhand since 2003, but I have never heard trees cut down with chain saws nor have
ever seen logs flowing on a waterway or river, either. For the generations that were born
after the late 1980s, it would be difficult to understand that the movement has radically
altered the scenery in the region.
The fact that the movement radically changed regional landscape in this way would also
mean a change in local industrial structure or in people’s daily life, but few researchers
have worked on this aspect, so it is necessary for more researchers to engage in research
projects on this topic in the future.
4 Roughly speaking, environmental “protection” generally entails two different ways of thinking. Someenvironmentalists call for “preservation” of wilderness not developed by humans as it is, while others arearguing that humans should “conserve” the environment and resources in an appropriate manner. SeeKitou (1996) for more information, in particular historical background, on these concepts. However, inthe case of the Chipko Movement, the participants tried to protect forests that humans have been using fora long time, rather than intending to exclude human impacts as much as possible by enclosing a certaindistrict like a nature reserve. On the other hand, as the Chipko Movement has resulted in denying forestuse/conservation for commercial purposes, the neutral term forest “protection” is used in this paper.
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This paper is intended to make clear that an “environment-related” new network (human
network or information network) was formed as another substantive outcome of the
Chipko Movement. This outcome would not have been realized in the absence of the
movement. It is important for the local community because Uttarakhand has become
connected with India’s central political arena and the world through this network. At the
same time, it should be stressed that it was this network that served as background for
the Chipko Movement’s “success” as an environmental movement in 1981.
2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHIPKO MOVEMENT
First of all, the specific process of how the Chipko Movement has been developed will
be described while at the same time explaining the unique nonviolence tactics that
characterize the Chipko Movement.5
1) Birth of the Movement (in 1973) and “Hugging” Tactics
The Chipko Movement started in village Mandal, Chamoli district, Uttarakhand in 1973.
To refuse commercial deforestation by timber contractors coming over from another
district outside the Uttarakhand, village residents including many women used the
tactics to hug trees for the first time.
The facts of what actually happened in village Mandal are as follows. The lumber quota
that had been allocated to a local-based association every year was not approved for that
year. Instead, a sports goods manufacturer in Allahabad in the north India plain area
obtained the license to use the trees in the forest in Mandal. At the town meeting to
protest such a fact, the town meeting participants approved Chandi Prasad Bhatt’s
tactics to “hug” trees that were scheduled to be cut down. 6 When the timber
contractor’s staff entered into the forest in Mandal, local residents stood at the forefront
and risked their life to protect the forest in nonviolent manner, which prevented
deforestation. After that, the timber contractors came over several times, but they could
not cut trees because a lot of local residents tactically raised a protest by hugging each
tree scheduled to be cut down. Local residents accounted for a majority of these protest
participants, and female residents accounted for a very high percentage of these
5 The description of this section is based not only on the author’s interviews at the locality and but alsoon (Mishra and Tripathi 1978; Shiva and Bandyopadhyay 1986; Shepard 1987; Weber 1988; Dogra n. d. a,n. d. b; Guha 1999 (1989); Mawdslay 1998; James 2000; Kano 1997; Kanazawa 2000).6 However, some researchers insist that Gansham Sailani suggested the “hugging” approach for the firsttime, while some other researchers argue that this tactic was not suggested by either of them, and thatlocal female residents spontaneously took this approach.
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participants. Some political parties and student group members that arrived to give
supports also participated in residents’ tactics. The Uttar Pradesh government attempted
to mediate between the company and residents, but such an attempt was unsuccessful. It
is said that some staff in the Uttar Pradesh government’s forest department felt
sympathy to local residents’ campaign and provided detailed information to local
residents in advance.
Since then, this “hugging” approach was also employed one after another in other areas
in Uttarakhand.
2) Movement’s Expansion (1974-77) and “Foot March” Approach
After that time, the Chipko Movement spread out to many locations in Uttarakhand.
When timber contractors came to Reni village in 1974, it is said that a lot of women led
by Gaura Devi, a leader of the village’s women organization, kept an all-night vigil for
4 days at the logging area to prevent deforestation, while withstanding to the cold
weather as well as the contractors’ threats.
In addition, Sundarlal Bahuguna, a Gandhian, played leading roles in conducting the
“Askot-Arakot Foot March” in 1974. In this foot march, participants walked from Askot
village, a village in east Uttarakhand, to Arakot village, a village in west Uttarakhand in
order to disseminate the messages of the Chipko Movement to the whole of
Uttarakhand.7
The movement’s tactics included foot marches (and fasting as explained in the next
section) which had been often conducted by the leader of Indian Independence Freedom
Struggle, M. K. Gandhi, as well as by Gandhians after India’s independence, and such
tactics have taken root in Indian society. Foot marches are similar to an ordinary
political performance or demonstration, such as a political campaign or a demonstration
march. However, in a foot march, participants basically travel on foot without money
and therefore it is unique because the marchers ask for accommodation and meals at
villages on the route. It seems that a lot of people in India recognize foot marchers as
a part of their cultural traditions, such as missionary activities (preaching or mission
works) of religious leaders including Buddha or Shankara, or pilgrimages to sacred
places by ordinary religious believers or sannyasins (persons having renounced the
7 For this “Askot-Arakot Foot March”, see (Ishizaka 2007b).
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social life).8
In Bahuguna’s “Askot-Arakot Foot March,” participants started their travel on foot at
Askot, an village in east Uttarakhand in October 1974, walked for approximately 700
km and arrived at Arakot, a village in west Uttarakhand in November 1974.9 During
this pilgrimage, it should be noted that a lot of young participants were converted into
environmental activists in the latter stages. For example, participation in Bahuguna’s
foot march served as the catalyst of full-scale village-based social activities of the
following environmentalists: Dhoom Singh Negi (1938-), Shamsher Singh Bisht and the
late Kunwar Prasun who engaged in various environment protection activities in Henval
valley, Uttarakhand; Upmanyu, who pushed ahead with forest protection movement in a
north Indian state Himachal Pradesh; and Pandurang Hegde, who organized an
environmental movement in southern India. Bahuguna accompanied young people in
his foot march and provided them with “on the job training” as activists during the
process of living under the same roof. It should be noted that Hegde organized
local-based foot march session every year until today calling for environment
protection.
3) Evolution of the Movement (1978-81) and “Fasting” Tactics
In 1978, the Chipko Movement entered a new phase in Advani Village in western
Uttarakhand with the launch of a new slogan by the Advani Village residents. The new
slogan was “What do the forests bear? Land, water and fresh air!” This new slogan is
said to reflect a new forest/environment conservation awareness which is different from
the Chipko Movement’s previous mainstream slogan, “What do the forests bear? Resins,
timber and business.” In other words, in the past, movement participants insisted that
their local communities, not corporations outside the locality, had the right to cut down
trees and aimed at revitalizing local economy through promoting forest-related industry
(lumbers and resins), but the Advani Village residents called for abandoning local
community’s right to cut trees as well and insisted that forests should be preserved for
environment conservation purposes. The background to this change was the pitiful
conditions in the village, such as a shortage of fuel-use firewood or fodder, loss of top
soil and water shortages. The villagers thought that these pitiful conditions resulted
from the disappearance of the forests. The Advani village residents and Sundarlal
8 For the tradition of pilgrimage in India, see (Konishi and Miyamoto 1995; Saraswati 2001).9 As Gandhi’s famous Salt March (in 1930) took 25 days for approximately 390 km-long walking tour(Naito 1995: 282), Bahuguna’s foot march involves much longer travel distance than Gandhi’s SaltMarch.
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Bahuguna have come to find it necessary to prevent deforestation if they want to
improve people’s living standards.10
What happened in Advani Village is as follows (Dogra n. d.: 6-11). In early 1978, a
timber contractor, who already obtained the timber right in the village through auction,
threatened residents in the Advani Village in Henval valley of Tehri district, saying they
would face serious consequences if they blocked the logging operation. Therefore
they almost gave up doing nothing against deforestation. However, when a member of
the local gentry and school teacher, Dhoom Singh Negi came to the village and started a
sit-in protest, saying he would fast until the village residents started taking forest
protection action, village residents had the courage to combat the timber contractor.
Negi’s fasting only continued for five days because Bahuguna, who stole out of the
hospital, in which he had stayed due to his ill-health, suddenly visited the village and
persuaded Negi to stop fasting. But in this process a lot of village residents, in particular
female residents and children, made up their minds to fight for forest protection. On the
other hand, the timber contractor also started its efforts to buy several residents in order
to cut down a few trees secretly at one time. In response a son of the timber contractor’s
staff member started fasting, saying he would eat nothing until his father quit his job.
The situation took another turn on February 1, 1978. To stop village residents’ “illegal
act” to prevent tree-cutting, two trucks full of police officers came over to Advani
village at the request of the timber contractor. Approximately 500 Advani village
residents gathered in their forest and waited for police officers, yelling out the following
slogan.
The Himalaya will awake today,
The cruel axe will be chased away.
With the backing of police officers, the timber contractor instructed its workers to start
tree-cutting operations in the forest. However, when workers came near a tree, village
residents formed groups of 3-4 persons and surrounded and hugged the tree to prevent
tree-cutting. This action was repeated for about one hour, but police officers started to
pull away residents from trees and attempted to arrest them. However, village residents
persisted in a nonviolent manner, yelling out the following slogan.
10 For Bahuguna’s view on forest protection, see (Ishizaka 2007a).
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No matter what the attack on us,
Our hands will not rise in violence.
The policemen are our brothers,
Our fight is not with them.
Police officers understood the village residents’ message that they just intend to protect
trees and not cause disputes with police officers. Consequently the police officers were
unable to arrest the village residents. The police officers left the forest one hour later,
but some police officers communicated with village residents and gave their blessing on
the success of village residents. In this way, the forest in the Advani village was
successfully protected by efforts of village residents.
In the Advani village, a son started fasting to raise an objection to his father who had
gained economic benefits from deforestation. In addition, village residents remained
steadfast to protect their forest, even though many police officers intervened. As
particularly seen in these examples, it is clearly confirmed that village residents
gradually became aware of forest protection and raised their voices calling for
prohibiting deforestation. This is the genesis of local residents’ spontaneous movement
against deforestation.
After that, the Chipko Movement came to its climax in 1979. The Chipko Movement
gained most momentum from the statement of Bahuguna that he would “fast unto
death” at Badhiyargarh village in December 1979 to oppose deforestation. On the 11th
day after Bahuguna started fasting, he was arrested and went in detention. Since this
event further fueled the resistance of the village residents, more than 3,000 people
rushed into the village from neighboring villages. It is said that they continued
nonviolent resistance for 11 days until the contractor withdrew from the village.11
This fasting approach also seemed to remind people of religious or cultural traditions,
such as religious fasting or oath, rather than a simple hunger strike. It should be also
noted that Bahuguna employed this fasting approach at the time of the Anti-Tehri Dam
movement, with which he actively got involved.
4) The Conclusion of the Movement (April 1981)
Finally, the Chipko Movement reached a conclusion when Bahuguna’s assertion for
11 For Bahuguna’s fasts including this one in 1979 in the Chipko movement, see (Ishizaka 2008).
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“entirely prohibiting commercial deforestation of living trees at altitude of 1,000 m or
higher in Uttar Pradesh” was accepted by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981 and
became a reality.
It should be noted that India’s forest policies in general saw a turning point in the 1980s.
India’s forest policies had been long putting emphasis on production forestry, but these
policies have shifted their focus to forest conservation. It is said that this policy shift has
put a brake on the contraction, degradation and further devastation of forests (Nagamine
2002). In the background to this policy change, a series of forest protection movements
were conducted all over India from the 1970s to the 1980s. The Chipko Movement was
a representative case of these movements.
3. ENVIRONMENTALIST NETWORK PROVIDING CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND INDIA’S CENTRAL POLITICAL
ARENA
The preceding section discussed the process of the Chipko Movement. In this process,
the preceding section explains that a lot of environmentalists were fostered inside and
outside Uttarakhand through pilgrimages. These environment activists have a strong
sense of mutual bonds and actively share information by having discussion meetings at
regular intervals. This paper terms such connections an “environmentalist network.” In
the process of the Chipko Movement, this environmentalist network not only provides
connections among environment activists but also provides connections with India’s
central government politicians and the global-level environmentalist trends outside
India as well. These aspects are discussed in this section and the next section.
In India, people started to talk about the “environment” around 1972 or 1973. At that
time, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (hereinafter, referred to as “Indira”) made a famous
speech on India’s poverty and environmental issues (Gandhi 1984) by attending UN
environment conference held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972 in an attempt to bolster her
image as a politician seriously working on “environmental” issues to people inside and
outside India. (In the speech, she made clear that India was willing to grapple with
environmental problems although, at the same time, India had to push ahead with
“development” in order to solve serious poverty in the country. Her main claim was that
the developed countries had more responsibility to initiate environmental protection
than the developing countries including India.) In 1973, she launched Project Tiger as
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an environment policy for India. This project designates certain districts as tiger
protective zones in order to protect wild tigers. In this way, the fact that a politician that
cares about the “environment” served as the ultimate leader in the Indian central
political arena was fortunate for the Chipko Movement stakeholders.
In fact, even before Indira worked on “environment,” there was a similarity between her
stance and the Chipko Movement concept. There was an intersection between the
nationalization and private enterprise deterrent policies pushed strongly by Indira from
the end of the 1960s and he Chipko Movement’s efforts to lock out timber firms
(Rangan 2000: 163). With such a background, the Chipko Movement participants, in
particular Bahuguna who had also served as a politician in the Indian National Congress
(INC) until the 1960s, actively pursued relations with Indira.
In the middle of the 1970s when the Chipko Movement expanded to a lot of locations in
Uttarakhand, the Indian central political arena was undergoing a strong transition.
Indian people feel strong dissatisfaction with Indira’s government because it ruled the
nation with an iron fist, such as imposing a state of emergency nationwide. When the
INC of Indira lost in the general election, anti-Indira politicians headed by Morarji
Desai took over the reins of government. However, the return of Indira as prime
minister in 1980 exactly coincided with the success of the Chipko Movement
participants in making Indira accept their demand for “entirely prohibiting
deforestation.”
The Chipko Movement was able to reach an outcome of entirely prohibiting
deforestation in this way because the Chipko Movement participants framed12 of their
movement as an “environmental” movement and had a relationship with Indira, the top
leader in India’s central political arena.
This “environmental”-based connection between Uttarakhand and India’s central
political arena has continued. For example, at the time of the Anti-Tehri Dam movement
in the 1980s and 90s, this connection also enjoyed a connection with Maneka Gandhi,
who is the wife of Indira’s second-eldest son and acknowledges herself as an
12 As the constructivists’ studies on social movements have already shown, how to set up the frame of themovement often controlled the ups and down of the movement (Benford and Snow 2000; Sato 2000; andHongo 2007). In this context, “frame” means a common definition for participants, “world image” ormovement’s “self image” that would justify collective action or social movement and motivateparticipation in such action or movement. Conscious and strategic process to form it is called a “framing”process.
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“environmental” politician. Since the Chipko Movement, Uttarakhand environmental
activists and India’s central political arena have been connected by the environmentalist
network. This can be also called as an important outcome of the Chipko Movement.
4. ENVIRONMENTALIST NETWORK THAT CONNECTS LOCAL
COMMUNITIES AND THE WORLD
The environmentalist network created in the process of the Chipko Movement provides
connection not only to the Indian central political arena but also to the world.
In the early 1970s, environmentalism started gaining their powers on a worldwide scale.
In a sense, a rise in worldwide environmentalism had already resulted from Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring published in 1962, but E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful or
Arne Næss’s “Deep Ecology” in the early 1970s has triggered the advent of
environmentalism on a full-scale basis.
Bahuguna, one of the key persons of the Chipko Movement, also read and was
impressed with Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful and has emphasized the importance of
that book since that time. In fact, as the formation of Schumacher’s environmental
thinking was strongly influenced by Gandhian concepts (Weber 2004: 218-231), in a
sense, the fact that Bahuguna accepted Schumacher’s concept is a case of “reimport of
Gandhism”.
The global-level environmentalism learned by Bahuguna in this manner yielded
significant results in 1977 when Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889-1982), a forest
protection thinker and activist that enjoyed worldwide fame as “Man of the Trees,”
visited Uttarakhand.
St. Barbe Baker was born in England in 1889, joined the Colonial Office after taking
forest studies at Cambridge University, and was sent to Kenya in Africa as a forester in
1920. Having recognized that disappearance of forests is the most significant factor for
the expansion of the Sahara Desert, he worked with local residents to set up a forest
protection organization in 1922, which evolved into the “Men of Trees” and then
“International Tree Foundation”. Through these organizations, St. Barbe Baker worked
on forestation projects at many locations around the world.
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St. Barbe Baker’s forest protection theory belongs to the desiccation theories that have
been argued by foresters in British colonies since the inter-war period. Desiccation
theory is “a way of thinking that relates forest destruction with the trend of desiccated
land/climate resulting from decreased precipitation, higher temperature or degraded
water/soil conservation capacity, such as water source depletion, soil erosion or
increased flooding” (Mizuno 2006: 82). It also represents one of the important trends
that have brought about today’s environmentalism.13
In his third visit to India in 1977, St. Barbe Baker attended International Vegetarian
Union’s meeting held in Delhi. Bahuguna, who went to Delhi to meet with St. Barbe
Baker, was able to meet St. Barbe Baker on November 20 and, on site, brought about St.
Barbe Baker’s engagement to visit Uttarakhand with Bahuguna. (According to
Bahuguna, Bahuguna sent letters in advance to St. Barbe Baker in UK (Bahuguna
1989b: 43).) At that time, Bahuguna was 50 years old, while St. Barbe Baker was 88
years old. When his traveling companions worried about his trip to mountainous area, St.
Barbe Baker said to them, “I would die in the worst case. However, my life is already in
the bonus period (because I have been almost died twice in my lifetime). In addition, it
would be my great pleasure if I die for Himalaya. In this case, I would directly go to
heaven.” Because Bahuguna was not very well-known at that time, a person raised
doubts about Bahuguna and said to St. Barbe Baker “How long have you known this
man that intends to take you to Himalaya?” St. Barbe Baker answered “How long? I
have known him since my previous life.” (Bahuguna 1989a: 13-14)
These two men who made an immediate connection with each other traveled around for
11 days. They first went to Dehradun in western Uttarakhand. In Dehradun, St. Barbe
Baker particularly felt distress at depletion of rivers and said to media that it is
necessary to solve the river depletion problem and limestone mining problem. Then,
they visited Mussoorie, famous summer resort (“hill station”) in western Uttarakhand.
In Mussoorie, St. Barbe Baker was shocked to see mountain surfaces exposed due to
lost forests. He recommended that the eucalyptus trees planted there should be cut down
entirely because eucalyptus trees are appropriate for dried land or swampy areas but are
inappropriate for this location and would deprive other plants of too much nutrition. In
the old capital Srinagar on the bank of the Alaknanda River, one of headwaters of the
Ganga River, St. Barbe Baker delivered lecture at Garhwal University. At his lecture, he
13 See (Mizuno 2006) for more information on desiccation theories and environmentalism of foresters inBritish colonies since the inter-war period.
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mentioned China’s large-scale forestation program and laid great emphasis on necessity
of similar forestation programs in India. On their trip from Srinagar to Tehri, when they
went through a pine forest heavily damaged due to extraction of pine resin, St. Barbe
Baker moaned, saying “It’s crazy,” and showed his sympathy for the Chipko Movement
by hugging trees there. In addition, he also emphasized that large-scale forestation of
broadleaf trees would be best suitable for irrigation purposes. Then, he looked at
expanse of denuded land in the Henval valley and felt deep sadness to know the news
that the Advani village’s forest, the last forest in this area, had been auctioned and was
scheduled to be cut down. After that, he always picked up this matter in his lectures or
interviews and expressed a desire that the forest in the Advani village would be
protected from tree-cutting.
St. Barbe Baker visited Uttarakhand only for a few days, but the visit has yielded
considerable significance for the Chipko Movement because it provided a direct
connection between the Chipko Movement and the trend towards global-scale forest
protection. St. Barbe Baker’s visit and the dialogues with him enabled participants of
the Chipko Movement to know about the global trend for forest protection, while the
Chipko Movement got widely known on the global scale through St. Barbe Baker.14
In this way, the Chipko Movement incorporated global environmentalism concepts
through St. Barbe Baker and, at the same time, became open to the world.
5. TOWARD CREATING “ENVIRONMENTAL”-BASED NEW RELATIONSHIP
Recently, some environmental movement activists in India are actively seeking to set up
interregional networks or forming alliances with “environmentalist” civil servants or
journalists. For example, in southern India, the movement network “Save Western
Ghats” sweepingly started its operations in 2009 and forms a loose alliance among local
environmental conservation groups in the Western Ghats areas, approximately 1,600km
from Maharashtra where Mumbai is located to Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu
states. The present author attended its founding meeting held in Goa in February 2009
attended by various persons, including activists, researchers, civil servants, journalists,
lawyers, writers and artists, mutually discussed environmental problems in the Western
Ghats (such as biodiversity, water environment, mining problems, thermal power plant
construction problems and infrastructure development) from various perspectives, and
14 For Baker’s introduction on the Chipko movement, see (Baker 1981).
- 14 -
talked about specific approaches to launch and actualize their comprehensive
environment policies. One of key persons of this movement is Pandurang Hegde who
became an environment activist after joining Bahuguna’s foot march and then pushed
ahead with the Appiko Movement.
According to Hegde, environmental movements should change themselves in an
appropriate manner due to recent significant changes in Indian society. The Chipko
Movement in the 1970s and Appiko Movement in the 1980s enabled ordinary people
who still strongly felt a sense of unity or an affinity with the nature to naturally hug
trees to prevent deforestation. However, as they have been quickly losing these attitudes
recently, it is more difficult to mobilize ordinary people into such movements. In
addition, since a culture of consumption is infiltrating rural areas at a much quicker pace
than 20-30 years ago, although movement members tried to explain the importance of
virtuous poverty, people tend to regard virtuous poverty as unrealistic. In addition,
Hegde has also stated that their opponents that push ahead with environmental
destruction conceal themselves and are much more difficult to identify than in the past.
In this situation, Hegde is putting focus on a new strategy to identify the environment
movement’s “friends” and prima-facie “enemies” (such as bureaucrats, politicians,
media staff and intellectual persons), to form “connections” with friends and solve
problems through such connections. In this context, he aims at forming
“environment”-based interpersonal networks beyond the limits of organizations or
images and at forging these networks as a new political arena or new political entities in
order to realize environmental protection.15
When we look back from the current situation, these efforts can be seen to have started
at the time of the Chipko Movement. A complete prohibition of deforestation is not the
only outcome of the Chipko Movement, but in the process of the actual movement, the
Chipko Movement has brought about new personal connections for practically
promoting with environmental protection action as well as new strategies for creating
such new connections and which are handed over to later generations.
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