Chipko movement

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Joint meeting of movement participants from 1974 after 30 years

The Chipko Movement (Chipko Movement) was a movement of villagers - mostly women - in the Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal) region of India who opposed commercial deforestation and the resulting destruction of their livelihoods. The Chipko movement became known for its method of hugging trees to prevent them from being felled . The name of the movement comes from the Hindi word for "hold on" or "stay on". In 1987 the Chipko movement received the Right Livelihood Award .

history

In the 1970s there was massive deforestation in many places in the Indian Himalayas . In particular, the locally adapted Banj (Himalayan oak ) forests were cut down and replaced by more profitable, but non-local and non-adapted tree species. This led to a severe impairment of the ecosystem , erosion and flooding increased and impaired the livelihoods of the population.

Against this background, the first spontaneous Chipko campaign took place in the village of Mandal in the Alakananda Valley in April 1973 . A sporting goods company there had received a concession to use the forest, which the villagers had previously been denied when they wanted to obtain wood for the production of tools. Encouraged by a local NGO and led by the activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt , the local women went into the forest, formed a circle around the trees and prevented the loggers from cutting down the forest. In Reni Village, 1974, a women's group led by Mrs. Ganra Devi blocked logging groups and admonished them with the song: This forest is our mother's home, we will protect it with all our might .

In the following years the Chipko movement expanded further. Influential leaders of the Chipko movement were Sudesha Devi , Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bachhni Devi and Sunderlal Bahuguna . Even Vandana Shiva was involved in the 1970s in the movement.

In many places the Chipko movement succeeded in preventing deforestation. The protests of the Chipko movement in 1980 in Uttar Pradesh led to a 15-year ban by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to fell trees in the higher elevations of the Himalayas. A similar ban was later enacted in the states of Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh . Indira Gandhi believed that the Chipko movement showed the social conscience of India. In 1987 the Chipko movement received the Right Livelihood Award .

reception

Shiva sees the structure of the Chipko movement refuting the thesis that movements are initiated and maintained by outside, charismatic leaders. For them, it is essential that ordinary women ensure leadership that is anchored locally. According to Mies, the protest of the Chipko movement differs from earlier criticism of industrialism and progress in that the criticism is formulated by people who are at the lowest level of the global pyramid of exploitation and distribution and not just from the urban middle class of the industrialized countries.

precursor

Actions similar to those of the Chipko movement had already taken place in India when, around 1730, in the village of Khejarli in Rajasthan, the Bishnoi defended themselves against the felling of Khejri trees by soldiers of the Maharaja of Jodhpur . 363 villagers are said to have died. However, the protest was ultimately successful and the Maharaja issued a decree against deforestation.

literature

  • Thomas Weber: Hugging the Trees. Viking, New Delhi 1988, ISBN 0-670-82353-8 .
  • Ramachandra Guha: The unquiet woods. Ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya . Extended new edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2000, ISBN 0-520-22235-0 .
  • Haripriya Rangan: Of Myths and Movements. Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History . Verso, London et al. 2000, ISBN 1-85984-783-8 .
  • Ludmilla Tüting: people, trees, erosions. Clear cutting in the Himalayas. Ways out of destruction . Pieper, Löhrbach 1987, ISBN 3-925817-20-4 ( The green branch 120).
  • Maria Mies , Vandana Shiva : Ecofeminism, contributions to practice and theory. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 1995.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ed.: John Derek Hall Downing: Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Sage Publications, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7619-2688-7 , pp. 91f.
  2. ↑ Shiva: Erddemokratie, Rotpunktverlag 2006, ISBN 3-85869-327-8 , p. 108 f.
  3. ^ A b The Right Livelihood Award : The Chipko Movement
  4. ↑ Appreciation on the occasion of the Right Livelihood Award ceremony ( Memento from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Shiva: The freedom concept of the Chipko women in Mies, Shiva: Ökofeminismus, Rotpunktverlag, p. 325 f
  6. ↑ Mies: They long for what they destroy in: Mies, Shiva: Ökofeminismus, Rotpunktverlag, p. 224 f.
  7. ↑ Geseko of Lüpke: The Alternative. Ways and worldview of the alternative Nobel Prize. Riemann-Verlag 2003 ISBN 978-3570500316 (section: For the love of trees. Woman power in India and East Africa)