The forests of India are the unique resources for the survival of the rural people of India which were exploited greatly for commerce and industry. With the advent of British Raj (Colonial Rule) conflicts broke out between rural population and the Forest Service because the village systems of resource use broke down and forest degradation accelerated rapidly. The Chipko Movement, founded in 1973 was the outcome of this conflict, started with an objective to conserve forest in the Himalayas.
Reserved Forests which ordinarily covered the half of the total area of the village had been foreseen wherever timber was produced profitably or where the forest had a protective function. Gandhiji characterized the newly established forest reserves as a symbol of oppression.
The significance of forests on environment and society is first recognized primarily by the women in India when the deforestation was taking place in the Himalayan Mountains of India where the forests are logged excessively. The Chipko Movement was a revolutionary step adopted to save Himalayan ecology and society from deforestation. Infact, besides environmental movement it was a women’s movement where a women played a vital role within the Chipko Movement against the State for more promising logging and forestry policies so that both the Himalayan environment and society are protected.
Devoid of good forests in England, the British realized the commercial value of Indian Forests and attempted to hold rigid control over them. This paved the beginning for a systematic forest policy of 1855.
During 1856, the Forest Department was established and the first Forest Act was legislated under the guidance of Dietrich Brandis, a German Botanist, the first Inspector General of Forests. In 1865, the first Act for the regulation of forests was passed. It gave the power to the government to declare all lands covered with trees and or brushwood as government forest and to make rules to manage them.
The Act of 1865 was replaced by a more comprehensive Indian Forest Act of 1878 which divided forests into protected forests, reserved forests and village forests. Several restrictions were imposed upon the people’s rights over the forest land and produce in the protected and reserved forests.
The government declared its forest policy by a resolution on 19th October, 1894 which stressed on State control over forests and the need to exploit forests for augmenting state revenue. As a step forward, the Forest department passed an order to excavate the complete forest land area, mainly by cutting down the ash trees, to utilise the same for commercial purposes. Infact, the state managed Forest Department used the most of the forests for timber showing no attention towards the employment and welfare of the local people and towards serious ecological damage arising out of such deforestation. In Bihar and Gujarat, these movements arose to revolt against conversion of natural forests to teak plantations, a move which deprived the indigenous forest-dwelling Adivasi people of their only resource base.
After independence, the Constitution of India adopted a number of provisions from the Government of India Act of 1935 and retained forest as a state subject in the 7th schedule. The National Forest Policy Resolution adopted by the government in 1952 stressed that the forest policy shall be on national needs but not on commerce, industry and revenue. For the first time, the resolution highlighted on the ecological and social aspects of forest management. Further, the commission recommended that the revised National Forest Policy be formulated basing on the important needs of the country, the forest lands be bifurcated into protection forests, production forests and social forests giving high priority to production forests and least to social forests, with the object that the forest management be that each hectare of forest land shall be in a position to yield a net income of many more times than is being obtained at present. For this purpose it further recommended to the revision of all India Forest Acts.
In 1985, the Forest Department was shifted from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Environment and Forests thereby changing the emphasis from revenue to environmental concerns. In December, 1988, the Parliament passed a new forest policy resolution called the National Forest Policy, 1988 rejecting the recommendations of the National Commission and emphasizing on the welfare of the adivasis and other forest dwelling communities. As per this policy, the survival of adivasis and other forest dwelling communities revolves within and near the forests which is to be fully protected.
In 1994, the Ministry of Environment and Forests prepared a draft of the new bill called the Conservation of Forests and Natural Eco-Systems Bill, 1994 to replace the Indian Forests Act, 1927 which generated a lot of debate on it.
- Preamble has been expanded to include the objectives of meeting the basic needs of the people, especially fuel-wood, fodder and small timber for rural and tribal people and maintaining the intrinsic relationship between forests and the tribal and other poor people living in and around forests by protecting their customary rights and concessions on forests as laid down in the National Forest Policy Resolutions 1998.
- In place of Forest Settlement Officer, Forest Settlement Board has been suggested with its composition and thereafter Forest Settlement Board has replaced the Forest Settlement Officer.
- References to practice of Shifting Cultivation in Chapter 11 on Reserved Forests, Chapter -III on Protected Forest and Chapter V on the Conservation of Forest and Lands, not being the Property of Government has been deleted and a separate Chapter 4A on Shifting Cultivation has been added.
- Rules for the publication of notice to constitute a Reserved Forest or a protected Forest have been explained in detail.
- Procedure of formation of Village Forests, and in particular constitution of Village Forests committees has been elaborated in detail and their powers expanded.
- The powers of management have been given to the State Forest Committee instead of the Forest Officer.
- The constitution of Urban Tree Authority has been changed and the formation of Urban Forest Committees has been suggested.
- The constitution of Central Forest Policy and Law Monitoring Committee has been amended. A new committee called State Forest Policy and Law Monitoring Committee (in brief Central Forest committee) has been suggested and the powers Forest Officers have been made subject the control of State Forest Committee.
- New Committees called District Forest Committee have been suggested at the District level and the major decisions relating to the forest in the District have been made subject to their sanction.
All these and other amendments have been suggested to encourage the preservation and development of the forest more participatory and effective and to achieve the main objective of Forest Policy Resolution 1988 of creating a massive people’s movement with the involvement of women, for achieving these objectives and to minimize pressure on existing forest.
Environmental deterioration and the fall of the great forests increased the natural disasters.
The areas of conflict between the forest departments and tribals and other forest dwelling communities living within and near forests are many. Encroachments on forest lands where a number of lands under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department are in actual possession of the people whose occupancy was being regularized from time to time in different states. But in some areas the orders of regularization are not properly implemented by the forest departments because they were reluctant to part with the forest lands under their jurisdiction. Attempts to evict tribal households from forests and the removal of encroachments resulted into severe and violent clashes between the people, police and forest officials. It was an organization worked against logging of forests and the state decision to allocate forest resources to a sporting good factory at the expense of the local enterprise. People in the plains are alone eligible for the products of our forests. Their struggle for survival gave them the management of their forests. After multiple bans had been ordered on green felling in various regional forests, in 1980′s this movement targeted a great victory when Smt. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, ordered a complete fifteen year ban on cutting down of trees above 1000 meters in the Himalayan forests which was further extended to the forests of Western Ghats and Vindhyas. The women participation in the Chipko Movement not only protected the ecology and environment but also developed the world’s consciousness on environmental aspects.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are strong supporters of Chipko Movements are increasing their influence on global and national forest policy. The growth of the modern environmental movements, following Stockholm Conference in 1973 observed many NGOs involving in high spirits against logging in natural forests, large scale dam construction, the use of pesticides and intensive forest management.
Infact, The 1992 Earth Summit and the subsequent spate of forest initiatives like Intergovernmental panel of Forests, World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development regional criteria and indicator initiatives all provided fora for NGOs to engage with governments and intergovernmental bodies.
The movement of Chipko Movement was carried on and became successful mainly through Public Interest Litigations.
Chipko movement has an active reforestation programs stressing on ecological dependency of the local people upon the forests and the need to sustain the forest environment.
In one of the earliest re-evaluations of India’s forest policy, the Government of India initiated a massive, nationwide Social Forestry Program (SFO) in 1976 in an attempt to reconcile industrial forestry and the basic, forest-related needs of the rural communities. Infact, social forestry was a path to introduce a community-extension orientation into State Forest Departments that adopted this program because States own their respective forest lands exercising considerable jurisdiction in terms of forest management approach though the nature of execution and supervision varied considerably from State to State. The State Forest Departments, in its attempt to involve local communities in such social forestry programs, worked with the local government units (LGUs) or more particularly with the gram panchayats because it is necessary for the possible coordination of local needs with the state forest management.
The year 1970 is the beginning for the national government and various states towards experimenting with community-oriented approaches from which the Joint Forest Management evolved as a policy-based program to establish management partnerships among local forest dependent communities and the State for the sustainable management and joint benefit sharing of public forest lands. Realising the importance of Joint Forestry in response to a growing enlightenment among the public for effective protection of forests in the country, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, decided to adopt the policy of Joint Forest Management through establishment of Joint Forest Management Monitoring Cell. Further, on 1st June, 1999 the secretary of Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a circular to all the States and Union Territories Forest Secretaries stressing the need of participation of village communities and voluntary agencies towards reforestation of degraded forest lands and also laid guidelines to provide usufructuary benefit to the village communities towards such participation in the afforestation programmes.
Each confrontation of Chipko Movement was non-violent and successful. Infact, its expansion developed two sections within Chipko – one towards protection of existing forests from deforestation and the other for promoting afforestation and development of sustainable village production systems based on forests and agroforestry.
CHIPKO MOVEMENT DEMANDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS :
The local hill people must be actively involved and consulted in any work related with the forests.
- The daily needs of the forest dwellers in the region should be duly evaluated and they should accordingly be given reasonable rights over the forest resources, Forests must be surveyed properly in order to know their exact condition as well as to evaluate the rights of the natives.
Again, the local must be involved and encouraged to take up forest-farming (agro-forestry).
- Commercial forest felling is completely banned not only in the Alaknanda basin from where the Chipko movement was started but in the whole Central Himalaya.
Is Chipko a movement rooted in economic conflicts over mountain forests or guided by ideas of deep ecology?
As a women’s movement, Chipko Movement is still continuing to fight for proper forestry policies.
After the transfer of forests from State list to Concurrent list, the Government of India promulgated the Forest (Conservation) Ordinance on 25th October, 1980 prohibiting the State Governments from allowing the use of forest lands for any other purpose without the approval of the Central Government. Article 48A is a directive principle of the State which states that the “State shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country”. With the advent of Independence and being well versed with the importance of forests on ecology and society due to various environmental protection movements like Chipko Movement ‘The Indian National Forests Policy’ was formulated which highlighted that minimum of 33.3% of the total land should come under forests.
Is the Chipko Movement Towards Forest Appraisal
The 1910 Fire was the largest forest fire in American history, perhaps in the history of the world. Miles of trees – sturdy, forest giants – were laid prone… In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt established The United States Forest Service to manage the national forests with the goal of providing the county with a consistent supply of quality water and timer. It will be centuries before a normal forest is restored.