Unheeded Warning: The Village Where the Chipko Movement Began

Years ago, I wanted to write a children's book about the Chipko movement, an astonishing story of love and clarity. In the story, 18th century people of the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan in northern India, led by their women, hugged their trees to prevent them from being cut down, because they knew the value of that forest and didn't want it to be sacrificed to a king's ignorant ambition.

Deborah Lee Rose beat me to it with her beautiful book, The People Who Hugged the Trees, so I never completed that project, but the story remains vivid in my mind.

In the 1970's, a woman named Gaura Devi in the area now known as Uttarakhand brought the ancient story to life in her own village to protest the cutting of trees by contractors. The 45th anniversary Google doodle commemorating that event includes a soundbyte history. The movement is credited with the passing of the Indian Forestry Act of 1980 and other measures related to biodiversity and conservation.

As history marches on, Gaura Devi's Uttarakhand, like much of the lower Himalayan region, is threatened by fast-melting glaciers. No one's been listening to local activists, or paying attantion to the findings of the special committee ordered by the Supreme Court of India after the last (2013) severe floods. Excert from the CNN report:

Ravi Chopra, director of the People's Science Institute, was part of that committee and advised the government against building back-to-back dams in the Alaknanda-Bhagirathi basin, high in the Himalayas. They discovered that the run of the river dams, which operate by digging large tunnels into the side of the mountain, actually "weakened the mountain by introducing fractures and fissures," increasing the risk of landslides.

Chopra said nothing much came of the committee's recommendations. Dam building continued. And now another Earth Day is behind us. Time will keep moving and so will the planet. Yes, planting trees is a good thing, but it's not enough.