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This article provides information about the importance of ecological movement and its survival:
The contemporary period is characterised by the emergence of ecology movements in all parts of the world which are attempting to redesign the pattern and extent of natural resource utilisation to ensure social equality and ecological sustainability.
Image Courtesy : ecology.iww.org/images/UtahPhillips1.jpg
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Ecology movements emerging from conflicts over natural resources and the people’s right to survival are spreading in regions like the Indian sub-continent where most natural resources are already being utilised to fulfill the basic survival needs of a large majority of people.
The introduction of resource and energy- intensive production technologies under such conditions lead to economic growth for a small minority while at the same time undermines the material basis for the survival of the large majority. In this way, ecology movements have questioned the validity of the dominant concepts and indicators of development.
Developing world ecology movements, which resist the destruction caused by State managed market development, are challenging the concepts of politics and economies as defined within the narrow confines of the market. They reveal that there is a notion of democracy, which is wider and deeper than the market democracy.
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This is the ecological concept of democracy of all life based on the recognition of the right to life of non-human nature and all segments of human society, including those large numbers which do not and cannot produce and consume within the market, and who are treated as dispensable in the logic of the market. The developing world ecology movements highlight the way in which issues of ecology and equity, sustainability and justice are intimately linked to one another.
The intensity and range of ecology movements in independent India have continuously widened as predatory exploitation of natural resources to feed the process of development had increased in extent and intensity. This process has been characterised by the massive expansion of energy and resource-intensive industrial activity and major development projects like large dams, forest exploitation, mining and energy intensive agriculture.
Among the various ecology movements in India, the “Chipko Movement” (embrace the trees to oppose Falling) is the most well known. It began as a movement of the hill people in the State of Uttrakhand to save the forest resources from exploitation by contractors from outside. It later evolved into an ecological movement that was aimed at the maintenance of the ecological stability of the major upland watersheds in India.
A spontaneous people’s response to save vital forest resources was seen in Jharkhand area, the one in Bihar-Orissa border region as well as in Bastar areas of Madhya Pradesh where there were attempts to convert the mixed natural forests into plantations of commercial tree species, to the complete detriment of the tribal people.
Inspired by the Chipko Movement, the “Appiko movement” in the Himalayas is actively involved in stopping illegal over-felling of forests and in replanting forest lands with multipurpose broad leaved tree species. In the Aravalli Hills of Rajasthan there has been a massive programme of tree planting to give employment to those hands which were hitherto engaged in felling of trees.
The exploitation of mineral resources, in particular, the open-cast mining in the sensitive watersheds of the Himalayas, the Western Ghats and Central India have also resulted in a great deal of environmental damage. As a consequence, environmental movements have come up in these regions to oppose the reckless mining operations. Most successful among them is the movement against limestone quarrying in the Doon Valley. Large river valley projects, which are coming up in India at a very rapid pace, is another group of development projects against which people have organised ecology movements.
The large scale submersion of forest and agricultural lands, a prerequisite for the large river valley projects, always takes a heavy toll of dense forest and the best food growing lands. These have usually been the material basis for survival of a large number of people in India, especially tribal people. The ecological movement against the Tehri high dam in the Uttarakhand Himalaya exposes the possible threat to people living both above and below the dam site through large-scale destabilisation of land by seepage and strong seismic movements that could be induced by impoundment.