Community management Projects: Approach for managing Ecology
and conservation of the environment in the context of Rural
Communities
(Comparison between India’s Chipko Movement and Tanzania)
Sanskriti Jha, Mahak Goel, Baby Pal, Somya Darmora
Introduction
Community management projects, especially focused on the environment, involve
communities which are empowered to manage their ecosystem around them in ways
which are economically viable and sustainable for them. Local communities around the
world have faced a number of environmental changes, including climate change,
drought, population movement, and sometimes conflicts of their own. In turn these
things threaten the natural resource base for livelihood. Community environmental
management is a method for improving the sustainable and equitable governance of
natural resources at the local level. It involves participation of local communities, who
have realized that protecting forests around them is the way to a sustainable and
beneficial future.
The socio- economic development of a country gets affected by the environmental
management systems majorly in regard to resources. To oversee the development,
management systems need to be improved so that renewable resources are maintained
for the health of the country. Forests being the major resource of livelihood around the
world calls for a vigilant system to sustain the resources for a long time. Forests are a
major source of income and food for a large part of the world's population with them
being dependent on firewood for fuel and wood being the primary building material.
As environmental consciousness rises, the concept of a self-sufficient community has
become more compelling. Because of the diverse socio-cultural roots, communities
have a propensity to become less cohesive. To instill community spirit,
communal–based activities (including ecological initiatives) that encourage collective
living can be implemented for a healthier future. The definition of being self-sufficient
is being able to fulfill one’s own needs without help from others while the term
community means people living in one place, like a district or city and considered as a
whole (Oxford Advanced Dictionary, 2001). In developing nations, community forest
management is one of the most widely used conservation methods. It can also help to
mitigate climate change by reducing emission caused by deforestation and degradation.
Community forest management supporters say that it can mitigate the negative effects
of forest protection on local residents' well-being. The evidence regarding the influence
of community management on human well-being, on the other hand, is mixed with
research indicating both negative and positive effects.
Several scholars say that community based forest conservation may be a more
equitable means of achieving conservation goals of forest. It has been observed that the
problem with community based approach is not that it does not work, but the aspect that
it has not been tried enough. The success rate of such of community based
interventions are very limited because the communities and local government have not
been sufficiently empowered to work properly. For finding the interconnection between
ecosystem conservation and community action, in this paper, we are taking two case
studies that show how their community-driven actions have led to saving the ecosystem
of their areas and conserving their forests and environment irrespective of politics and
corruption. One is India’s Chipko Movement and another is a case study from Tanzania
over village forest management. We will be comparing these two case studies, the role
of their respective governance and thier sense of belongings.
For understanding community-driven environmental projects, analyzing India’s Chipko
Movement and its history are vital to comprehending the evolution of Indian
environmentalism. Chipko movement, also known as Chipko Andolan, was a nonviolent
social and ecological movement in India in the 1970s spearheaded by rural villagers,
with the goal of conserving trees and forests threatened by government-sponsored
logging. Chipko protestors' efforts resulted in long-term logging restrictions throughout
the state of Uttarakhand. The Chipko movement is widely regarded as being crucial in
the formation of Indian environmentalism, owing to its success and a variety of other
considerations. Since the last Chipko forest protests in the 1980s, the movement, its
messages, and its leaders have influenced other Chipko-style protests across South
and Southeast Asia, as well as in Europe, and have altered the face of environmental
and developmental policymaking as well as a political struggle in India. The Chipko
movement has become the most studied South Asian environmental social movement
as a result of these accomplishments and widely regarded as India's most influential
environmental movement..
Same as through Tanzania’s movement we are examining the story of Tanzanian Village
Forest Reserves and the reasons given for their success and the problem with village
government and how social movements emerge from spatially-embedded power
relations and social contexts.
Case Study: Chipko movement
The term chipko means to hug or embrace, which was a method of protest to prevent the tree
from falling by embracing the tree in the himalayan region of uttarakhand in 1973.
Not many people know but the Bishnoi people of rajasthan are the first ones to be credited to
use chipko approach in defense of scared khejari tree in 1730, when the Maharaja of Jodhpur
sent axemen to collect wood to fire kilns at the Mehrangarh Fort, but the axeman failed to listen
the protesters until a local women, Amrita devi wrapped her body to embrace the tree and
refused to move, and thus causing her to loose her live. Devi’s actions inspired other members
of community to do the same, leading 363 lives being lost, causing maharaja to declare that no
more bishnoi trees, ever be cut further. But the chipko’s origin cannot be explained by the
Bishnoi incident, since the similarities with Bishnoi movement may only be coincidental given
the large gap in both space and time.
The Bishnoi community was not the only one to see the massive exploitation of forests,
Uttarakhand was also a victim of this. The forests which traditionally belonged to villages near
them were being exploited by the public and private companies which led to the creation of
dasholi gram swarajya mandal (DGSM) whose aim was to organize village labourers and
craftsmen to compete with private (outside) contractors and wholesalers’. For this DGSM
requested communal access of ten ash trees in Chamoli for their local industry, but the
government denied this request while giving Symonds Company permission to fell 300 trees for
the production of tennis rackets. This denial of access, combined with the existing
discontentment with forest policies, sparked massive protests throughout the district, thus in
March of 1973, they were successfully blocked by villagers. But the company's permit was
quickly transferred and were allotted forests near Phata Rampur. However, protesters were
successful in chasing them away from there even, alongwith obtaining a logging permit for
themselves. This created a clash within the DGSS wherein men wanted cash from commercial
forest products while women wanted to conserve the forest as local life-support systems. So
during the beginning, the men played a foremost role but there was a dramatic shift in march
1974 when the men of Reni village were sent to Chamoli to receive compensation for the 1962
war with China. Taking the advantage of their absence, timber contractors arrived at Reni forest,
but were witnessed by a small girl, who informed Gaura Devi, President of a local women’s
organization and She organised thirty women to hug the trees and prevent them from being
felled.
This gained a lot of media attention and the increasing public concern led to the creation of the
Reni Investigation Committee(RIC), an agency consisting of both state officials and local
representatives, which was investigating the impacts of deforestation and found that
deforestation was a major cause of flood, unemployment and various economic promblems in
mountain valley. Based on this report,the UP state government Banned commercial logging of
trees in 1200 sq mi area around River Alaknanda for the following decade. And following this,
there were many chipko inspired movements throughout India, which led to in 1980, the
national Forest Conservation Act being passed ,prohibiting forests above 1,000 metres from
being felled for the next 15 years, and this was renewed in 1987.
Was it a Feminist Movement?
The first thing that attracted the talk, was the presence of large number of women that led to
some analyst claiming it was a women’s movement. Was it a women's movement?
There were truly a mix of opinions, some believed, like bahuguna, the real leaders are the
women, and men were just runners and messengers to the movement. While on the other hand
majority of authors, like Guha claimed that although women hugged trees because the men of
Reni had been tricked into going to Chamoli to receive compensation, But still both men and
women contributed to chipko and so it "can hardly be said to constitute a women's movement,
and was supported by Bandyopadhyay who asserts that none of the women who participated
even claims that it was a women’s movement, but it just happened quite spontaneously due to
the absence of men, affirmed by Gaura devi. Thus women not claim the exclusivity of the female
role, but are proud of their importance. Therefore, the movement definitely helped women gain
empowerment & used their newly gained confidence to demand “a share in decision-making
process at the community level”. Therefore, the women activists of the Chipko movement have
considered that the movement has strengthened itself from gender collaboration against
inappropriate practice prevailing in forest, and even Women have played significant roles in the
movement, just as their male counterparts. Thus, there is no reason for seeing the Chipko
movement as based on gender conflicts.
policies/politics
The first issue that comes to mind is why this tragedy had to happen in the first place; weren't
there adequate government forest rules in place prior to the chipko movement? In the 150 years
between the commencement of British colonisation and the start of Chipko protests in the
1970s, there were already established forest policies, but they did not see any meaningful
change. since during period, the forests of Uttarakhand were continually exploited in the name
of external growth-first by british empire, which focused on extracting forest products for
trade and expanding transit networks to facilitate this trade. They also intended to build
large tea plantations,which led to the clearing of forests.
Similarly after the independence too, working toward national development, stability, and
progress, The demand for raw forest materials increased and at the same time that the
first Five-Year Plan was approved, which gave exclusive rights to state government to make
laws regarding forest and the state was often called upon to produce raw materials needed
for industrial processing and thus the state forest departments prioritized natural resource
extraction in order to achieve short-term economic gains concurrent with national
development efforts. Thus, these forest policies were often just seen as obstacles to be
overcomed, since forest policies does not dictate the forest practices and use, but rather
mediates the ways in which the forest are being accessed at least locally only causing harm
to local people,and the enviorment.
The next question that pops up, is the people who initiated the chipko movement concerned
just about the environment and were ecologically noble savages? According to the
researches no, because these forest villagers even have a damaging effect in the area
prior to the arrival of Europeans which goes against the mass-produced stereotype of
indigenous people living in harmony with nature. But if we look in a broader perspective these
are just behaving naturally as humans who have a close material relationship to the forests for
fuel and fodder, this deforestation would threaten their forest-dependent livelihood as one
nature. These people behaved as humans and thus they had a close material relationship to the
forests for fuel and fodder and it was primarily for this reason that Chipko activists did not want
outsiders to chop down their trees.
Case Study: Tanzania
The origin from Duru-Haitemba Forest
The story of Tanzanian village forest that begun in the Duru-Haitamba forest in Babati district
could be an inspiration for many community based reservation. It has become a model for new
series of upcoming village forest reserve. With the help of tolerant and influential forestry officers
solutions were explored. These enabled the villagers to survey forest in order to monitor its
resources. Several actions were taken that included closing access of certain parts of forests to
forbidding charcoal burning. Policies were formulated by village councils that led to changes in
the forest which was later observed by the district forest officers after they revisited.It is
argued that the Daru-Haitemba forest reserve worked only because the villagers were
empowered as managers rather than being treated as users.
Weakness of village governance - Conflict between farmers & herders
There has been a widespread sense of resentment among the farmers and herders. And
these conflicts get fuelled due to the inability of poor farmers to defend their farms in court
against the wealthy cattle keeper. The resentment among the farmers was towards the
wealth and the power that those cattle owners possessed. They had the power to bribe
village leaders and turn court decisions into their own advantage. There was a lot of
incompetence of police and the courts due to bribery in the country. There are multiple such
stories here that demonstrate the predatory relationship between the district government
and the villages under its jurisdiction.
This Tanzanian village is also troubled with taxes as multiple villagers complained that they
have not received any benefits from these taxes. As the taxes were not spent on local
services. There was also a visible lack of accountability and transparency because there
was no clear means of knowing how much money was raised nor was their any systematic
way of informing people about tax money available for government committees to spend.
Comparison
Conclusion
