Complain about Diwali crackers, Delhi’s smog and the lungs of infants, and a roomful of people will nod along. But if you talk about saving trees in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, or Dehradun, that consensus will come apart. You will be accused of being a wooly eyed romantic or just impractical. But whether you like it or not, urban Chipko movements are mushrooming across India. And they are hashtagging their trees against the onslaught of thoughtless sarkari development planners.
Just in case news outside of Mumbai and Delhi isn’t reaching you, I’d like to tell you about the #SaveMollem campaign that is currently underway in Goa. The same Goa most of us fantasise about on a monthly basis, for its beautiful nature, pristine beaches (you’ll find them beyond tourist-infested Calangute) and wild nightlife, is currently fighting for its forests. Yes, it is a fun party spot. But think of it bereft of tens of thousands of trees. Not so enticing anymore, maybe?
But that’s the price Goans are being made to pay for ‘development’, namely the expansion of the National Highway NH-4A into four lanes, double-tracking of the railway line, and the laying of 400 kV transmission line. For these, one lakh trees will be cut, 59,000 of them in Goa. This will lead to a total loss of 170 hectares of protected forest land in Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park. Interestingly, no cumulative impact assessment was done for the projects. Objections raised in the Environment Impact Assessment reports for the projects were brushed aside on the basis of “mitigation measures” suggested by the Chief Wildlife Warden.
Goans, however, are not taking this silently. In a unique protest, 5,000 locals gathered at Chandol village in the Western Ghats. They danced, sang for their forests, and performed Kunbi (a local folk dance) near the railway line which the government has proposed to work on. But even this colourful protest in the middle of a pandemic seems to have failed to grab India’s attention. After all, no celebrities joined these protests as they did for Mumbai’s Aarey forest.
Funnily, one of the arguments in defence of the proposed projects is that it will actually reduce damage to the environment. Goa environment minister Nilesh Cabral said that the double-lining of railways will help trains pass through the Western Ghats swiftly. According to him, trains travel through the region at 40 kmph burning more fossil fuel than necessary.
But whether it is to protect the elephant corridor in Dehradun against the Jolly Grant airport, or Aarey forests campaign in Mumbai, or Gurgaon residents walking on Sundays to save the remaining Aravalis, the urban Chipkos are the new environmental warriors, armed with their hashtags and smartphones.
Also read: Goa is Fun’s Own Country. But it doesn’t need ‘super-spreader’ Sunburn festival
Not in the name of development
‘It’s necessary for development’ — this is the basic crux of most arguments in favour of huge infrastructure projects that are said to draw the ire of the ‘Leftist’ and ‘activist’ types.
However, it is never clear why we haven’t learnt lessons from the past in how we think of ‘development’. Young people are not against development. But they have anyway inherited such shrinking biodiversity from the previous generation that they just want planners to think innovatively and come up with solutions that don’t rob them of even that.
There’s a cost that we, as a planet, bear every time a mountain is erased, a sea encroached upon, or a forest destroyed. These costs don’t only come in the form of loss of ecological biodiversity, animal habitat, displacement of indigenous communities, and can also be weighed monetarily.
According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2020, climate change cost India almost $37 billion and over 2,000 lives in 2018 alone — the highest death toll of this kind in the world that year. The report also claims India will lose 5.8 per cent of its working hours to heatwaves by 2030.
If you still say pro-environmental conservation policies are necessarily anti-development, then the problem is in the outdated engineering and management degrees that continue to teach business-as-usual ways of thinking. In case you think climate change is a hoax, then you might as well be the General Secretary of the Flat Earthers Club — a person one shouldn’t waste time arguing with.
The definition of the word ‘development’ has to be more inclusive and holistic.
Also read: Environment is the most under-reported disaster of Narendra Modi government
Many more Chipkos
A ‘second Chipko Movement‘ seems to have saved about 10,000 trees and 243 acres of forest land with a critical elephant corridor, which Uttarakhand was ready to sacrifice for the expansion of Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport. The Centre has directed the Uttarakhand Government to find alternate land for the expansion. People here reclaimed the women-led Chipko movement pioneered by the state of Uttarakhand, and tied threads around trees, taking vows to save them. The ‘Save Thano‘ protesters also took their protest out of the forest to the Jolly Grant Airport, for the authorities to hear them loud and clear.
After a long fight to save what is left in the Aarey Forest, the Save Aarey movement in Mumbai has compelled the Maharashtra Government to move the proposed metro shed to Kanjurmarg, away from Mumbai’s last green belt.
Residents in Gurgaon had also started their own Chipko movement in 2018 to prevent deforestation in the Aravalli ranges, forcing the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to look for alternative routes and save the Aravalli Biodiversity Park. These and many more movements and campaigns prove that if we come together, movements like #SaveMollem can push authorities to go back to the drawing board, weigh alternatives, and come up with plans that are more inclusive and sustainable.
The anger of third world countries to be environmentally sensitive when the Western world rampantly cuts forests and dumping waste for its own industrial revolution is understandable. This is what gets Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s goat — why should Brazil halt development because the world relies on the Amazon forest? Why did they cut their forests left, right and centre, preventing Brazil from accessing their own resources in the Amazon? He has termed this ‘radical environmentalism’.
But the mistakes of the past need not be repeated. There are many indigenous people fighting against Bolsonaro’s attacks on their forests. Bolsonaro’s definition of development is linear, as is most of ours.
Surely, Delhi’s smog cover, if not other overwhelming evidence, is enough for India to realise this. And surely, you don’t just want to agree about the problem, you also want to be part of the solution.
Views are personal.