On June 5, 1972, when concern for the environment was neither popular nor a global priority, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment opened in Stockholm, Sweden. The conference, attended by 122 countries, set the world on a new path and led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The road to the historic conference, charged with providing guidelines for action by national governments and international organizations, was anything but smooth. Neocolonists such as Britain, France and Italy, fearful that their former colonies would demand reparations for their past environmental sins, conspired to thwart the conference. For their part, the former colonies were understandably wary of the restrictive regulations the West was likely to impose on them, hampering their efforts at economic and social development.
Initially skeptical of the need for a global environmental programme, America jumped on the bandwagon after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill devastated the California coast. The disaster provided American politicians with an opportunity to channel youth anger caused by anti-Vietnam War protests toward environmental protection. On April 22, 1970 (observed today as Earth Day), nearly 20 million Americans took to the streets across the country, protesting environmentally harmful industrial practices.
Among the countries that made a big impression at the 1972 conference was China, which successfully protested the section of the Stockholm Declaration linking large population sizes with environmental degradation; India, whose then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave a powerful speech about the hypocrisy of the West, mocked our country’s poverty while warning us against using its own methods to alleviate poverty.
Meanwhile, in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas, which had been steadily eroding as a result of unrestrained logging by government-approved contractors, environmental awareness was at an all-time high in the wake of the Alaknanda River floods of 1970. From 1973 onwards, people in the region began organizing organized protests against commercial logging operations. Matters came to a head on March 25, 1974, when the women of the village stopped loggers who had arrived to start cutting down 2,500 trees near the village of Chamoli Gopeshwar, hugging the trees and refusing to let go. The loggers left helpless, and the Chipko movement, named after the women’s unique style of protest, was born. In 1980, the Indira Gandhi government imposed a ban on logging in the Himalayas for 15 years.
Among those who were greatly inspired by the Chipko movement was Panduranga Hegde, a chartered accountant from Sirsi, Uttara Kannada. After a few years in accounting, Hegde turned to where his heart truly lay and enrolled at the Delhi School of Social Work. There he first met one of the leaders of the Chipko movement, the indefatigable Sunderlal Bahuguna. In the early 1980s, alarmed by rampant deforestation in the hills of the Western Ghats surrounding his birthplace, Hegde returned to Sirsi, where he began working to educate and empower people to take responsibility for their forests.
In September 1983, the Karnataka Forest Department started felling trees in the Kalasi forest in Sirsi taluk. As news spread like wildfire, people from villages like Gobigad and Silakni rallied around Hegde. On September 8, a group of 160 people walked through 8 km of leech-infested monsoon forest to a logging site, fell onto trees, hugged them tightly and generated the abiku (‘hug’ in Kannada) movement. Aided by unlimited support from the media and the inherent appeal of a noble, non-violent tree-hugging campaign, Appiko captured the public’s imagination. In 1990, the state government imposed a blanket ban on felling of green trees within natural forests.
(Rupa Pai is a writer who has had a long-lasting love affair with her hometown of Bengaluru)
