Gaura Devi and her contributions in Chipko Movement "EMPOWER IAS"

 

In news:

• Union HRD Minister along with senior women officers of the Ministry planted a sapling in memory of Gaura Devi, Chipko Activist in New Delhi.

 

Gaura Devi

• The movement was led by Gaura Devi, who saved their communal forest from clear felling, beginning a decade of Chipko direct actions by women throughout the Uttarakhand region.
• Gaura Devi led the first all-women action to save their community forest and mobilised the women of this region to protect their natural heritage.
• During the activist phase of Chipko in the1970s, the courage and vigilance of Uttarakhandi women saved many forests and earned them a hallowed place in the history of the global environmental movement.
• From this action, Chipko was to emerge as a peasant movement in defence of traditional forest rights, continuing a century-long tradition of resistance to state encroachment.

 

Her contributions in Chipko Movement

• Gaura Devi came to notice in 1974 when she was told that local loggers were cutting the trees.
• The men of Reni village had been tricked out of the village by news that the government was going to pay out compensation for land used by the army.
• She challenged the men to shoot her instead of cutting down the trees and she described the forest with her maika (mother’s house).
• They managed to halt their work by hugging the trees despite the abuse of the armed loggers.
• They kept guard of the trees that night and over the next three or four days other villages and villagers joined the action. The loggers left leaving the trees.

 

The Chipko Movement:

• The Chipko movement was a non-violent agitation in 1973.
• It is best remembered for the collective mobilisation of women for the cause of preserving forests, which also brought about a change in attitude regarding their own status in society.

 

Impact

• After this incident, the Uttar Pradesh Government established a committee of experts to investigate the issue of felling of trees, and the lumber company withdrew its men from Reni.
• The committee stated that the Reni forest was an ecologically sensitive area and that no trees should be felled there.
• Thereafter the government of Uttar Pradesh placed a 10-year ban on all tree-felling in an area of over 1150 km².