ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS

Environmental movements are mobilizations of people with the goal of protecting the environment or of fighting against the practices which are leading to any type of environmental degradation. In India they also refer to people's struggle to hold their traditional right to protect their natural habitats and resources. In economic terms, they involve a new political struggle for safeguarding the interests and survival of the poor, and the marginalized including women, tribals and poor peasants whose economic and political interests are closely associated with nature. In the past these movements have often resulted from a deep agrarian unrest but their nature has changed considerably. There has been a rapid growth of forest-based industries in the post-independence period such as paper, plywood, rubber, soap, etc.

This resulted in giving preference to large scale plantation of fast growing commercially viable species... Thus the organic and composite nature of forests with varied flora and fauna had been destroyed and thereby the people and the communities who were dependent on these forests were marginalized causing disenchantment among them. In this milieu the agrarian unrest continued after independence. (Augustine, 1995).

Ecological degradation and economic deprivation generated by the resource insensitivity and intensity of the classical model of development have resulted in environmental conflicts… (Shiva, 1991).