India’s “environmentalism of convenience” threatens forest-dwellers’ rights

India has a rich history of environmental justice movements, particularly on the part of forest-dwelling communities protesting colonial-era forest laws and development projects. The tradition gained momentum with the Chipko movement in the 1970s, in which indigenous Adivasi women in the Tehri Garhwal district of Uttaranchal state asserted their rights over trees to prevent them from being felled. And it carried on to the ongoing Narmada Bachao Andolan movement, beginning in 1985, in which communities in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra oppose construction of dams on the Narmada River.