/CORRECTED REPEAT/ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Villagers’ Resistance May Yet Save a Forest

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bharat Dogra

TEHRI GARHWAL, India, Nov 1 2001 (IPS) - The remote Himalayan forest of Advani recently took on a festive mood here as colourfully dressed villagers marched into the forests, singing songs and chanting slogans.

Women tied sacred threads around trees, symbolising their determination to protect them. With this gesture, they hope to save the forest from destruction, like the earlier struggles by the Indian Chipko movement had achieved in the 1980s.

The name of the village-level movement comes from a word meaning “embrace”. The women practised non-violent resistance and put their bodies between the trees and the contractors’ axes.

Many years back, a large number of trees in the same forest of Advani, located in Tehri Garhwal district of India’s northern Uttranchal state, had been auctioned for commercial felling.

When the contractors’ workers came to fell trees along with an armed police team, village women hugged trees to prevent them from being cut. The forest was saved.

Now more than two decades later, the threat to this forest as well as a large number of other trees of this region has come from an entirely different source: the giant Tehri dam project coming up near Tehri town.

Though highly controversial because of its adverse impact on the environment, work on the project has begun and the government looks determined to complete it.

In order to transmit the electricity to be generated from this project to other parts of the country, the Power Grid Corp has been given the responsibility of laying 800-KV transmission line from Tehri in Uttranchal to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh state.

In this approximately 200 km stretch, nearly 50 km are in the hilly region. The proposed path of transmission lines in the Himalayan area, would cut into the forest of Advani — earlier saved by the Chipko movement — threatening about a hundred thousand trees.

Kunwar Prasun, a senior activist of the Chipko movement, says: “There was such a big and determined struggle over two decades back when only some hundred trees were threatened. How can we remain silent when thousands and thousands of trees are threatened. We are determined to save trees.”

Dhum Singh Negi, who is a mentor of the younger Chipko activists, asks: “Had they really taken permission for cutting all these trees when the dam project was cleared? I doubt that the permission to fell so many trees would have been given.”

This in fact is the heart of the debate over the project, activists say, accusing government agencies involved in the project of deliberately keeping any information about its environmental impact from public discussions.

Shekhar Singh, who was one of the experts on a committee appointed by the government to examine this project, says with anguish: “This important matter of the loss of Himalayan forests was never brought up before our committee. The committee never got a chance to discuss this.”

Another senior committee member, Ramaswamy Iyer, says: “The loss of such a large number of trees on Himalayan slopes is actually one of the most important aspects of the Tehri dam project and yet this was not even considered.”

Actually, environmental impact is just one of the concerns the project has spawned. Earlier, there were worries about its safety.

The Environment Appraisal Committee which examined all important aspects of the Tehri Dam Project opined that safety factors alone are important enough to stop the clearance of this project.

The report said: “Taking note of the unacceptable risk involved, extremely poor status of readiness to deal with the hazards and unprecedented damage in case of a breach or overtopping, the Committee reiterates its considered view that it would be irresponsible to clear the Tehri dam as currently proposed.”

“Considering the almost total certainty that a strong earthquake of magnitude greater than 8.0 on Richter scale will occur in the region during the life of the dam, and considering that the dam design does not provide for such an earthquake, the Committee has no option but to conclude that construction of Tehri dam, as proposed, involves totally unjustified risks,” the committee further said.

“The magnitude of the disaster that would follow, if the dam collapsed, strengthens the Committee’s opinion that approval to the construction of this dam, as proposed, and at the present site, would be irresponsible,” it added.

In view of such adverse comments of previous committees and the newly discovered threat of the loss of a large number of trees, several observers believe that the possibility of still converting the Tehri dam project into a run-of-the-river scheme should be considered.

Says Sunderlal Bahuguna, senior environment activist who has been in the forefront of the opposition to the Tehri dam project: “Although so much work has been completed on this project so that there will be inevitably some financial loss involved in now changing the giant project into a smaller run-of-the-river project, the hazards associated with the original project are so many as to justify this change.”

“In fact the change from a huge storage project to a run-of- the-river project should have been made earlier. It is still not too late to make this change,” he adds.

Although the government has shown no signs yet of accepting this demand and revising the Tehri dam project, it has at least responded to some extent to the growing demand for sparing Himalayan trees coming in the way of the power grid’s electricity lines.

On Sep. 7, the Ministry of Environment and Forests sent a note to the Power Grid Corp asking it to apprise it of the alternative alignment of electricity lines or the possibility of using existing towers for this project.

Activist Kunwar Prasun expresses the sentiments of many concerned people when he says, “It will be very good if the hazardous Tehri dam project can be given up in its present form. However, if the government does not agree to do this, then at the very least it should take effective action to save the thousands of trees threatened by the power grid lines.”