Women and the Struggle for the Environment (the Story of Indian Women)

Indian Women: struggle for the sustainability environment.
Dear my beloved readers, perhaps lately we often heard about the effort to save and defend our environment. The issue of environment become one of the crucial issue today, as we know that there are a lot of negative impact from the destruction of environment and mismanagement of natural resources, like climate change and global warming, water crises, and flood in many area. The decreased of environment sustainability, create many effort to do a tight protection through both locally or internationally. In India, the effort to struggle the environment is much done by the women. Through mobilization, women fight to prevent further more ecological destruction.

The green Revolution has created a positive impact by its success in increasing global food supply, but in the other hand, the failure of this revolution has created a negative impact by the ecological destruction. The problem of debt, the deforestation for the expansion of agricultural land, the negative effect of fertilizer and chemical pesticide, scarcity of water, and the building of dam which expropriate the area of society and agricultural land, and expropriate the role of women in the agricultural and as a the main food provider for their family and society is the become one of problem that is experienced by Indian society especially the women.

The green revolution has moved the control of natural resources (plantation) from women and farmer to the food corporation and multinational agribusiness by new superior varieties technology, and ignore the social and ecological effect of that revolution. In the other hand, Indian women against the natural concept as the pillage and try to protect environment as a Prakriti (the vitality to sustain the life). The Indian society, especially the women struggle to defend and preserve the life. The repression for the environment which is the kind of development model at a present also become a repression for the women, which depend on the nature in their effort to get a food for their family and society.

Try to protect the trees by embrace them.
That’s why the Indian women begin to make a mobilization to protect their environment. One of the movement is called Chipko Movement. Chipko means embrace, which describe the the effort of women to protect the plant by embracing the trees in order to prevent the saw machine and ax cutting the trees. Chipko movement has saved a thousand of square kilometers forests in Himalaya area, because the forest has a relation with their livelihood to fulfill their food supply and become of their income. The other movement is a Narmada Bachao Andolan which is still struggle until now to stop the building of dam in Narmada Valley.

By these movements, the Indian women try to struggle to prevent the ecological destruction. From years after years they commit a demonstration, protest and long march from one village to another village and get a positive result.

The effort of Indian women really wonderful, they have to sacrificed their live to protect the environment, and I hope it’s also become a inspiration for us to care our environment.

(thanks for my best friend, Eka Apritriasa)