Environmental Conservation

• Environmental conservation is the protection, preservation, management or restoration of natural environments and the ecological communities that live in them.
  • It also covers the management of human use of natural resources, so that they give present benefit and remain available for sustainable social and economic use later.
• At its root, conservation is the planned management of humankind’s surroundings to prevent their exploitation, destruction or neglect.
  • It does not mean hoarding. It means wise use that keeps a resource flowing far into the future: renewal of what can be renewed, and recovery, recycling and reuse of what has been extracted.
• Conserving a natural area also means keeping it in a natural state for enjoyment and study, so that the complexity of ecological laws can be understood.
  • The idea draws its tenets from ecology, the science of the interrelationships between living things and their environment.
• Natural resources fall into two groups, and conservation treats them differently:
  • Renewable resources: forests, pastures, wildlife, fish and fresh water are replaced by natural processes and are inexhaustible if properly managed.
  • Non-renewable resources: minerals, metals, coal and oil exist in fixed amounts and cannot be rebuilt on a human timescale. Soil also behaves as non-renewable, because a few centimetres take centuries to form.
• Why conservation is urgent:
  1. World population is growing fast, and so is the demand it places on land, water and energy.
  2. Resources are being used up at an accelerating rate, faster than renewable ones regenerate.
  3. Pollution keeps increasing with industrial and urban growth.
  4. Some damage is irreversible: an extinct species or a collapsed ecosystem cannot be brought back.
  5. Humanity’s demand on nature now equals the renewable output of about 1.7 Earths, a deficit met by running down forests, fisheries, soils and groundwater.

Concept, Aims and Principles of Conservation

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Meaning of conservation

• Conservation is a broad concept with scientific, ethical, moral, economic and political sides. Each profession reads it in its own way:

• The World Conservation Strategy (1980), prepared by IUCN with UNEP and WWF, gave the definition that is now standard:
  • conservation is “the management of human use of the biosphere so that it may yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations.”
  • It named three objectives: maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems; preserve genetic diversity; and ensure the sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems.
  • This framing fed directly into the idea of sustainable development popularised by the Brundtland Report (1987).
• Conservation is a collective responsibility of governments, private organisations, industries and individuals. It needs dedicated funds for ecological research and for carrying out conservation projects.
• It is not a negative idea of simply curbing consumption. It is a positive programme of management:
  • what is harvested from the earth is replaced;
  • what is damaged is restored;
  • what is protected is studied and appreciated.

Preservation, conservation and restoration

• Preservation keeps a resource in an essentially undisturbed condition for its scientific interest, aesthetic appeal or recreational value: little or no consumptive use is allowed.
• Conservation is broader. It includes rational use for commodity or recreation, sustainable harvesting and restoration, alongside protection.
  • It is the pragmatic middle path between unchecked exploitation and strict preservation.
• Restoration is the active repair of a degraded system, such as replanting a cleared slope or reflooding a drained wetland, until it can again sustain itself.
  • At landscape scale it is now a global priority under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030).
• The historical debate: the two words took their modern meanings in a quarrel in the USA.
  • Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the US Forest Service (1905), defined conservation as the wise use of resources for “the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run”.
  • John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club (1892), argued for preserving wilderness for its own sake.
  • Their clash over damming the Hetch Hetchy valley (approved in 1913) became the classic use versus preservation dispute.
  • The ethical side of the debate later deepened, from the land ethic of Aldo Leopold (1949) to the deep ecology of Arne Næss (1973).

• IUCN’s protected-area categories run along the same spectrum:
  • Ia (strict nature reserve) and Ib (wilderness area) are at the preservation end;
  • II (national park), III (natural monument) and IV (habitat/species management area) protect nature while allowing visitors and active management;
  • V (protected landscape/seascape) and VI (protected area with sustainable use) sit at the conservation (wise use) end.

Evolution of the conservation idea

• Ancient and traditional India held a strong ethic of restraint toward nature:
  • the Arthashastra of Kautilya provided for abhayaranya, forests where animals could not be killed;
  • Ashoka’s fifth pillar edict (3rd century BCE) listed animals that were not to be killed and forbade burning forests to drive out game;
  • sacred groves (devrai in Maharashtra, kavu in Kerala, sarna in Jharkhand, law kyntang in Meghalaya) and sacred tanks protected patches of forest and water through religious taboo;
  • the Bishnoi sect, founded by Guru Jambheshwar in 1485, made the protection of trees and animals part of its 29 rules.
• Colonial forestry turned forests into a state resource:
  • the Imperial Forest Department (1864), with Dietrich Brandis as the first Inspector General of Forests, introduced “scientific forestry” aimed at a sustained yield of timber;
  • the Indian Forest Acts of 1865, 1878 and 1927 created reserved forests and curtailed the customary rights of forest communities, sowing conflicts that later surfaced in Chipko;
  • princely hunting reserves sometimes saved species by accident: the Nawabs of Junagadh protected the last Asiatic lions in Gir.
• Global milestones shaped the modern idea:
  • Yellowstone (1872), the first national park, began the protected-area model;
  • the Pinchot–Muir quarrel split wise use from preservation;
  • Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson exposed pesticide damage and launched modern environmentalism;
  • the Stockholm Conference (1972) put the environment on the world agenda, where Indira Gandhi argued that poverty and need are the greatest polluters;
  • the World Conservation Strategy (1980), the Brundtland Report (1987) and the Rio Earth Summit (1992) joined conservation to development;
  • the present phase stresses nature-based solutions, the 30×30 target and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

From fortress conservation to people’s conservation

• Fortress conservation treats protected areas as people-free zones, fenced off from local communities.
  • It produced early successes but also displacement, loss of forest rights and conflict with forest dwellers, as seen when villages were relocated from tiger reserves.
• Community-based conservation gives local people a stake and a voice. Indian expressions include:
  • Joint Forest Management (1990), which shares usufruct with village committees;
  • conservation and community reserves under the 2002 amendment of the Wildlife (Protection) Act;
  • community forest resource rights under the Forest Rights Act (2006);
  • long-standing sacred groves and the Bishnoi ethic.
• Women manage fuel, fodder and water in most rural homes and keep much of the knowledge of seeds and forest plants, which makes gender a core dimension of biodiversity conservation.

Aims of conservation

• Preservation of a quality environment that serves aesthetic and recreational as well as material needs.
• A continuous yield of useful plants, animals and materials, through a balanced cycle of harvest and renewal.
• Both aims rest on keeping ecological processes, genetic diversity and life-support systems intact.

Principles of conservation

• Conservation works through measures that increase the longevity of a resource and improve the pattern of its use. Eight principles form the framework:

• The first five principles are operational: they act directly on a resource.
• The last three are strategic: they decide which resource is used, by whom and how resources are combined.
• Restoration depends on protection: depleted populations recover only if species are protected and their genetic diversity is kept.
• Integration is the central objective of planning. Maximising the sum of goods and services from, say, a river valley is better than maximising one benefit at the expense of others.

Conservation of Natural Resources

Soil conservation

• Soil is lost through accelerated erosion, salinisation, waterlogging, nutrient mining and pollution. About 29.8% of India’s land was undergoing degradation in 2018–19.
• Measures follow the conservation principles:
  • biological: afforestation, shelter belts, grass barriers and controlled grazing;
  • agronomic: contour ploughing, strip and cover cropping, mulching, crop rotation and zero tillage;
  • mechanical: contour bunds, bench terraces, check dams and gully plugs.

Water conservation

• Why it matters: India has about 18% of the world’s people but about 4% of its fresh water, and per-capita availability keeps falling as population grows. Groundwater is over-drawn across the north-west and the hard-rock south.
• Principles applied to water:
  • Rational use and allocation: drip and sprinkler irrigation; crop choice matched to water; pricing and metering.
  • Reutilisation: recycling treated wastewater for industry, gardens and flushing.
  • Integration: planning a river basin or watershed as one unit, from ridge to valley, as in watershed management.
• Rainwater harvesting captures runoff where it falls: rooftop collection, recharge pits, farm ponds, percolation tanks and check dams.
• Traditional systems embody centuries of local knowledge:

• Indian endeavours to augment water conservation:
  • the National Water Mission (2009), which aims to raise water-use efficiency by 20%;
  • Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (2015), with its “more crop per drop” component;
  • Atal Bhujal Yojana (2019), for community-led groundwater management in seven states;
  • Jal Shakti Abhiyan (2019) and its “Catch the Rain” campaign;
  • Mission Amrit Sarovar (2022), with 75 water bodies per district, of which more than 68,000 had been completed by 2025;
  • Namami Gange (2014) for river rejuvenation.
• Community success stories:
  • Tarun Bharat Sangh, led by Rajendra Singh, revived johads in Alwar from the mid-1980s; the seasonal Arvari and other rivers began to flow again.
  • Ralegan Siddhi and Hiware Bazar (Maharashtra) combined watershed treatment with bans on free grazing and felling, and water budgeting.

Forest and vegetation conservation

• Status: the India State of Forest Report 2023 put forest cover at 21.76% and tree cover at 3.41% of the country, a total of 25.17%. The National Forest Policy (1988) target is 33%.
• Causes of deforestation: conversion to farms and settlements, mining, dams and roads, overgrazing, fire and shifting cultivation on shortened cycles.
• Conservation measures:
  • Protection: reserved and protected forests; diversion of forest land only with central approval under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, renamed the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam by its 2023 amendment.
  • Sustained yield: working plans that fix felling cycles to growth.
  • Restoration: compensatory afforestation through the CAMPA funds (Act of 2016); the Green India Mission (2014); MISHTI (2023) for mangroves; the Aravalli Green Wall Project (2025).
  • People’s participation: Joint Forest Management, community forest rights, Van Mahotsav and Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam (2024).
• India’s climate pledge links forests to conservation: an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent through forest and tree cover by 2030.

Social forestry and environmental conservation

• Social forestry means raising trees outside traditional forests, by and for the people. The term was popularised in India by the National Commission on Agriculture (1976).
• It has three forms: farm forestry on private land, community forestry on village commons, and extension forestry along roads, canals and railways.
• Conservation gains:
  • it takes pressure off natural forests by supplying fuelwood, fodder and small timber;
  • it checks soil erosion and wind erosion, and recharges groundwater;
  • it greens degraded commons and stores carbon.
• Limits: early schemes favoured fast-growing eucalyptus monocultures that suited markets more than villagers, and benefits often went to large farmers.

Wetland, coastal and marine conservation

• Wetlands purify water, recharge aquifers, buffer floods and support fisheries and migratory birds, yet they are drained, filled and polluted faster than most other ecosystems.
• India’s measures:
  • 103 Ramsar sites by October 2026;
  • the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, and the National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems (2013);
  • Amrit Dharohar (2023), which promotes eco-tourism and local livelihoods around Ramsar sites;
  • the Coastal Regulation Zone notification (latest 2019), which restricts construction near the shore;
  • marine protected areas such as the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park and the Malvan Marine Sanctuary.
• Mangroves shield coasts from cyclones and storm surges, as the Bhitarkanika and Sundarbans forests showed in recent cyclones; MISHTI plants them on suitable mudflats and salt pans.
• Coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar, Gulf of Kachchh, Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands suffer repeated bleaching in marine heatwaves; coral reef transplantation has been tried in the Gulf of Kachchh and the Gulf of Mannar.

Conservation of energy and minerals

• Non-renewable resources are conserved mainly by substitution, reutilisation and efficiency:
  • Efficiency: the Energy Conservation Act (2001), the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, appliance star labels, the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme for industry (2012) and the UJALA LED programme (2015).
  • Substitution: renewable energy in place of coal and oil; India targets 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030.
  • Reutilisation: the Steel Scrap Recycling Policy (2019), extended producer responsibility for plastic, e-waste and batteries, and the circular economy.
  • Mineral conservation: scientific mining, use of low-grade ores and the recovery of by-products, under the Mineral Conservation and Development Rules.
• The 2022 amendment to the Energy Conservation Act enabled India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (2023).

Wildlife conservation

• Wildlife means non-domesticated animals and plants living in their natural habitat.
• India is one of the world’s megadiverse countries:
  • it holds about 7–8% of recorded species on 2.4% of the world’s land;
  • its fauna database reached 1,05,953 species after the 2025 additions;
  • it has four of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots: the Himalaya, Indo-Burma, the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, and Sundaland (the Nicobar Islands).
• Global decline:
  • the Living Planet Index (2024) shows a 73% average fall in monitored wildlife populations since 1970;
  • the IPBES Global Assessment (2019) estimated that about one million species face extinction;
  • the IUCN Red List counted about 49,500 threatened species out of nearly 1,76,000 assessed (2026).

Threat categories

• The IUCN Red List places species in categories by their risk of extinction:

• A species can also be extinct regionally: the cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952, though it survives in Africa and Iran.

Why species go extinct

• Extinction comes from economic, political and psychological forces acting together. The principal human causes are:

• Biological traits raise vulnerability:
  • high specialisation in diet or habitat;
  • a high position in the food chain;
  • a small or island range;
  • a low reproductive rate, typical of large animals;
  • low tolerance of human presence.
• The IPBES (2019) ranks the global direct drivers as land- and sea-use change first, then direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species.

Why conserve wildlife

• Genetic reservoir: every population carries a gene pool, and all crops and livestock came from wild ancestors. Wild relatives supply resistance to disease and drought.
• Ecosystem stability: each species moves energy and materials through the web of life. Losing a plant at the base of a food web can cascade into the loss of the animals that depend on it.
• Economic value: fisheries, timber, fibres, tourism and pollination.
• Medical and scientific value: penicillin from Penicillium, quinine from Cinchona and morphine from the opium poppy came from nature; unscreened species may hold future cures.
• Aesthetic and recreational value: wild flowers, birdsong or a tiger in the wild have no market price, yet they enrich human well-being. National parks are among the most visited places on earth.
• Inherent (ethical) value: every species has a right to exist, regardless of its use to people.

Saving endangered species

• Wildlife management works at three overlapping levels:
  • technical (habitat management, captive breeding);
  • legal (laws, bans and enforcement);
  • personal (awareness and behaviour).
• Habitat management is the most efficient technique, because populations respond sensitively to their habitat.
• An integrated species management programme attacks all the causes of extinction together:
  • habitat: site development away from critical habitats; set up preserves for nesting and breeding grounds;
  • harvest: curb commercial and trophy hunting of rare species and use synthetic substitutes; design pest and predator control that spares non-target species;
  • invasives and pollution: control alien introductions, above all on islands; keep toxins out of food chains;
  • breeding: captive breeding for release, and breeding of research animals to end wild capture;
  • law and money: tough penalties and policing of trade; international cooperation through CITES; higher spending, possibly from environmental taxes;
  • knowledge: research on critical habitats, and public awareness of the value of all species, not only charismatic ones.
• The systems approach focuses a set of techniques on one target species in an area:
  • expert research and clear goals;
  • public education;
  • habitat retention and improvement;
  • harvest regulation or population control, and management of sex and age ratios and density;
  • anti-poaching action and disease control;
  • translocation from breeding strongholds to suitable empty habitat. Under Indian Rhino Vision 2020, rhinos were moved from Kaziranga and Pobitora to Manas from 2008.
• Conservation breeding has rescued species on the brink:
  • India’s Gyps vultures fell by more than 95% after the 1990s, poisoned by the painkiller diclofenac in livestock carcasses;
  • veterinary diclofenac was banned in 2006, and ketoprofen and aceclofenac in 2023, while breeding centres such as Pinjore (Haryana) raise vultures for release under the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020–25.
• Rising contact between expanding wildlife populations and people makes human–wildlife conflict part of conservation planning.

Wildlife conservation in India

• Flagship species counts:
  • Tigers: 3,682 (range 3,167–3,925) in the 2022 estimation, about 75% of the world’s wild tigers;
  • Asiatic lions: 891 in the Gir landscape (2025), up from 523 in 2015;
  • Snow leopards: 718 in the first national survey (2019–23);
  • Ganges and Indus river dolphins: 6,327 in the first range-wide survey (2025), under Project Dolphin (2020);
  • Asian elephants: 22,446 in the first DNA-based estimate (2025). It is not directly comparable with the older head counts, but it signals pressure on fragmented herds.
• Project Cheetah: eight cheetahs came from Namibia in 2022 and twelve from South Africa in 2023; a further batch from Botswana arrived in 2026. Gandhi Sagar in Madhya Pradesh became the second site.

Protected areas

• Protected areas (PAs) are the core of in-situ conservation. The Wildlife (Protection) Act recognises four kinds:
  • National park: conserves the environment, natural and historical objects and wildlife, while allowing public enjoyment that leaves them unimpaired. No private rights; grazing and forestry are barred.
  • Wildlife sanctuary: killing, hunting or capture is barred except under the authority’s control. Some rights may continue, and uses that do not harm wildlife are allowed.
  • Conservation reserve: state land, usually linking PAs, managed with local people (2002 amendment).
  • Community reserve: private or community land that people choose to protect (2002 amendment).
• Conservation is either in-situ, in natural habitats, or ex-situ, outside them in zoos, botanical gardens, seed and gene banks and cryopreservation facilities.
  • Ex-situ conservation is a back-up, not a substitute: the National Gene Bank of the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in New Delhi stores crop germplasm, and the Central Zoo Authority (1992) coordinates conservation breeding in zoos.
• Tiger reserves (2006) and elephant reserves overlay these PAs. Biosphere reserves follow UNESCO’s zoning.
• India’s network grew sharply after 1972. By 2026 it had over 1,000 PAs, including 106 national parks and about 574 sanctuaries, covering about 5.3% of the country.

Advantages of protected areas

• Scientific: undisturbed ecosystems give a baseline. Measuring human damage, and studying succession and energy flow, needs such reference sites.
• Watershed protection: forested catchments keep stream flow steady and reservoirs free of silt; protected estuaries sustain fisheries.
• Psychological and aesthetic: contact with wild nature supports human well-being, and parks are major tourist destinations.
• Legal clarity: declared status makes it easier to monitor populations, stop poaching and prevent overuse.

Selected national parks and sanctuaries

Biosphere reserves

• Biosphere reserves join conservation with sustainable development through three zones:
  • a strictly protected core zone;
  • a buffer zone for research, education and limited use;
  • a transition zone of settlements and sustainable use.
• India has 18 biosphere reserves, beginning with Nilgiri (1986). Thirteen are in UNESCO’s World Network: Nilgiri, Gulf of Mannar, Sundarban, Nanda Devi, Nokrek, Pachmarhi, Simlipal, Achanakmar-Amarkantak, Great Nicobar, Agasthyamalai, Khangchendzonga, Panna and Cold Desert (2025).

Project Tiger

• Background: India may have had about 40,000 tigers around 1900, but the 1972 census found only 1,827. Hunting, deforestation and the taming of rivers had driven the collapse.
• Launch: Project Tiger began on 1 April 1973 in nine reserves, with Corbett the first. It was a centrally sponsored scheme with early support from the WWF.
  • It took a long-term, genetics-based view: viable populations large enough to keep genetic diversity and adapt to future pressures.
• Objectives:
  • maintain a viable tiger population for its scientific, economic, aesthetic, cultural and ecological values;
  • preserve areas of biological importance as a national heritage for the benefit, education and enjoyment of people.
• Course:
  • The 1989 count of 4,334 relied on pugmarks and was later shown to be inflated.
  • When Sariska lost all its tigers to poaching (2004–05), the system was overhauled. The 2006 amendment created the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), and camera-trap estimation from 2006 found only 1,411.
  • Numbers then rose to 2,226 (2014), 2,967 (2018) and 3,682 (2022).
• Now: India has 58 tiger reserves; the 58th, Madhav (Madhya Pradesh), was notified in March 2025.
• Concerns: relocation of villages from core areas, rising human–tiger conflict at reserve edges, and corridors cut by roads, canals and mines.

Challenges and the way forward

• Development pressure: roads, railways, mines, dams and transmission lines claim forest land and fragment habitats.
  • The 2023 forest-law amendment exempted some strategic and security projects near the borders and narrowed the scope of protected “deemed forests”. In 2024 the Supreme Court directed that the broad dictionary meaning of “forest”, laid down in the Godavarman case (1996), must continue to apply.
• Quality of compensation: compensatory afforestation is often done on poor land with monocultures, which cannot replace natural forests and their biodiversity.
• Fragmentation and conflict: as wildlife recovers inside isolated reserves, animals spill into farms and villages, while corridors between reserves are cut.
• Invasive species: Lantana camara has spread through the understorey of many forests, and Prosopis juliflora has overrun the Banni grasslands of Kachchh.
• Climate change shifts species ranges upslope, intensifies forest fires and bleaches corals, so fixed protected boundaries may no longer hold the species they were drawn for.
• Institutional gaps: vacant frontline posts, weak monitoring outside protected areas and thin funding.
• The way forward:
  • plan at the scale of landscapes, joining PAs through corridors and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) such as community forests and sacred groves;
  • secure community rights and benefit sharing, so that conservation pays the people who live with wildlife;
  • use payment for ecosystem services and green accounting to value what nature provides;
  • monitor with science: camera traps, the M-STrIPES patrolling app, remote sensing and environmental DNA;
  • make conservation climate-smart, planning for species on the move.

Public Awareness and People’s Movements

Public awareness for environmental conservation

• No law or PA succeeds without public support, compliance and participation. Awareness must be rooted at every level of society, from school through adult life.
• Formal environmental education builds it in stages:

• Adult education should aim at collective action:
  • build village-level capacity in the technical, social and institutional sides of resource management;
  • reorient teachers and extension workers toward natural resource management;
  • match training to local demand, with assured funds and suitable methods.
  • Content: soak pits; keeping wells, ponds and rivers clean; water saving; tree planting; careful use of pesticides and fertilisers; biogas and solar energy; siting polluting industry away from homes; waste handling and recycling.
• Rural women spend much of their lives managing fuel, fodder and water, so their place in decisions on natural resources is the foundation of any awareness programme.
• Mass media (radio, television, film and now social media) can bring threats to public attention through talks, interviews, plays and documentaries. Media research can show which messages change behaviour.
• Institutional mechanisms in India:
  • the National Green Corps and school eco-clubs;
  • green belts along roads, railways, canals and housing colonies, and Van Mahotsav, the tree-planting festival begun by K. M. Munshi in 1950 and held in the first week of July;
  • public campaigns on buses and hoardings by state departments;
  • Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment, 2022), which seeks mindful consumption by individuals;
  • the Green Credit Programme (2023), which rewards voluntary actions such as tree planting and water conservation.
• Civil society and science: the Bombay Natural History Society (1883), WWF-India, the Centre for Science and Environment (1980) and the Centre for Environment Education (1984) research, campaign and teach. Citizen-science bird counts and biodiversity registers add public data.
• Courts: public interest litigation, such as the T. N. Godavarman Thirumulpad case, whose 1996 order applied forest law to all forests by their dictionary meaning, and the M. C. Mehta cases, kept conservation in the public eye. The National Green Tribunal (2010) now provides a specialised forum.
• Awareness changes behaviour only when it reshapes perception, attitude, value and emotion, the four components of PAVE theory.

Major conservation movements in India

• The Bishnoi sacrifice at Khejarli is remembered as India’s first recorded conservation martyrdom.
  • It took place when soldiers of the Jodhpur ruler came to fell khejri trees for a new palace; Bishnoi villages still give shelter to blackbuck and chinkara.
  • A national award for wildlife protection now bears the name of Amrita Devi Bishnoi.
• Chipko grew out of the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh of Chandi Prasad Bhatt; Sunderlal Bahuguna carried its message across the Himalaya.
  • Its strength was women’s defence of the forest as a livelihood: fodder, fuel, water and soil.
• Appiko (“hug” in Kannada) began in September 1983 under Panduranga Hegde. It added the slogan of protect, plant and use rationally.
• Silent Valley brought scientists, the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad and poets such as Sugathakumari together to save the habitat of the lion-tailed macaque.
• Narmada Bachao Andolan, led by Medha Patkar with Baba Amte, made displacement and rehabilitation central to the large-dam debate.
• Community water and wildlife movements show conservation as everyday practice:
  • Tarun Bharat Sangh in Alwar and Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra revived water through community action;
  • Khonoma in Nagaland gave up hunting and declared a community tragopan sanctuary (1998).
• Recent forest struggles, such as Hasdeo Arand in Chhattisgarh against coal blocks, continue the pattern of gram sabhas defending forests.

What the movements achieved

• Policy change: Chipko fed the 1980 Himalayan felling ban and the climate in which the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 was passed. Silent Valley showed that a project could be stopped on ecological grounds.
• A new idea of conservation: India’s movements were mostly “environmentalism of the poor”. They defended forests, rivers and fisheries as livelihoods, not only as wilderness.
• Rights and participation: they pushed policy toward Joint Forest Management, forest rights and gram sabha consent.
• Global reach: Narmada forced a rethink of World Bank dam lending. Chipko became a world symbol of ecofeminism and grassroots action.
• Lesson: public awareness, organised and informed, is one of the most powerful conservation tools.

International Framework for Conservation

Organisations

• IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature):
  • founded at Fontainebleau in 1948 as the International Union for the Protection of Nature, and renamed the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1956;
  • a union of governments and NGOs, with more than 1,400 members;
  • keeps the Red List of Threatened Species (since 1964) and sets the protected-area categories;
  • its Survival Service Commission (1949), now the Species Survival Commission, tracks species in danger of extinction.
• WWF (World Wildlife Fund, now the World Wide Fund for Nature):
  • founded in 1961 at Morges, Switzerland, to raise funds for IUCN’s conservation work;
  • now active in over 100 countries, focusing on endangered species and habitats;
  • WWF-India dates from 1969, and WWF supported Project Tiger at its launch.
• UNEP was created after the Stockholm Conference (1972) to coordinate the UN’s environmental work.
• UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme (1971) designates biosphere reserves.
• TRAFFIC (1976) monitors wildlife trade, and the Global Tiger Forum links tiger-range countries.
• The Global Environment Facility (1991) finances conservation projects in developing countries, and IPBES (2012) assesses the state of biodiversity for governments, much as the IPCC does for climate.

Conventions and agreements

• The Kunming-Montreal GBF (CBD COP15, December 2022) commits parties to:
  • protect 30% of land and of the oceans by 2030 and restore 30% of degraded ecosystems;
  • cut harmful subsidies by US$500 billion a year;
  • mobilise US$200 billion a year from all sources, including US$20 billion a year of international finance by 2025 and US$30 billion by 2030.
• India’s response: an updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan with 23 national targets (2024), the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023, and the International Big Cat Alliance.