Community conservation and sacred ecology

Detail

1. Why communities matter in conservation

• Community participation in conservation means that local people and their village bodies protect nature, make the rules and share the benefits. The government does not act alone.
• The Class 11 principle: we can protect nature and use it sustainably only if local communities and local institutions take part.

• Sustainable use means using a resource today without using it up for future generations.

• The Class 10 view: conservation is not new in India. India's forests are home to traditional communities. Protection lasts only when these communities are at the centre of it.

• Why the top-down model fails:
• Fences and guards keep people out, but people still depend on the forest for fuel, fodder and food.
• This leads to conflict, poaching and encroachment.
• When communities own the rules, they guard the forest themselves, and protection costs less and lasts longer.

2. Community action: Indian cases

Case	Where	When / who	What the community did
Sariska villagers	Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan	—	Fought mining in the reserve, using the Wildlife (Protection) Act
Bhairodev Dakav Sonchuri	Alwar district, Rajasthan	5 villages	Declared 1,200 ha of forest their own sanctuary
Chipko movement	Himalaya; Mandal and Reni villages, Chamoli (now Uttarakhand)	1973–74; Gaura Devi, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna	Hugged trees to stop felling; planted native species
Beej Bachao Andolan	Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand	Late 1980s; Vijay Jardhari	Saved native seeds; revived barahnaja
Navdanya	All India (started in Dehradun area)	1987; Vandana Shiva	Community seed banks; organic farming
Joint Forest Management	First in Odisha	1988	Village groups protect degraded forest for a share of produce

• Bhairodev Dakav Sonchuri: "Sonchuri" is the local word for a sanctuary the people declare themselves.
• Five villages of Alwar, Rajasthan declared 1,200 hectares of forest as their own sanctuary.
• They made their own rules. Hunting is banned, and outsiders who try to encroach are kept out.

• It is a people's sanctuary, not one the government notified.

• Chipko movement: "chipko" means "to hug" or "to cling".

• Cause: contractors were given rights to fell trees in the Garhwal Himalaya. The villagers lost fuel and fodder, and landslides and floods got worse.
• Action: villagers in Mandal (1973) and Reni (1974), both in Chamoli, hugged trees to stop the felling. Gaura Devi led the women of Reni. Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna were the other leaders.

• Result: the felling stopped. The movement also showed that community afforestation with native species works. Afforestation means planting trees on land that has no forest.

• Beej Bachao Andolan ("Save the Seeds Movement"):

• Started in Tehri Garhwal in the late 1980s by Vijay Jardhari.
• It collects and saves native (traditional) seeds.

• It revives barahnaja, which means "twelve grains". This is a mixed-cropping system: about twelve crops (millets, pulses, beans) grow together on one plot.

• Navdanya ("nine seeds" or "new gift"):

• Started by Vandana Shiva in 1987.

• It runs community seed banks and promotes organic farming, which is farming without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides.

• The lesson from both seed movements: growing many different crops without synthetic chemicals can be economically viable. Farmers can earn a living this way.

3. Joint Forest Management (JFM)

• Joint Forest Management (JFM) is a scheme in which the state forest department and village communities jointly protect and manage degraded forests.
• Timeline:
• 1988: JFM began formally when Odisha passed the first JFM resolution.

• 1990: the Centre issued national JFM guidelines.

• How it works:

• A village forms a committee that protects degraded forest from grazing, fire and illegal felling.

• In return, the villagers get non-timber forest produce (NTFP: leaves, fruits, fodder, honey, grass) and a share of the timber that the protected forest yields.

• Local names: the committees are called the Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC), Forest Protection Committee (FPC), Village Forest Committee (VFC) or Van Sanrakshan Samiti (VSS), depending on the state [5].

• Scale: more than 1,18,213 JFMCs were managing about 23 million hectares of forest (FRI, 2011) [5].

4. Legal tools for community conservation (beyond NCERT)

• Community reserve (Section 36-C, Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972; added in 2002):
• The state government can declare private or community land a community reserve when the community or a person volunteers to protect wildlife and its habitat [2].
• The land must lie outside a National Park, sanctuary or conservation reserve [2].
• It protects fauna, flora and traditional or cultural conservation values and practices [2].

• Once it is notified, the land use cannot change unless the reserve's management committee passes a resolution and the state government approves it [2].

• Protected Area network (2026): 106 National Parks, 573 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 123 Conservation Reserves and 220 Community Reserves, covering 1,78,640.69 sq km [3].

• Community Forest Rights (Forest Rights Act 2006):
• Community rights and Community Forest Resource titles are issued in the name of the Gram Sabha, the assembly of all adult voters of a village [5].
• The Gram Sabha manages the forest through a committee it appoints [5].

• Under Section 5, the Gram Sabha and local institutions are empowered to protect wildlife, forests and biodiversity [2].

• Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs; Biological Diversity Act 2002):

• Every local body (rural and urban) sets up a BMC.
• The BMC prepares a People's Biodiversity Register (PBR), a record of the local plants, animals and traditional knowledge.
• India has more than 2,76,653 BMCs and more than 2,72,648 PBRs (2026) [4].

5. The Bishnoi community

• The Bishnois are a community of western Rajasthan. They follow the 29 principles (bis = 20, noi = 9) of Guru Jambheshwar (15th century).

• These rules forbid harming trees and animals.

• Wildlife near Bishnoi villages: blackbuck, chinkara, nilgai and peacocks move about freely and are not hunted.

• The Khejarli sacrifice (1730):
• Cause: soldiers of the Jodhpur ruler came to cut khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria).
• Action: Amrita Devi and 362 others (363 in all) hugged the trees and were killed.
• Place: Khejarli village, Jodhpur district [2].

• Legacy: this is often seen as an early form of Chipko, the "hug a tree" movement [2]. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award is named after her.

• Other sacred trees and animals (Class 10):

Tree / animal	Who holds it sacred
Mahua and kadamba	Mundas and Santhals of Chota Nagpur
Tamarind and mango	Tribal people of Odisha and Bihar (worshipped at weddings)
Peepal and banyan	Widely across India
Macaques and langurs	Fed by devotees at many temples

6. Sacred groves

• A sacred grove is a patch of forest dedicated to a deity or ancestral spirit. People leave it untouched: no felling, no hunting.
• What sacred groves preserve:
• Virgin forest, meaning old, undisturbed forest.
• Rare and endemic species. Endemic species are found only in that area.

• Small water bodies: springs, ponds and streams.

• An official description calls them generally very small patches of trees that communities protect for religious and cultural reasons and that help conserve local biodiversity [7].

• Regional names (Class 7 table):

Name	Language / region	State
Kavu	Malayalam	Kerala
Kovilkadu	Tamil	Tamil Nadu
Devare kadu	Kannada	Karnataka
Devrai	Marathi	Maharashtra
Khlaw kyntang	Khasi	Meghalaya (e.g. Mawphlang, near Shillong)
Dev van	—	Himachal Pradesh
Sarna	—	Jharkhand
Devgudi	—	Chhattisgarh
Oran	—	Rajasthan

• Meghalaya: in Khasi groves, spirits such as Ryngkew or Basa are worshipped as the guardian deities.
• Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu): a grove's chronicle records the protection of fruit bats.

• The bats pollinate flowers and spread seeds, so they help the forest grow back.

• Orans of Rajasthan (beyond NCERT):

• "Oran" comes from Sanskrit aranya, meaning "undisturbed forest" [2].
• Rajasthan has about 25,000 orans covering about 6,00,000 ha. Of this, 5,37,000 ha lies in the western Thar region [2].
• Other local names are dev-van, rundh, deorai, malvan and mandir van (temple forest) [2].
• Common trees are khejri (Prosopis cineraria), ber (Zizyphus) and Salvadora [2].

• Orans hold springs, ponds and baoris (stepwells), so they help harvest rainwater and recharge groundwater in the dry zone [2].

• The threat: groves are shrinking because people encroach on them for farms, settlements and industry.

• The Supreme Court on sacred groves (18 December 2024):
• Rajasthan must map every oran on the ground and by satellite, and classify them as "forest". Size does not matter; their purpose and cultural value do [2].
• Sacred groves should, where suitable, be declared community reserves under Section 36-C [2].
• The MoEFCC should frame a nationwide policy on sacred groves and conduct a nationwide survey of them [2].
• The Court praised the Piplantri model (Rajsamand district, Rajasthan). There, 111 trees are planted for every girl born, and more than 40 lakh trees have been planted [2].

7. Sacred ecology: how the land becomes sacred

• Sacred ecology means that people see the land, rivers, mountains and trees as holy, so they protect them.
• Tirthas (pilgrim sites) are found by rivers, lakes, forests and on mountains. Because of this, the whole landscape becomes punyakshetra, meaning "sacred space".
• Rivers as devis (goddesses): the nadistuti sukta of the Rigveda is a hymn in praise of rivers.
• Peepal (Ficus religiosa) is sacred to four religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.
• Todas of the Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu): they treat peaks, sholas and wetlands as sacred.

• Shola means the patches of stunted evergreen forest in the valleys of the high Western Ghats, set among grasslands.

• Sikkim: in the early 2000s, the state notified sacred mountains, caves, lakes, rocks and hot springs for protection.

8. Niyamgiri: a sacred hill against mining

• Location: the Niyamgiri range (Eastern Ghats) lies in Rayagada and Kalahandi districts of southern Odisha.

• Its highest hill, Niyam Dongar, is the home of Niyam Raja, the god of the Dongria Kondh.

• The Dongria Kondh are a PVTG (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group: a tribe with a very small, declining population, a simple economy and low literacy).

• They forbid felling trees on the sacred hill.

• The conflict: Vedanta wanted to mine bauxite (the ore of aluminium) on Niyamgiri, to supply its refinery at Lanjigarh.

• The verdict: in Orissa Mining Corporation v. MoEF (April 2013), the Supreme Court let the Gram Sabhas decide, under the Forest Rights Act 2006, whether mining would harm their religious and cultural rights.
• The outcome: all 12 Gram Sabhas rejected the mine (2013). It became a landmark for Gram Sabha consent and sacred rights.

9. Rights of nature

• Rights of nature is the idea that a river, mountain or forest can be a legal person. It has its own rights, and human guardians speak for it in court.

Entity	Country	Year	Key point
Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua)	New Zealand	2017	Declared "an indivisible and living whole" and a legal person [6]; guardians from the Māori iwi (tribe) and the State act for it [6]
Taranaki Maunga (mountain)	New Zealand	2025	Declared a legal person; Māori elders act as its voice
Ganga and Yamuna	India	2017	Uttarakhand High Court (Mohd. Salim v. State of Uttarakhand) declared them living entities; the Supreme Court stayed the order

• What the Whanganui law covers: "Te Awa Tupua" includes the river with all its physical and metaphysical (spiritual) elements. The law links the river's health to the health of the people who live in its basin [6].
• The irony in India: many sacred places are now polluted, such as the Yamuna, Mahanadi and Kaveri.
• The lesson: David Suzuki points to a worldview that sees a mountain as a deity, not as ore. Such a worldview can help build sustainability.

Prelims Hooks

• Sacred grove names: kavu = Kerala; kovilkadu = Tamil Nadu; devare kadu = Karnataka; devrai = Maharashtra; khlaw kyntang = Meghalaya (Khasi); sarna = Jharkhand; devgudi = Chhattisgarh; oran = Rajasthan; dev van = Himachal.
• Mawphlang, a famous sacred grove, is near Shillong, Meghalaya.
• Bhairodev Dakav Sonchuri: 5 villages, Alwar (Rajasthan), 1,200 ha, a self-declared people's sanctuary.
• Chipko began at Mandal and Reni in Chamoli (1973–74). The leaders were Gaura Devi, Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna.
• Seed movements: Beej Bachao Andolan = Tehri Garhwal, Vijay Jardhari, barahnaja. Navdanya = Vandana Shiva, 1987.
• JFM: first resolution by Odisha in 1988; national guidelines in 1990.
• Community reserves come under Section 36-C, Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. There are 220 of them (2026) [3][2].
• Bishnoi trap: 29 principles of Guru Jambheshwar; the 1730 Khejarli sacrifice was to save khejri trees, not blackbuck. Khejarli is in Jodhpur district.
• Niyamgiri: Rayagada and Kalahandi (Odisha), Dongria Kondh (a PVTG), bauxite. In 2013, all 12 Gram Sabhas said no.
• Rights of nature: Whanganui River (2017) and Taranaki Maunga (2025), both in New Zealand. India's Ganga–Yamuna "living entity" order (2017) was stayed by the Supreme Court.

Mains Points

• Why community conservation works (GS-III):
• People who depend on the forest are its best guards: Sonchuri, Chipko, JFM (about 23 million ha under JFMCs, 2011) [5].
• It cuts the cost of policing and reduces conflict with forest departments.

• It fits the CBD and Kunming-Montreal framework's emphasis on the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

• The legal path from tradition to law:

• Sacred groves and orans can become community reserves (Section 36-C) [2].
• Gram Sabhas hold Community Forest Resource rights under the FRA 2006 [5], and BMCs maintain PBRs [4].

• The Supreme Court's 2024 directions (orans as "forest", a national policy and a national survey) can stop encroachment on groves [2].

• Sacred ecology versus development:

• Niyamgiri (2013) shows that Gram Sabha consent can block mining on sacred land.
• Pollution of sacred rivers (Yamuna, Mahanadi, Kaveri) shows that reverence alone does not protect a river without enforcement.

• Rights-of-nature laws (Whanganui 2017) give a model, but India's 2017 order was stayed because of practical and legal problems.

• Agro-biodiversity and food security: Beej Bachao Andolan and Navdanya keep native seed diversity and mixed cropping (barahnaja) alive. This makes farming more resilient to climate risks and less dependent on chemicals.