Environmental movement refers to mass mobilization for environmental causes.

Post-independence movement was mainly for improvement of quality of life not for changing power sharing arrangement as was there before independence. Similar was the case with environment movement

Various environment movement of post-independence India were –

• Chipko Movement
• No forest exploitation contracts to be given to outsider.
• Local communities should have effective control over natural resources like land water and forest.
• Narmada Bachao Abhiyan
• A proper cost benefits analysis of the major developmental projects completed in the country so far.
• Social cost should be calculated too with respect to such projects. Social cost meant forced settlement of project affected people, serious loss of means of livelihood and culture, depletion of ecological resources
• Appiko movement
• Against the felling and commercialization of natural forest and the ruin of ancient livelihood.
• Silent valley movement: Against dam construction on Kuntipuzha river.

All these movements started from local issues and mostly local people only took part in them. These movements can be seen as competition between environmentalism and industrialization

Reason for Limited participation

• The issue over which the movement started had direct impact over the particular region only. For example in Chipko Movement the movement was against issue of license to a private company to cut down trees which were the source for livelihood of the locals.
• The awareness about environment were not widespread, during those times people were not aware that environment at one place could impact environment of other places.
• There was not much clarity for referring environment to development.
• Environment movement work considered anti-development in some part of the countries which were more industrialized.
• These movements were mostly during the time of emergency and while political churning of our country was going through various other political movements like JP Andolan.
• Responsive government work quick government responded to local demand before the movement could spread outside the region example in silent valley movement Prime Minister of India himself inaugurated Silent Valley National Park to fulfill the demand of people

However though the movements were concentrated in local regions there impact was Pan Indian.

• They made people more aware about environment, appiko movement made villager aware throughout the Western Ghats. Jungle bachao andolan of Singhbhum district of jharkhand spread all over to Odisha.
• They forced government to make policies to protect environment. For example appiko movement forced Government of India to change forest policies like concession to login company was stopped.
• These movements motivated people of other region to take similar sentences for example Chipko movement has motivated Appiko movement and Beej Bachao movement.
• It changed the colonial tradition of forests being controlled solely by bureaucrats.

Presently environment movement is gaining Global prominence. NGOs like Greenpeace and organizations like United Nations are taking steps to save environment at Global scale and mitigate climate change. Different nations are also making their effort to save the environment and develop sustainable example International solar Alliance by India and France.