The Chipko movement began in the Himalayan region of India in the 1970s when villagers, especially women, resisted commercial logging by embracing trees. The movement linked forest protection with local livelihoods, erosion control, and community rights. It became a global symbol of grassroots environmental action.

Chipko drew on songs, slogans, oral poetry, and devotional language to defend forests as living kin rather than timber. It gave Indian environmental literature a powerful image of bodies protecting trees, influencing ecofeminist and regional poetic traditions.