Afforestation to State government. The 2009 Indian national forest policy document emphasizes the need to combine India's effort at forest conservation with sustainable forest management. India defines forest management as one where the economic needs of local communities are not ignored, rather forests are sustained while meeting nation's economic needs and local issues through scientific forestry. 4.95% of the area of India (156,700 km2) called Protected areas of India is reserved for the in situ conservation of species and their natural habitat. Issues and threats Chipko movement The Chipko movement in India started in the 1970s around a dispute on how and who should have a right to harvest forest resources. Although the Chipko movement is now practically non-existent in Uttarakhand, the Indian state of its origin, it remains one of the most frequently deployed examples of an environmental and people's movement in a developing country. The motivation of the movement is a subject of some debate; some neopopulists view Chipko primarily as an environmental movement and an attempt to save forests, while others suggest that the movement had nothing to do with eco-conservation, but was driven primarily by local communities' demand for equal rights to harvest forests. According to one set of writers: Since the early 1970s, as they realised that deforestation threatened not only the ecology but their livelihood in a variety of ways, people have become more interested and involved in conservation. The best known popular activist movement is the Chipko Movement, in which local women under the leadership of Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna, decided to fight the government and the vested interests to save trees. The residents declared that they would embrace—literally "to stick to" (chipkna in Hindi)--trees to prevent cutting of ash trees in their district. According to those who critique the ecological awareness and similar theories, Chipko had nothing to do with protecting forests, rather it was an economic struggle using the traditional Indian way of non-violence. These scientists point out that very little is left of the Chipko movements today in its region of origin save for its memory, even though the quality of forests and its use remains a critical issue for India. To explain the cause of Chipko movement, they find that government officials had ignored the subsistence issues of the local communities, who depended on forests for fuel, fodder, fertiliser and sustenance resources. These researchers claim that local