The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan was a forest conservation movement in India where people embraced the trees to prevent them from being cut down. The main reason we should conserve the forest is that trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into a wood, where the carbon stays bound up for hundreds or even thousands of years, living forests are an important part of the earth's climate system. Growing trees soak up CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their trunks, roots, leaves, and forest soils.