"Mountain Forum" is an electronic network arising from the NGO follow up to Rio's Agenda 21.  It began to function in 1996 and provided the connectivity or "nervous system" for a world-wide network of NGOs
and individuals interested in environmental threats to mountains and their populations.  Its electronic conferences were successful and cheap innovations which speeded up policy evolution.
 
 

One Extract from an E Conference of Mountain Forum - April/May 1999

Mountain, People, Forest and Trees: Tourism and Forestry in Everest Region
Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:44:56 -0400
From:  "Lhakpa Sherpa" <lsherpa@mountain.org>
 

I come from the Everest Region and have been maintaining a strong interest in the environmental changes taking place in the area.    Sanjay (previous contributor. -Ed.) your statement: "In the Everest region, there are clear indications that forests inside the Park have greatly improved over the last 15-20 yrs"  is perfectly in line with conclusion drawn by a number of earlier researchers. Since, you have not elaborated on the causes of the recovery, I would like to add a little background  for benefit of those who are less familiar with the area.

Nepal was opened to foreign visitors only in 1950.  First explorers and climbers began to arrive in Khumbu soon afterward.  The area drew a lot of international attention after Hillary and Tenzing scaled Everest in 1953. Nevertheless, visitor numbers in 1960 were recorded as only 20 people, mainly because of difficult access.  It would involve a couple of weeks of hiking to reach Khumbu from Kathmandu.  In 1964, a small airstrip was built in the area, which opened the visitor floodgate.  The visitor numbers began to rise rapidly and has reached 18000 a year recently.

The decade of 1960-1970 was one of the grimmest periods for Khumbu forests.  Tourist numbers were increasing.  The indigenous forest protection system was breaking down.  Locals were taking up selling firewood to trekking camps as an income generating activity.  Camping groups were having bon-fires every night.  Migrant workers were arriving to join in the business of selling firewood, which can be obtained freely from the communal forests.  Demand for timber was not only rising but also cutting was taking place without any kind of control or supervision.  Thus, the "doomsday" projections by early writers were not entirely baseless.

In case of Khumbu, tourism did have the potential to destroy the forest, had we not intervened by declaring the area under a national park in 1976.  I am not arguing that creating a national park was the best solution but as one local informant put it "if the harvesting trend of 1970s was allowed to continue we will have difficulty finding axe handles in the forests" suggesting that only seedlings and saplings would be left.  Therefore, I disagree with the following statement:

"Just as the past research generalized the environmental crisis and presented a doomsday scenario for the Himalayan forests, which were proved wrong by the more recent research…."

I feel that it is not correct to say that doomsday crisis scenario painted by earlier observers was a proven wrong by later researchers.  Rather, crisis was averted by placing the area under protected area status.

The park introduced the following measures:-
* Made firewood selling illegal
* Required all trekking groups to use kerosene or gas
* Opened up nurseries to restore native forests
* Removed goats
* Regulated free felling of timber
* Made efforts to educate locals and visitors

These measures may not be 100% effective, but they definitely  avoided the full impacts of the tourism.  Earlier Tim Volwiler has provided an excellent analysis of this.  Since 1994, all the major villages within the park are supplied with electricity for cooking  and lighting. According to a research report based on user interview, the villagers have reduced their firewood use by as much as 65%, which disagrees with your statement:-

"Recent data from the Everest region show that the availability of  electricity and other alternative energy sources have not diminished the firewood and timber demands at all."

How did the forest of the Park improve over last 15-20 years otherwise?

Regarding the issue of forest loss outside the park, it is true that protection inside the park naturally increased demands on forests outside the park. However, if you analyze carefully, much of the timber harvested was pine.  Many forest scientists are of the opinion that pines were secondary successional species, which colonized after removal of the original fir and oak forests.

Older generation informants from Pharak still remember that much of the  area currently under pine stands were grassy meadows as recently  as 1920s and 30s.  These grassy slopes were created through heavy  burning, grazing and farming pressure.  Tourism has helped take off some of these pressures by generating off-farm employment opportunities for the local people in recent years.

Considering the unreliable nature of the tourism as a sustainable economic base those mountain meadows might reappear again if the tourism was to disappear. The wider spatial and temporal picture seems to be really important to develop any kind of understanding of  what is happening to the forests in the Everest Region.    Thank you for stimulating such a lively discussion and good luck with your dissertation.

For a full account of this interesting conference contact :
Mountain Forum Moderator at  mfmod@mtnforum.org

ENDS

Mallory´s body found, Knoydart rescued, Himalayan glaciers-alarm grows, Everest Forests-a Sherpa's view,
The epic of Mt. Everest, The state of the world mountains, My first summer in Sierra
Poems and Belles letters, The Yellow brick Road - Polemic, Paradise fishing at Autannes, Traditional Solar Science,Dogs on high, Obituary, Esme Percy, Web-sites for browsing
Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan on sustainable mountain tourism
P.B. Stone on mountains under pressure (general overeview of so-called Mountain problematique

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