On the "Myth" of Himalayan Environmental Degradation

Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa (Ph.D)

Environmental degradation is a complicated subject, especially when dealing with forests. What may seem like degradation for one species may not be degradation for others. For example, reduction of forest cover may be harmful for a species that survives only in the forest interior, but may benefit the others that thrive on open landscapes. More importantly, forests are living systems. Their structure and composition change over time and space and with that also changes their ability to provide ecological and social services. What we do to a forest now influences the condition of the forest hundreds of years down the line. Despite this complexity, societies still need to make forest management decisions. Often we do not have the option or liberty of waiting until all the scientific facts are known before taking action. This is particularly true in the developing world, where resources for conducting rigorous scientific research are limited. Even if resources are available, sometimes decisions can not wait until researchers reach a consensus. The current issues of global climate change and the Tso Rolpa GLOF threat fall in this group, and in both cases prevention may be better than cure.

As for the "myth of Himalayan environmental degradation" in the Khumbu Region, I agree with Professor Ives that many projects and programs have been launched without proper investigation of facts. The establishment of the Sagarmatha National Park is a good example. However, local people had already experienced and begun to respond to forest degradation problems with the nawa forest protection system long before the park was created. It was in the 1970s when new challenges for environmental protection emerged as tourist numbers began to increase, without proper regulations for the use of local firewood and timber for cooking, campfire wood, and lodge building. Garbage littered the camps sites in absence of proper disposal mechanisms. The local forest protection system was not designed to deal with the externally driven economic pressures and broke down. Projections were therefore made that if tourism numbers continued to grow in the absence of an effective mitigation measures, the people and environment of Khumbu would suffer. This led to declaration of the national park. There was no time or resources to carry out expensive scientific research. Pre-existing data was limited because scientific research in the Nepal Himalaya was a post-1950 phenomenon that emerged only after the country was opened Western explorers and researchers. Instead, decisions were based on years of local knowledge and familiarity with the environment and resource use trends. Such decision processes can be equated with what we now call "experts system" or "adaptive management", where an activity is initiated with limited information but corrections are made along the way.

The recent scientific research data and external media publicity have had limited influence on how the decisions are made at the local level. Local people and governments generally make resource management decisions and take action with or without scientific information. These actions are justified on the basis of their own needs and aspirations. Academic arguments such as downstream impacts from up-stream deforestation play a limited role in these decisions. For example, Tibetans are plantings millions of saplings along the Tsangpo River basin not because they are worried about flooding in Bangladesh but they want to control desertification and create biomass resources locally for themselves. Similarly, Khumbu people have their own reasons for maintaining their environment in certain ways pertaining to livelihoods, tourism, and religious needs.

Finally, it is true that a forest recovery trend is apparent in Khumbu despite the fact that over the last 30 years tourist numbers have risen from 2,500 to 25,000 each year, and the population nationwide has more than doubled. Khumbu locals now believe that the maintenance of forest conditions have been a result of park regulations, electricity alternatives, and, in part, reduced grazing pressure. Had we not paid attention to the "myth" in 1975 and taken the initiative to start the national park, would we be able to say today that Khumbu's forests have not changed in the last 30 years, and that we therefore don't have a deforestation problem?

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