Posting
Lhakpa Sherpa
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?
Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa (Ph.D)