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Synthesis
"Cultural and ecological impact of tourism in remote mountainous destinations"
[Session I (April 2-6) of the "People, Parks, and Mountain Tourism" e-consultation series co-organised by
The Bridges-PRTD, Namche Conference and Asia Pacific Mountain Network]Moderation and Synthesis by: Beau Beza
Contributors: Shoaib, Empar Alos, Giuliano Tallone, Lakpa N. Sherpa, Brian MacCall, Elli Broxham,
Seth Sicroff, Doreen Park, Brot Coburn, John Shores, Wolfgang Bayer, Christine LambrechtsTechnical Support provided by: MF-Asia Moderator, Asia Pacific Mountain Network
Introduction
Session I, "Cultural and ecological impact of tourism in remote mountainous destinations", produced some interesting discussions. The following text is a synthesis of those discussions and is hoped to elicit further discussion during the Namche Conference.
Synthesis
The e-consultation for Session 1 started with a lead paper titled "The worst way to see garbage in the landscape along the Mt. Everest trek". This paper focused on garbage and its visual impact on the landscape of a remote mountain destination. In particular it presented ways one might see garbage in the landscape along the Mt. Everest trek and its perceptual effect on Australian Tourists and the Sherpa. From this initial paper much discussion followed and three major issues emerged.
The first issue was impacts on the natural environment where garbage, at first, was a major component of this discussion and many different opinions on this subject were presented. For example, whom is responsible for creating and collecting the garbage (Shoab), garbage may ultimately cause local people to shift cultural practices, littering is a concept invented in the USA during the 1950's, garbage may be over dramatised (Alos) and garbage (in some parts of Nepal) can act as a status symbol, doesn't generally effect the environment and is a 'feel-good' substitute for the real work of protecting the environment (Coburn).
Some things that weren't discussed but may be considered important are:
1) The notion that one may be able to identify the culprits of littering by the type and location of garbage. Identifying these people does not imply catching the individuals but rather identifying the groups of people responsible, where educational efforts may then targeted and appropriately applied.
2) How much of an impact does garbage have on local fauna and how do they help distribute the garbage. For example, you can sometimes see yaks eating empty plastic noodle packets and locals have reported that animals become sick and die because of this. Additionally, you see dogs carrying away empty tins of fish to lick clean in more secluded spot. Thus, distributing the garbage to a wider area.
3) What is the sphere of influence different types of garbage have on the environment. For example, if a tin can is left to decompose how much heavy metal actually leaches into the ground and what area does it affect (e.g. 100 cubic millimetres).
Ancillary to the first issue raised are environmental problems such as erosion (Alos), the over-building or over-settlement (L. Sherpa) of an area, indiscriminate firewood cutting and overgrazing...(Coburn) which are considered to be more important than garbage and should therefore be discussed first. These other environmental problems then bring up the notion of formulating a set of environmental priorities. I would venture to say however that every remote mountain destination would be different and that if a set of priorities were to be established the priorities would need to be set by the relevant community, rather than to try and provide a blanket set of priorities to be used by all. Maybe as a topic for a workshop at the Namche Conference a list of environmental and cultural priorities could be developed to be used as a starting point for a community? The community could then add or subtract environmental and cultural concerns from this list and then priorities them. Note that, this set of priorities could include recommendations for establishing baseline data, monitoring systems and action plans.
The second major issue that emerged from the e-consultation was human waste. It was discussed that human waste is an increasing problem and existing toilet facilities (e.g. North side of Everest) are not in appropriate places (L. Sherpa). L. Sherpa also proposed a solution to this problem that recommended installing mobile toilets that could be located at camps to service mountaineers or trekkers and that the human excrement could be brought down to lower elevations and distributed on fields to act as a fertiliser.
The moderator asked the group if this final distribution of the excrement would be a problem. Responses to this question ranged from 'no' to 'yes', where the excrement was suggested that it should be treated. Bayer discussed some dangers with the use of fresh human waste and I would like to also point out that excrement can carry organisms such as E. coli, Klebsiella, Proteus and Giardia which can cause Gastroenteritis. Which is a very uncomfortable illness and potentially very dangerous. Therefore, any human waste that is to be applied to a field I would suggest should be treated so that these organisms are killed or the food would need to be thoroughly washed free of this excrement before consumption. Washing the food clear of this excrement however assumes that any water used in this process is or has also been purified.
Other points discussed on the issue of human waste where that tea houses could be required to make toilets available to the public, toilets shouldn't be placed over streams and toilet paper should be undyed and be made to degrade quickly (Sicroff). A general question is however how one would enforce a requirement for a tea house to make toilets available to the public? It seems that some mechanism would need to be put in place and then enforced to enable this recommendation to work.
The third major issue that was raised was the development of a management plan (Tallone) or 'Tourism Development Index' (Park) to monitor the impacts of tourism on a remote mountain destination. I would suggest that the index itself should have a triggering mechanism that would prompt people to respond accordingly if negative effects resulted. This index would need to be holistic (Park) and include all features associated with the environment and culture. In affect what you would be doing is planning for tourism and hopefully you would prevent any destructive short term benefits (Lambrechts).
Many things are interesting with this third issue. Overall it implies sustainability and possibly that any index would need to start by defining sustainability. Each remote mountain destination however is different and it may be that sustainability should be defined first by the community of a remote mountain destination. The index would then need to have the flexibility to be applied under that definition.
Sicroff argues however against defining sustainability indicating that it is a subjective issue and that any index may fall victim to a commercial application and abuse. Conversely Shores argues that maybe in the 1970's or 1980's sustainability might have been a challenging questions but now "that question has been put to rest". Shores goes on to say that an index may be best developed if it includes the concept of 'Limits of Acceptable Change' rather than any notion of 'Carrying Capacity' as this was developed for animal populations.
Additionally a minor topic that was presented but not discussed was the idea of creating a world-class boarding school in Namche to help prevent out-migration of kids from this area. What struck me was that maybe this idea should be expanded to create a boarding school or University that attracts not only local students but also students from around the world. I know that organised groups of secondary students from Australia trek in Nepal and conduct community work. Maybe this boarding school could be marketed to these groups of school kids (i.e. Schools or Colleges) and they could learn and interact in a classroom setting with the local school children for as long as a school term or as short as a few weeks. You would of course charge tuition fees, etc. to the international students and hopefully that would help to sustain the school and subsidise local children that might not otherwise be able to afford to attend. This school may be the location where the index, previously discussed, and its environmental and cultural applicability is developed and then taught to and maintained by these students - maybe this could be another workshop topic for the Namche Conference?
Finally a number of references have been provided by many of the e-consultation participants and are available in the individual 'Discussion' postings for Session 1 (please visit: http://www.mtnforum.org/apmn/ppmt.htm ).
Thank you.
Beau Beza,
Lecturer in Landscape Architecture
Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning
The University of Melbourne
Victoria, 3010
AustraliaDirect Tel.: 61 3 8344 7191
Gen. Faculty Tel.: 61 3 8344 6417
Fax.: 61 3 8344 5532E-mail: beaubb@unimelb.edu.au
Web: http://www.arbld.unimelb.edu.au/research/staffprofiles/beza.shtml
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