Dear MF-Asia,

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Namche E-Consultations ("People, Park, and Mountain Tourism") on behalf of the numerous agencies and individuals who have been collaborating to present the upcoming Namche Conference to be held in Namche Bazar, Sagarmatha National Park, Khumbu, Nepal, from May 24-26, 2003. These include:

• Dr. Swoyambhu Man Amatya, Director General of the HMG (Nepal) Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (chair of the Namche Conference Organizing Committee)
• United Nations University, especially Dr. Libor Jansky and Dr. Teiji Watanabe
• The Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), especially Mr. Subash Nirola
• The Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), especially Mr. Ang Tsering Sherpa and Mr. Bhumi Lal Lama
• The Mt. Everest Golden Jubilee Celebration Committee, especially Mr. Damodar Rana, Shiva P. Shah, and Madan S. Shah
• The International Center for the Integrated Mountain Development, especially Dr. Gabriel Campbell, Ms Greta Rana, and Mr. Ujol Sherchan; and
• The Bridges: Projects in Rational Tourism Development (Bridges-PRTD), directed by myself and Empar Alos.

The Namche Conference was conceived as an accessory to the celebration of the Golden Jubilee Year of the climbing of Sagarmatha as well as the first quarter century of Sagarmatha National Park. Sir John Hunt's 1953 expedition not only placed the first two summiters on top of the world's highest mountain, it also unleashed a development process that has radically transformed the Sherpa homeland. The selection of the conference venue, Namche Bazar (3450 m), at the gateway to Sagarmatha National Park, is emblematic of a significant departure from the usual academic symposium on mountain issues: rather than simply reading papers to each other, the delegates and participants will have the opportunity to 'ground-truth' their ideas and to learn from local experts.

The e-consultations which we are initiating today are intended to function as a preliminary to the Namche Conference. Focusing specifically on issues that are of concern to the residents of remote mountain tourism destinations, we will compile a set of questions, generalisations, and suggestions to place before the conference participants (including members of the host community). In so doing, Mountain Forum subscribers around the world may participate by proxy, and the actual conference participants will have an opportunity to focus and sharpen their ideas in advance. All Namche Conference presentations are to be made available in draft form prior to the conference itself, and many have already been posted in the "files" folder on our Yahoo e-group, "NamcheConference". We encourage participants in this e-consultation to join the "NamcheConference" e-group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/namcheconference) access these presentation drafts, and respond to them. Your feedback will be noted and placed in discussion at Namche, and will become part of the conference proceedings.

Today is the start of the first of four five-day sessions addressing broad themes relating to mountain tourism. Mr. Beau Beza has kindly agreed to moderate the discussion of "Cultural and ecological impact of tourism in remote mountainous destinations and neighboring areas." At the risk of being accused of jumping the gun, I would like to make a few remarks about some of the Namche Conference presentations (in the hope of motivating you to go to the trouble of downloading them now rather than later); and I would like also to briefly outline some of the recommendations that will be placed before the Namche Conference by Bridges-PRTD. Ideally, the Namche Declaration should grow out of discussion at the conference itself; however, three days is a very short period in which to generate, discuss, and vote on substantive initiatives. We believe that there is an unusual opportunity to make provocative than the usual call for more research, broader participation, and further palaver. If Archimedes were still looking for a fulcrum from which to leverage global change, he could have asked for none better than Mount Everest in its Golden Jubilee year.

One of the first things that comes to mind in the context of "tourism impact" is garbage. The issue is complicated because it draws a response -- not only from tourists but also from international donor agencies -- that is wildly incommensurate with the measurable hazard. Beau Beza and Ang Tshering Sherpa have contributed a preliminary overview of their innovative study comparing subjective responses of tourists and host community members to various configurations for solid waste in "The worst way to see garbage in the landscape along the Mt. Everest Trek."

A broader-based protocol for the evaluation of impact is proposed by Caravello, Boselli, Bertollo and Baroni ("Assessing Ecosystem Health: An Analysis of Tourism Related Change and Impact in Khumbu Valley, Nepal"), who advance an "ecosystem health paradigm" combining anaylsis of the quality of water resources and socioeconomic indicators. As they note, this paradigm has the advantage that it does not involve a necessarily invidious comparison with some supposititious "pristine state"; instead, an ecosystem may be judged as healthy based on "biological integrity, productivity, self-renewal or resilience."

Among the cherished indicators of tourism impact is deforestation. In "Management Implications of Historical and Contemporary Landscape Change in the Khumbu Region, Nepal," Alton Byers finds that landscape modification is much older than previously suspected and that subalpine (<4000m) forests and other vegetation are relatively stable; he suggests that the conventional focus on suspected recent degradation of the subalpine zone may be distracting attention from serious degradation of the alpine zone (4000-5000 m).

Barros and Gonnet contribute a useful study of vegetation damage on and around trails. ("Impact of tourist activity in mountain vegetation and soil. Quebrada de Horcones, Aconcagua Provincial Park, Mendoza, Argentina.") They conclude that the greatest damage is being inflicted by mules and other equines; noting comparative studies showing that pedestrian hikers and llamas produce much less damage, they recommend the establishment of a pilot project introducing llamas as pack animals in Aconcaqua Park. This reminds me of a long-standing proposal by Alejandro Camino of HimalAndes to introduce South American camellids in the Himalayas. Llamas have meanwhile been successfully introduced in North America, and, if we can get past our fidelity to the charismatic yak, we might find that the idea is worth considering after all.

Biodiversity concerns are played out in a variety of dramatic confrontations within and around protected areas. In Sagarmatha, an early source of conflict between park residents and administrators arose over the decision to exclude domestic goats. Ironically, one of the more conspicuous success stories has been the flourishing population of the tahr, an indigenous wild goat. Anil Shrestha makes some locally-based recommendations in "Preliminary Study on Crop Depredation by Himalayan Tahr (Hemitragus jemlihicus) in Sagarmatha National Park"; given that such stakeholder conflicts are found in virtually all protected areas, it would seem a promising area for inter-regional study and collaboration.

In "Ecotourism, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development of Local Communities in the Kyrgyz Republic" Cholpon Dyikanova broaches issues which have received little public discussion despite their prevalence around the world: institutionalized corruption and public distrust of official information sources. A key point is that money raised in the form of user fees for protected areas is rarely invested in local community development or ecosystem protection.

Sergey Golunov has contributed a disturbing account of "Mountain Tourism in Caucasus and Central Asia in Light of Transboundary Security and Cooperation." While there is probably little that can be done at present in such catastrophic areas as Kashmir, it seems to us that there may be room for an international accord to facilitate trans-boundary trekking in designated wildlife corridors -- for instance, between Qomolongma and Sagarmatha.

Quite a few of the Namche Conference presentations focus on solutions to problems. J. O. Wensich analyzes and underutilized opportunity in "Wind Energy from Microturbines in Nepal." Sjoerd Nienhuys presents a lower-tech renewable energy option in "The Beehive Charcoal Briquette Stove in the Khumbu Region, Nepal." Tony Freake discusses his work with the Phortse Community Project, an effort in the Promethean spirit of Sir Edmund Hillary's own projects in the Khumbu.

These notes touch on a rather random selection of the dozens of presentations scheduled for the Namche Conference in late May. Whether or not you join us there, we hope you will take the time to review some of the draft texts and respond, either in these e-consultations or by email to the authors.

Again, an equally important aspect of the Namche Conference should be a set of specific recommendations. Participants in the e-consultations should feel free to submit their own proposals at any time -- the earlier the better! To get the ball rolling, here are three from Bridges-PRTD:

1) Establishment of a Mountain Legacy Institute at Beding (3600m) in Rolwaling Valley, a relatively unimpacted region immediately west of Khumbu. We envision a center for academic research in a broad range of fields, including global warming (and the effect on Tsho Rolpa, which has for years been recognized as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood risk), ethnomusicology, ethnobotany, yak husbandry, and so on. The center would welcome volunteer workers, whether exchange students or backpacker tourists. This proposal, by the way, is already supported by the Journal of Himalayan Sciences and the Himalayan Research Institute. (More details to be posted soon.)

2) Open the Nangpa La pass to trekking between Khumbu (Nepal) and Tibet Autonomous Region (China).

3) "Mt. Everest: Setting the Standard": The dangers of overcrowding, dilettantism, and compulsive record-setting have already attracted international concern. We suggest holding a conference in Kathmandu in Sept. 2004 dedicated to setting internationally recognized guidelines for Mt. Everest and for mountain climbing in general. Bridges would like to see the formation of a select committee that would rank mountains (or routes on given mountains) by difficulty on a ten-point scale. The conventional route up Everest might be an 8.3, for instance, while Tramserku rates a 9.2. The Nepal Mountaineering Association would then be asked to screen applicants for climbing permits, requiring that anyone applying for a 8.5 peak be able to document a prior 8.0 climb, for example. This would not only have the effect of reducing congestion and incompetence on Everest, but also direct more traffic more prestigious in view of higher rankings. Individual climbers could be ranked also, according to a formula based on the point-values of their climbs. In the sponsorship marketplace, there would then be more attention to real experience and skill rather than the pursuit of increasingly redundant and pointless records.

These three recommendations are proposed by Bridges-PRTD and do not represent the views of our collaborators in the Namche Conference or the e-consultations. We look forward to an avalanche of other ideas from you all, which we will introduce at the Namche Conference next month. With your help, we will be able to generate a Namche Declaration that will make a difference.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Seth Sicroff
Director, Bridges-PRTD