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ENVIRONMENT: EVEREST CLEAN-UP
Everest Needs Rest
As early as 1986,
some Everest climbers, including the legendary Sir Edmund Hillary, had
pressured the Nepalese government into tighter controls on expeditions
to the Everest region. Hillary maintained that "the Everest needs
rest" from increased crowds and growing environmental hazards in
the Khumbu region. As a result, the government had implemented the "1
route, 1 season and 1 team" system to control the influx of climbers
and levied a refundable deposit of $4,000 to control littering by expeditions.
Under this system only one team could climb Everest at a time and every
expedition had to declare the incoming and outgoing goods during the expedition
to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee. Not only did the strict
rules send expeditions away from Nepal to the Tibetan route, they also
led expedition operators to try to circumvent the rules through the organisation
of "environmental expeditions". The government had to change
its policy, but that has led to the situation that Lakpa Sherpa described
at a recent press conference in Kathmandu: when she reached the highest
point on Earth last month, she found there were 30 other people already
there sharing the moment with her.
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| WASTE LAND: Members of a clean-up expedition
sort garbage on the Everest |
Fifty years ago, when the Nepal route to the
top of Everest in the south was first opened, it was impossible to foresee
such a scenario. Today, speedier access to remote locations, larger disposable
incomes and a desperate need for adventure have led to a commercial log-jam
of affluent tourists and a general neglect of the environmental concerns
of the area. Ecosystems like the high-altitude reaches of the Himalayas
are environmentally fragile, their beauty being endangered by visitor
access far above seasonal carrying capacity.
For long after the first ascent of Everest in
1953, summit expeditions were few and far between. But today the position
is that Everest has been climbed by over 1,000 persons, the majority via
the South Col or "yak" route. In one single morning in 1993,
30 climbers were able to reach the top. Large national groups and tour
companies lay siege to the mountain, backed by colossal budgets, bottled
oxygen and mountains of baggage requiring vast hordes of porters in tow.
On one level, this benefits the economy of a poor country like Nepal.
But the ecological price is heavy and in the long run may become unaffordable.
There have been some periodic trend shifts; climbing Everest without oxygen
following Reinhold Messner's ascent in 1978 was one, as was descending
by para-sailing. But these cannot stem the tide of amateurs who pay up
to $65,000 each to be guided right up to the peak of the highest spot
in the world.
The summit is now attempted not only in summer
and the post-monsoon period but even in winter. Every conventional climber
is a part of a group totalling at least a dozen with porter support of
two per member for transporting food, baggage and equipment. On an average,
a climber and his two porters carry a total of 100 kg between them. Of
this, a minimum of a third (between 30 and 40 kg) is left behind, either
as human or containerised waste. Moreover, the higher an expedition goes
the more oxygen cylinders they carry and then leave behind.
Along with the climbers actually heading up
the Everest, there are also expeditions attempting the neighbouring peaks
and the vast numbers of trekkers who use the Khumbu trail for close-up
views of the mountain. One recent summer witnessed 36 mountaineering expeditions
to Everest alone, including 14 via the South Col, with the northern route
on the Tibetan side of the mountain subjected to a similar assault. The
NMA has hinted that a clean-up of Dhaulagiri is also on the cards, but
that would still leave several peaks with mountains of garbage.
Indeed, the dilemma between access and conservation,
from unfettered reach to complete closure underpinned by tourism and local
aspiration, has become common to mountain ecosystems around the world.
Thus, the Gangotri basin in Garhwal, the Baltoro glacier at the foot of
Mount K2 and the Andean base camps in South America share common ecological
concerns.
The solutions require hard choices. Nepal is
trying to find the magic mean between sustaining the local economy and
preserving the environment. One way is to structure visitor cost in such
a manner that it includes garbage removal by expeditions not only to the
roadhead (up to as far as the road goes) but to the point of origin of
the group. "There has to be a mechanism to strictly compel the expeditions
to bring back 100 per cent of their wastes," says Shreshtha.
Left to themselves, in environmentally fragile
mountain regions, these efforts will not prevent mountains of garbage
accumulating on the flanks of the highest points on earth. As of now,
clean-up attempts can at best resemble a snowflake on the expanse of a
glacier.
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