[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Deforestation In Nepal
The high Himalayan regions of Nepal have become the foremost center of mountaineering and trekking in Asia. Small-scale adventure tourism links this once relatively remote part of the world with the global economy and provides new opportunities for economic development. The change is most strikingly evident in the Mount Everest region, where the prosperity of the Sherpas contrasts sharply with the living standards of nearby peoples who have not become involved in tourism. Various adverse effects of tourism on the local society and environment have been widely reported, and one consequence was the establishment of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park in 1976.
Although tourism has transformed land and life in the Mount Everest region in some ways, many reports have exaggerated the severity of the effects of tourism and have underestimated Sherpa adaptiveness, ingenuity, and cultural resiliency. This article examines how tourism has become a source of local economic development in the Mount Everest region and the effects of this economic change on local landuse, environment, and culture. The observations presented here are based on extensive interviews with local residents, religious and political leaders, national-park administrators, managers of trekking agencies, tourist guides, and tourists during more than three and a half years of fieldwork conducted on eight research expeditions between 1982 and 1992.( Pawson I,Stanford D, Adams V and Sherpa M N 1984)
Over the past 50 years the Sherpa-inhabited Mt Everest region of Nepal has become a premier international mountaineering and trekking destination. Tourism development has brought prosperity to many Sherpas. It has also, however, had adverse impacts on regional forests and alpine vegetation because of the use of firewood by camping groups and inns and the felling of trees to construct inns and other tourist facilities. Concern that tourism was causing widespread deforestation helped catalyse the 1976 establishment....
