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1 Introduction

“In a thousand ages of the gods, I could not tell you of the glories of the Himalaya.” So wrote a Sanskrit poet who found himself at a loss for words to describe the beauty and magnificence of the Himalaya. The beauty and magnificence remain, but there is another element that is beginning to threaten them: environmental degradation. The snow-covered peaks glisten in the sun, but barrenness marks the mountains below. The Himalayan farmer is no expert in ecology, but during the past three decades he has seen his land gradually yield less and has watched with anguish the loss of his fields and cattle to landslides during the wet monsoon. The desolation of the mountains is a problem created by humans. The destruction of forests and vegetation is not an isolated instance in the Himalaya; it is only one example of regional environmental problems. On a global scale, a noxious cocktail of soot, smog, and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia. Rain can cleanse the skies, but some of the black grime that falls to earth ends up on the surface of the Himalayan glaciers that are the source of water for billions of people in India, Pakistan, and China. As a result, the glaciers that feed into the Ganges, Indus, Yangtse, and Yellow Rivers are absorbing more sunlight and are melting more rapidly. According to the United Nations report, these glaciers have shrunk by 5 % since the 1950s and, at the current rate of retreat, could shrink by an additional 75 % by 2050. Although the overall impact of the clouds is not entirely understood, what is happening in the Himalaya may be affecting precipitation in parts of India and Southeast Asia, where monsoon rainfall has been decreasing in recent decades, and central China, where devastating floods have become more frequent.

The Himalaya extends 2,720 km from the southern edge of Central Asia to the borders of Burma and Yunan Province in China. More than 50 million people live in this region. Increasing at a rate of nearly 2 % annually, the population is being forced ever upward on the slopes of the Himalaya. The slopes are too steep and the soils too thin for intensive cultivation, even with the aid of terracing. Nevertheless, with a rapidly growing population, each hectare of arable land on the slopes must support larger numbers of people. Despite hard work, many Himalayan farmers get poor yields from their land, for it lacks the physical characteristics to give more than a meager level of sustenance. The fragile mountain environments are subjected to uses that cannot be sustained, and the middle Himalayan slopes are becoming unproductive. The farmers become ecological refugees who move to the foothills and the piedmont plain.

The rapidly increasing interregional migration of people from the mountains to the piedmont plain in Nepal, Bhutan, and the Indian Himalaya is more than a demographic phenomenon. High land–man ratios, limited employment opportunities, low income, food shortages, and steadily deteriorating economic conditions, combined with natural hazards such as soil erosion, floods, and landslides, contribute to the migration of people from the mountains. This migration is causing environmental modifications that affect long-term productivity.

The slopes of the Himalaya contain tightly compressed vegetative belts that range from warm valley floors through deciduous and coniferous forests and alpine grasslands to permanent snow cover. Human survival in the mountainous environment is dependent on efficient exploitation of these narrow zones, and Himalayan societies have developed several strategies to cope with the limitations of vertical terrain where a single productive zone cannot meet the demands of a population. Some groups specialize in herding instead of cultivation and meet agricultural needs through trade with farmers at lower altitudes. This type of exchange allows exploitation of several available eco-zones. Some communities combine farming and herding at different altitudes with a seasonal trek of livestock and herders between valley floors and high pastures. In glacial valleys such as Langtang and Khumbu in Nepal, this kind of mixed agriculture or agropastoral transhumance is especially important because each altitudinal zone has a different function in the economy. The system requires a complex, cyclical movement of men and animals to suitable climates: an upslope trek in summer in pursuit of sun and forage, and a fall retreat in search of protection from the harshness of winter. This pendulum-like rhythm unites alpine pastures and valley floors to give mountain agriculture its characteristic ecological design.

The highlands of the Himalaya have developed distinctive patterns of land use and landownership to facilitate these intricate movements. Community law typically allows private ownership of small, cultivated fields and hay meadows located near the main village, whereas upland forests and alpine pastures are held in common. Garden plots and hay meadows require intensive care, and they can be exploited by private households. However, successful grazing on high pastures and use of forests require coordinated efforts. In recent years uncontrolled cutting of trees in some parts of the Himalaya to meet the demands of trekkers and tourists have left many highland communities without essential firewood or building materials, and overgrazing on the high pastures have led to irreversible erosion.

Traditional communities and economies in the Himalaya are also being transformed by influences from outside the region. Population pressures on the limited amount of land have sent highlanders upslope as well as to areas far from their home valleys to supplement incomes. For example, wage labor and military service in India and Nepal have been outlets for some groups for a long time.

During the past half century, tourism has played an important role in the Himalayan economy. The influx of mountain enthusiasts has created new employment opportunities for the highlanders, but tourism has also accelerated environmental deterioration. Tourism is only one threat to Himalayan ecology. Construction of roads, bridges, and hydroelectric dams has negative ecological effects on the finely tuned mountainous habitats. As economic development and population growth continue to threaten environmental stability in the Himalaya, the problem of preventing further environmental deterioration becomes urgent.

2 Geoecological Zones

The Himalaya may be divided into three geoecological zones: the Outer Himalaya, the Middle Himalaya, and the Great Himalaya. The Outer Himalaya is the lowest zone, with an average elevation between 1,000 and 2,000 m. The zone is contiguous with piedmont plains in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. The zone varies in width from approximately 48 km in the west to a narrow strip in the east. Except for a gap south of Bhutan and Darjeeling, the Outer Himalaya zone is continuous from the Indus River to the Brahmaputra. The zone has numerous longitudinal flat-bottomed valleys, called duns, which are usually spindle shaped and filled with gravelly alluvium.

One malarial dun, the Rapti Valley in southern Nepal, was transformed by an 80-km road built with United States aid in the late 1950s. The new road and a DDT-spraying program opened the valley, which previously had been a hunting preserve for the Rana rulers of Nepal, for settlement by more than 30,000 homeless, landless farmers from the Middle Himalaya. The success of the malaria eradication program led to other resettlement and land distribution efforts in southern Nepal. The resettlement programs in the Outer Himalaya have resulted in widespread clearing of forests to make land available for newcomers. Forests of the zone in most of Nepal and India are now restricted to small, scattered patches. Reforestation efforts in the past three decades have been successful in some areas.

The Middle Himalaya zone is approximately 80 km wide and abuts the flank of the Great Himalaya. This zone consists principally of branches running obliquely from the Great Himalayan Range and other disconnected units. The chief oblique branches are the well-known Mahabharat Range, which stretches on an east–west axis across Nepal, the Dhauladhar Range, and the Pir Panjal Range. The Middle Himalaya has a remarkable uniformity of elevation, between 3,000 and 5,000 m.

About 60 % of the Himalayan population lives in the valleys and on the slopes of this geoecological zone. Sizable concentrations of population exist in some large valleys such as the Kathmandu and Pokhara Valleys in Nepal, the Paro Valley in Bhutan, and the Vale of Kashmir. The density of population in the Kathmandu Valley is more than 1,200 persons per square kilometer, in the Pokhara Valley more than 500, and in the Vale of Kashmir more than 400. The small valleys and basins have fewer people, but even in the steepest and most rugged areas every patch of arable land has been settled, so that the most thinly populated regions still have densities of approximately 25 persons/km2.

Most cultivators in the Middle Himalaya are sustained by less than a quarter hectare of land and supplement their incomes by raising livestock and participating in cottage manufactures. The forests of this zone are receding further under the combined pressures of clearing for cultivation, uncontrolled grazing, and wood gathering for fuel. The removal of forests along the construction routes for roads also contributes to loss of topsoil, landslides, and excessive water runoff. The population of the Middle Himalaya is precariously dependent on the natural environment: any negative change in the physical environment adversely affects their survival. Environmental stress is generating a rural-to-rural migration flow within this geoecological zone and from it to the piedmont plain and the Outer Himalaya.

The highest geoecological zone is the Great Himalaya, which consists of a single range with 50 peaks of elevations more than 7,000 m. The peaks include Mount Everest (8,848 m), Kanchenjunga (8,578 m), Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), Makalu (8,470 m), Dhaulagiri (8,172 m), and Nanda Devi (7,817 m). The zone has an average width of 24 km, but southward-projecting spurs extend for a distance of 16 or more km. The Tibetan Himalaya comprises subordinate ranges on the northern flank of the Great Himalaya.

The Great Himalaya is sparsely populated; settlements are restricted to forest clearings in the high mountain valleys. An increased demand for firewood and overgrazing by livestock has initiated destruction of forests and alpine pastures in many areas. Most destructive than these demands of local origin is the use of firewood by campers and hikers who have become numerous during the past four decades. Tourism has created demands for services and materials that are slowly changing the ecology, the environment, and the economy of the Great Himalayan zone. For example, as firewood becomes increasingly scarce, cattle and yak dung is collected and burned instead of being used for fertilizer.

The net effect of overcropping, overgrazing, and overcutting in each geoecological zone is accelerated erosion of fertile topsoil. Brown-colored, silt-laden rivers–the Indus and its tributaries, the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Gandak, the Tista, and the Brahmaputra–carry away the soil that forms the basis of life for the Himalayan people. An estimated 280 million cubic meters of topsoil is washed away annually from Nepal Himalaya to the Gangetic Plain in India and Bangladesh. Himalayan silt stains the Bay of Bengal as far as 700 km from the shore, and during the devastating annual floods the debris spreads over the delta. A vast portion of the population of the Indian subcontinent lives on plains of streams that flow from the Himalaya and is thus vulnerable to consequences of ecological misuses upstream. Of major concern is the impact of environmental stress in the Himalaya on the expensive and ambitious irrigation projects that have sustained the green revolution in northern India.

3 Regional Variations in Environmental Degradation

Regional variations in environmental degradation exist in the Himalaya. Conditions range from an extremely crucial situation in Nepal to moderately serious in Indian Himalaya and a somewhat better situation in Bhutan. However, if rapid development continues in Bhutan without due regard for conservation, the problem may assume crucial proportions in the coming decade.

3.1 Western Himalaya

Environmental degradation in the western Himalaya includes widespread deforestation. The per capita forested area has continued to decline, no forests remain below 2,000 m, and the forested area in a middle belt rising to an average height of 3,000 m has been reduced substantially. In addition to increased demand for firewood and extensive lopping of trees to feed livestock, construction of a network of roads during the past five decades for strategic and developmental purposes in the border regions has been a major factor in destruction of forests, environmental degradation, and an increased number of landslides.

The rapidly increasing population has accelerated manmade pollution. Streams that formerly were clear are now polluted with refuse and domestic effluents. Hill people who use the water for drinking suffer from diarrhea: cholera and typhoid epidemics are frequent during pilgrimages to sacred places in the Himalaya. Large lakes such as Dal in Kashmir or Nainital in Uttarakhand have become polluted after an influx of tourists and pilgrims. The demand for firewood from these groups further depletes the forests. The effects of this type of influx on ecologically sensitive areas such as the Valley of Flowers between 3,658 and 3,962 m near Joshimath can be readily seen in the landscape.

Activities of the local forest departments intensify with the advent of roads in mountain areas. The main objective is to increase the yield of commercial timber and firewood. Contractors once cut only valuable timber and left secondary products such as roots and vegetal cover to stabilize the soil. Now indiscriminate felling that divests forests of their vital undergrowth prevails in many areas. Additionally, building sites are cleared to accommodate the hordes of road construction workers in temporary encampments. Replanting the cleared slopes is obviously essential to reduce further run.

The Gulaba Pass (3,600 m) was covered by dense forests only a few years ago, but it is now bare and barren. The Kulu Valley, formerly a picturesque scene of deodar trees, some 45 m high and 3 or more m in girth, is now almost barren. The felling of the tall coniferous trees has been followed by increase in the number of avalanches. Private landowners have cleared mountain slopes to plant apple orchards. The enterprise is profitable, and Himachal Pradesh has become a leading producer of apples in India. The need for packing cases to ship the apples is an additional burden on the limited forest resources. An apple tree requires 5 to 7 years of growth to bear fruit; meanwhile, farmers cultivate potatoes between the rows of apple trees and thereby promote soil erosion from the slopes.

In Kashmir, logging operations in remote forests roll cut logs down the hillsides, an activity that leads to soil erosion and landslides. The rich chir-pine forests in Kashmir have been damaged by excessive tapping of resin, which weakens the trees by sapping them dry. The weakened trees then break easily during storms. Fast-growing willow trees are traditionally a source of firewood for the people of Kashmir. Because a large portion of the harvest is used in the sporting goods industry, the population now experiences a shortage of firewood.

Livestock far outnumber people in western Himalaya. Nomadic graziers were once allowed to cross the international boundaries freely so that they had access to pastures in the Tibetan Himalaya. After the Sino-Indian hostilities, border crossing was stopped in 1962. Overgrazing and depletion of vegetal cover resulted.

3.2 Nepal Himalaya

Nepal, with an estimated population of nearly 30 million in 2009 living within an area of 140,797 km2, is one of the densely settled mountain countries and one of the most populated areas of the Himalaya. With increased population, forests have been depleted, and the consequent runoff produces erosion and loss of cultivable land. As much as 40 % of former farmland in eastern Nepal has been abandoned because it is no longer fertile enough to produce crops. One fourth of the forests in the country have been cut during the past four decades. These statistics are disturbing for a predominantly agricultural economy. About 95 % of the Nepalese population lives directly off the land. Some grow rice on the irrigated piedmont plain, but most subsist on maize, millet, and potatoes grown on narrow tracts of cultivated land along mountain slopes.

The lack of land leads poor people to extend the frontiers of agriculture into marginally productive areas of the mountains. Currently nearly 60 % of the Nepalese lives in villages in the Middle Himalayan valleys at altitudes between 450 and 3,600 m. Agricultural land is scarce in the mountains, but the population is dense. Since 2001 agricultural production has contracted significantly because of pressures by Maoist insurgents on farm owners and farm workers. The impact of more than a decade of Maoist insurgency in Nepal on the environment and the economy has been significant, and research is needed for a firm assessment.

As a result of the erosion of topsoil, the bed level of many rivers on the piedmont of Nepal and adjacent India is rising. The stream courses meander, and arable land is lost. Time is running out for efforts to cope with the consequences of environmental degradation in Nepal. An effective environmental preservation program must be accompanied by efforts to improve the general living conditions of most of Nepal’s poor and dispossessed people who subsist in the mountains. Many rural development projects with assistance from foreign countries or international agencies are trying to improve the environmental situation in Nepal. However, the political instability in the country during the past two decades has made it difficult to offset the damage to the environment.

3.3 Sikkim Himalaya

Population growth and demand for new farmland during the past four decades have pushed forest clearing higher and higher up the mountain slopes in Sikkim. The newly cleared land was first planted with maize or rice, but these crops gave little protection to the soil on the slopes. Rains washed away some of it and leached minerals on which soil fertility is dependent. The rivers of Sikkim become heavily silted during the rainy season. Dried gullies on the mountainsides dot the landscape during the dry season as visible evidence of the destruction of soil resources and environmental problems. Checking the loss of agricultural land through erosion control is a principal problem in Sikkim and Darjeeling, where hope for increased agricultural productivity is being eroded along with the soils that are necessary to support it.

Steepness of terrain, tectonic instability, heavy monsoonal rainfall, and rapid population growth are the factors that adversely affect the environment in Sikkim Himalaya. Sikkim has one of the highest rates of population growth in the Himalaya. Excluding areas above 3,000 m, cultivated land constitutes approximately 35 % of Sikkim. Since the integration of Sikkim into India in 1975, immigration has worsened population pressures on the land.

Blasting during construction of new roads has loosened the mountain slopes in many parts of the state. Excessive landslides are a consequence, and numerous landslip zones have been identified. Some slips have been forested. Stabilization of these areas requires major forestation and engineering work. Streams are polluted by debris from road construction, and the inadequate maintenance of roads and mountain slopes leads to gullying. As in the western Himalaya, opening the interior to motorized transportation hastens the destruction of otherwise inaccessible virgin forests. A developmental program consistent with environmental protection and improvement is clearly needed for Sikkim. The designation of an 850-km2 national park near Kanchenjunga in 1977 was a step in that direction.

3.4 Bhutan Himalaya

Bhutan has a small population (682,000) in relationship to its area (46,500 km2). The country has avoided many severe environmental problems that affect other parts of the Himalaya. Almost half the country remains forested. King Wangchuk has transformed Bhutan from one of the world’s most poor countries to one of its more enlightened in terms of environmental protection and cultural preservation. The economy has grown at an average annual rate of 7 % during the past 25 years, largely the result of exports of hydroelectricity to India. At the same time, the king maintained strict control over the country through decrees preserving the environment and the Buddhist culture of the majority of the Bhutanese. In a society rich in sacred streams and mountains, this approach is popular. It also ensures the protection of a precious ecosystem; under Bhutan’s constitution, at least 60 % of the country must be forested. The king’s actions are formulated under the overarching policy of “Gross National Happiness” as opposed to economic growth at any cost. Stringent checks on the exploitation of timber have created relatively few jobs. The government will have to create jobs for the growing number of educated youths. In the short term, ecotourism is the best hope. A plan to double the number of tourists (20,000 in 2007) will create a total of 100,000 jobs in the sector. This plan will require a new international airport as the current one, at Paro, is not adequate to handle the traffic. To improve the lot of poor peasants, the government will have to lead them out of subsistence farming. To bring their produce to market, many more roads must be built through pristine forests.

3.5 Eastern Himalaya

The Eastern Himalaya in Arunachal Pradesh until recently contained one of the largest reserves of subtropical forests in the Himalaya. The reserves have a wide range of flora and fauna, including the rare, one-horned rhinoceros. However, pressure on the forests is mounting as a result of growing population, road building, and improved communications. The forest products are the most significant sector of Arunachal Pradesh economy. To preserve the forest, Arunachal Pradesh has stopped additional sawmills and plywood production. However, large-scale felling in recent decades has already extended into some areas of virgin forest.

Large projects as part of the flood control program on Subansiri and Dibang Rivers involve deforestation and population resettlement. A negative impact on the ecosystem can be expected. The dams would submerge large tribal habitations, including rice terraces. The tribe’s people who adopted sedentary, terraced rice cultivation on the hill slopes during the past several decades may be forced to return to marginal slash-and-burn farming in the hills.

4 Responses to Environmental Stress

The governments of India, Nepal, and Bhutan are aware of the dangers from environmental degradation in the Himalaya. India has established one of the largest forest protection funds and plans to set up a regulatory body modeled on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in an effort to improve its dismal environmental track record. The $2.5 billion fund will be earmarked for the regeneration and management of forests, which have been identified as an important means of reducing carbon emissions according to a 2009 report from the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. An additional $1 billion in public funds will be allocated for forestry-related activities. These measures should help preserve the forests and protect the environment in the Himalaya. Various state governments have banned commercial felling in areas above 1,000 m. All forest areas in Himachal Pradesh have been nationalized to prevent overexploitation. Environmental preservation is one of the principal goals of the development plan in Bhutan. Various international agencies aid the Nepalese government in creating programs for the integrated development of mountain areas to arrest further ecological damage.

The people of the Himalaya are becoming increasingly aware of the serious ecological and environmental problems in the region. The chipko movement, launched in 1972 in Kumaon to protest the sale of ash trees to a sporting goods manufacturer by the state forestry department, has done much to create an awareness of environmental degradation in the Himalaya. The movement began when villagers, protesting the felling by contractors, literally hugged the trees. The villagers were successful, and the forestry department allotted another area to the sporting goods firm. The chipko movement has broadened from a local protest to a principal activity for environmental conservation. Its leaders have traversed the Himalaya from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh on foot to assess environmental damage and to mobilize public opinion in support of conservation of the soil, water, and forest resources.

Environmental degradation involves several factors, and solutions must be sought by accounting for these variations. Different methods include education, integrated corrective activities, institutional change, and encouragement of decision making at the local level. A solution to the environmental crisis cannot be general because the causes lie in varied local and regional conditions, but I outline here five policies to handle the problems.

Because environmental problems in the Himalaya have arisen from the processes of rapid development and population growth as well as physical processes, one of the challenges facing scholars of the mountain environment is to separate environmental changes caused by human activities from changes that would have occurred without human interference. Research should stress identification of the role of human and physical factors in the nature and extent of environmental degradation in Himalayan subregions. A land classification survey, accounting for soil types, erodibility, and rockiness as well as slopes and drainage, and a land use study would be necessary to development a plan for conservation of soil and water in various subregions. With data on land capacity, farmers in the Himalaya could be encouraged to put land to its best use, and a set of conservation measures could be devised to maintain the land in optimal condition.

Concern for preservation of the fragile Himalayan environment should be at the core of future developmental plans. Resources such as forests, hydroelectricity, and scenic beauty must be considered in the context of preserving the quality of mountain landscapes and environments. Overall developmental plans and specific projects must contain measures to protect the environment.

The complex environmental problems of the Himalaya require an integrated approach to their solution. Currently projects for environmental protection are spread throughout numerous governmental agencies. It is important to have an administrative structure that facilitates coordination among agencies that implement plans for resource exploitation and environmental protection.

Himalayan governments must continue to weigh carefully the relative desirability of uncontrolled growth or guided growth with conservation, of sophisticated mechanized techniques or appropriate technology in resource development, and of urban growth or rural development. It is hoped that the development in the Himalaya will stress both economic and environmental goals.

Plans for development and environmental preservation must consider the important role of women in Himalayan society. In Himalayan villages, women perform almost half the agricultural labor and most of the domestic chores. Their workload increases when environmental degradation forces them to journey ever farther in search of firewood or fodder for livestock and water. Women not only do most of the labor in obtaining foodstuffs and fuel and water, but also make many decisions about these tasks, but they have limited access to information about conservation and techniques of resource management. Women should participate in formal and informal nontechnical training programs to be effectively involved in conservation of resources and environmental management in the Himalaya.