Suitably impressed by his Manali visit, he was, however, dismayed by the depleting forest cover in the Mandi area and Shimla, which he is currently visiting. Such destruction, as a result of tourism and industrialisation, he also witnessed in China during his recent visit to Tibet. In contrast, the mountainous areas of Japan, he says, are very green. Seventyfive per cent of the country, which strictly adheres to its environment protection laws, is covered by forests. Rating tourism facilities in India and China almost on a par, he, however, avers that he was expecting better facilities in India considering that tourists have been visiting this multicultural land since the 60s, whereas China opened its doors to tourists only about a decade ago.

These maybe casual observations of a widely travelled foreigner but it wouldn’t be amiss to deliberate upon where we are heading, especially when the year 2002 has been designated the International Year of Mountains (IYM) and International Year of Ecotourism (IYE).

IYM comes as a call of the United Nations to protect the mountains, which are home to one-tenth of the world’s population yet provide water to more than half the world. Another objective of the IYM is to ensure the well-being of mountain people by promoting sustainable development of mountain ecosystems. Making the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in charge of the programme, the UN has directed it to collaborate with governments, NGOs and other UN organisations and focus on the rapid pace of globalisation, urbanisation and mass tourism that are threatening mountain communities and the resources they depend on.

Jacques Diouf, Director-General, FAO, while admitting that mountains are the sites of most of the armed conflicts in the world and home to some of the most impoverished people, says peace and food security were the prerequisites for achieving IYM’s goals.

But before we talk of any such prerequisites, how many of us can even admit being aware of this worldwide move to shield mountain areas, which are facing increasing marginalisation, economic decline and environmental degradation. Almost half the year has gone by but there is still no news of what came of the proposal sent by Dr Karan Singh, president of People’s Commission on Environment and Development, to the Prime Minister in mid-December last year, seeking the formation of a broad-based national committee on mountains. With almost non-existent central initiative, it is not surprising to find state governments — HP being one of them — draw a blank on the issue.

In comparison, the J&K Government fares a shade better

The state, home to some of the most majestic Himalayan mountains, has formed a six-member committee, which is yet to go beyond the planning stage.

All not well with the Himalayas

Nicholas Roerich, one of the innumerable artists who chose to settle in the lap of nature and made the picturesque Himachal their home, beautifully captured the spirit of the world’s grandest range in his work Himalayas.

But, unfortunately, all is not well with the Himalayas today, its strength and spirit is flagging. This 2500-km-long mountain chain, which has for 30 million years served as a valuable reserve of natural resources and has been a centre of culture, tradition and recreation, is facing a number of stresses resulting from increasing tourism and other commercial ventures.

No doubt, the lure of these divine but dangerous, beautiful but brutal, fragile but fierce mountains is hard to resist. But, ironically, it’s this grandeur and ethereal beauty — finding expression in the challenging and rugged terrain, snow-capped peaks, long-winding pathways that bring a new vista at each turn, evocative fragrance of pines and deodars, lush meadows, jewel-like lakes, fascinating flora and fauna, rich culture of its people and interesting architecture — which is fast becoming its bane.

Leaving aside tourists, pilgrims and research teams, trekkers alone visiting the Himalayas every year add up to more than 1 lakh and each year their number continues to rise.

This can be seen as a shot in the arm of the tourism industry but, as per environmentalists, it spells bad news for the ecosystem, which has been upset by the garbage left behind by mountaineers and the deforestation of the lower Himalayas for cultivation purposes and for attaining timber.

In 1951, when Sir Edmund Hillary began visiting the Himalayas, he did not see even a single person in the two months he spent in the mountains. "It was a marvellous experience, dozens of untouched summits to reach, glaciers to explore and a tremendous sense of isolation and remoteness."

Since then a lot has changed for the worse. The dense forests have shrunk and erosion has been unchecked and extensive. According to him, tourism, which was almost non-existent in the fifties, has contributed largely to the damage. "Now tens of thousands of people — mostly the young but many of mature years too — are walking the hill tracks, floating down the rivers, driving over the great Himalayan passes, landing in tiny air fields in remote villages…the impact of all these people has been substantial. The Himalayan environment has suffered severely."

As part of an international initiative to clean the mountains, 4.3 tonnes of garbage, including 211 oxygen cylinders, water bottles, cans and other non-biodegradable stuff, was brought down from Mount Everest, dubbed the world’s highest junkyard by Hillary. This trash was removed last year from as high as 7985 mt.

Earlier, in 1998, a Canadian mountaineering team lowered 325 kg of garbage from a height of 5360 mt. In another instance, an Army team cleared 450 kg of garbage from the highly protected Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.

But are these retrieval acts the solution to a cleaner Everest? World renowned mountaineer Chris Bonington does not think so. "The clean-up expeditions are not a solution. The responsibility for cleaning the Himalayas is mine, yours and every single climber’s. You don’t just clear your own mess, you clear someone else’s as well."

Giving way to greed and immediate commercial gains, there have been several occasions when the authorities have ignored or paid scant regard to pleas of environmentalists. A case in point, with reference to Mount Everest again, has been the little desire shown by the Nepalese Government to check the mountaineering flow, which has increased manifold over the years. While the year 1970 saw just two climbers scale the peak; in 1990, 72 reached the top. Now more than 150 climb the mountain every year, and each of them shells out a royalty fee of Rs 4.4 lakh, as against the Rs 5,000 charged for an expedition in 1965.

Surely during the golden jubilee celebrations this year of the first conquest of the Everest on May 29, 1953, some attention could be paid to Hillary’s suggestion that the peak be closed to climbers for five years to allow nature to do a clean-up job.

As much as a decade ago, Nepal, which is home to eight of the ten highest mountains in the world, did not allow more than one expedition in a day and now more than two dozen expeditions take off in the peak season. The government is also turning a blind eye to the ugly commercialisation of this serious mountaineering activity. Now you have tour operators who take large sums of money to virtually heave you atop the Everest. The height of commercialisation, however, is the 52-bedded hotel that will come up at 17,000 feet above sea level in the Rongbuk valley in the Everest. While a number of climbers and environmentalists have strongly protested against this venture, fearing that it will "make the area around the Everest a virtual theme park," others have called the project "regrettable but inevitable."

Tourism, no doubt, fetches handsome revenue to governments (4.4 per cent of the world’s GDP flows directly from tourism and over 200 million people are employed in the tourism industry) and is many times the mainstay of the people living in the hills. But are these simple, trusting hill folk the major beneficiaries of this rapidly growing industry? The answer almost always is they are not. As a resident of Shimla angrily points out, "The tourism sector has literally been sold out to non-Himachalis. Law to safeguard the hill people is being flouted with benami deals. Outsiders run big hotels using cheap local labour. What is more, their gains are not reinvested in the state."

With the current year being designated to protect the mountains and its people, it becomes imperative to raise certain questions which have no doubt been taken up many a time, but have always fallen short of plausible answers in an attempt to hide political laxity or erroneous government actions and decisions.

Why is the Centre’s conscience not pricked by the slow pace of development in hill areas, especially the northeastern states and the upper reaches of Himachal and Garhwal? What do the authorities have to say about the poor educational and medical facilities in these areas? Why do schools lack sufficient staff and some are even devoid of basic infrastructure like blackboards and benches? Why are the transport facilities inadequate and the roads not well-maintained? Haven’t the shortsighted policies of the successive governments in Himachal Pradesh resulted in the mess called Shimla today?

Instead of taking remedial measures to stem the degeneration of the tourist town, building rules are being flouted with impunity by the HP Government itself (the High Court building being a classic example), trees are being felled in the name of tourism and urbanisation and little is done to check the water shortage that hits the town year after year during peak tourist season. Recently, during the keenly contested municipal elections, all parties brazenly violated the ban on the use of recycled coloured polythene, which can cause irreparable damage to the environment. On the one hand, the leaders promised to beautify the town and make it pollution-free and on the other hand they mindlessly decorated the whole town with plastic buntings.

And it will not be surprising if the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) officials, who noted at the launch of IYM that vital sources of fresh water are disappearing, get taken aback by the rapidity at which crystal-clear springs in the town have disappeared. The dismal state of the once free-flowing nullahs, which remain clogged with garbage, hotels waste and polybags, is also cause of much concern to environmentalists and residents of the town. If the Corporation would just take the trouble to maintain these drains, the Queen of Hills would be a cleaner place.

The Tehri Dam project, which is nearing completion, is one more example of the apathetic attitude of the government towards the locals. The authorities chose to go ahead with this project even though two committees rejected it in the preliminary stage itself. Both the SK Roy Committee set up by Indira Gandhi and the Environment Appraisal Committee in 1990 announced that the project " does not merit environment clearance" and recommended its abandonment. No attention was paid even to the leader of the Save Himalaya Movement, Sunderlal Bahuguna, who has all along been protesting against the unsafe project. According to him, the surrounding hills of the dam have lost their grip due to the repeated explosions at the project site.

Environmentalists warn that in case of a failure in the Tehri Dam, the possibility of which cannot be ignored keeping in view the two major quakes in Uttarkashi and Chamoli, the the reservoir will be drained out in 22 minutes flat. The waters will inundate a major part of the region, including Rishikesh, Hardwar and Meerut. Even Delhi shall have to face the brunt.

Receding Himalayan glaciers, which can also cause flash flooding, is another ecological threat that the government is yet to initiate action on. According to the International Commission for Snow and Ice, glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world. Already Triloknath, Chota Shingri and Bara Shingri glaciers in Himachal Pradesh, Pindari, Milam, Ponting and Gangotri glaciers in Uttaranchal and Zenu glacier in Sikkim are receding. A UNEP study attributes the melting of glaciers and the expansion of glacial lakes to global warming. It says that 44 glacial lakes in Nepal and Bhutan are filling so rapidly that they could burst their banks in five years from now.

Both these countries have made an assessment of the damage, but India is yet to conduct any such study even though the receding glaciers can affect the rivers and hydro power plants in the country.

It is expected that during whatever is left of the current year, determined steps will be initiated to achieve a balance between development and preservation. By looking after our mountains and its people, we can be certain of the safety of everything connected and linked with them. And that includes us, who depend on them for our very existence.

Photos: Roopinder Singh