RESPONSIBLE TOURISM IN EVEREST BASE CAMP
The ever-increasing number of tourists visiting the Sagarmatha National Park, home to Everest Base Camp, has definitely boosted the local economy and standard of living, with better health, education and infrastructure facilities now available to local people, but it’s also caused issues that are troubling to any responsible traveller.
This leads to a contradiction; in visiting Nepal we are supporting the local economy but also contributing to regional problems. The more people that plod up the trail to Everest Base Camp, the more litter that is dropped or poorly disposed of. In addition, our need for a hot meal and the human waste we inevitably produce can pressurise often fragile local infrastructure. We may enjoy the teahouses lining the route, and read the area as well set up for tourism, without questioning where our human waste is being dumped, whether the wood our meal was cooked on is contributing to deforestation, or how our litter is discarded.
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PEOPLE & CULTURE
Porters rights
Most guided treks to Everest Base Camp employ a team of porters to carry bags. For the lucky trekker, that means simply carrying a daypack up the trail, but what does it mean for the porter? It’s tempting to think of porters or guides as heroic individuals who can trek to Base Camp carrying two packs, wearing only flip-flops and an old jumper. Whilst many porters and guides do indeed have incredible strength and stamina, most Nepalese porters are poor farmers from lowland areas, unused to high altitudes and harsh mountain conditions.Undoubtedly, the income from your trek provides a vital wage for porters and their extended families, but porters can also be taken advantage of and poorly treated. They suffer four times as many accidents as trekkers, and reports of porters being forced to carry more than the recommended maximum load of 25kg are not uncommon. Porters have even been abandoned by tour groups when they fall ill, or left behind in life-threatening blizzards while trekkers were rescued by helicopter. This is unacceptable. It’s easy to forget how fortunate many of us are, with sick pay and incapacity benefit to fall back on; if an overloaded porter in Nepal strains his back or gets frostbite he cannot work – and his family cannot eat.
Sherpa's safety on Everest
In addition to the porters that serve the route to Base Camp, many Sherpa people form the region work on the expeditions that attempt to summit Everest. Known for their strength and kindness, the Sherpa people have lived on the rugged south shoulders of Everest for centuries, after crossing the Himalayas from Tibet ('Sherpa' means 'Easterner' in Tibetan). An ancient legend said that the first man to climb the world’s highest mountain would be a Sherpa and on May 29, 1953 that came true, when Tenzing Norgay stood with Sir Edmund Hillary at the top of the world.That achievement, though, paved the way for hundreds of climbing expeditions, always supported and made possible by teams of hardy, brave Sherpas. Although raised in its shadow, Sherpas are just as likely to fall foul of the mountain as anyone and from 1924 to June 2016, 114 Sherpas died on Everest, while the first casualties recorded on the mountain were the deaths of seven Sherpas during Britain’s first reconnaissance expedition in 1922. In 2014, 16 Sherpas died during an avalanche, working as so-called ‘ice doctors’ to make the Khumbu Icefall safe.
This is dangerous, difficult work. The Sherpas aren’t simply climbing the mountain alongside expedition teams; they are making those expeditions safe and possible by fixing lines, shuttling supplies and escorting paid clients to the summit. They are exposed to the worst dangers on the mountain—rockfalls, crevasses, frostbite, exhaustion and, due to the blood-thickening effects of altitude, clots and strokes, all of which can kill or cause lasting disabilities and health issues. Even the relatively safe Base Camp has proved treacherous; after the April 2015 earthquake, an avalanche ripped through the camp, and 10 of the 22 deaths were Sherpas.
A Sherpa working above Base Camp on Everest is more than three and a half times as likely to perish as an infantryman was during the first four years of the Iraq war. For someone making a once-in-a-lifetime attempt to reach the summit, the dangers of climbing can perhaps be rationalised; but as a workplace safety statistic, 1.2 percent mortality for Sherpas is a horrific figure. There’s no other service industry in the world that so frequently kills and maims its workers for the benefit of paying clients.
* Source: a research article by Grayson Schaffer for Outside magazine in 2013, entitled The Disposable Man.
What you can do
Even those of us who will never attempt to summit Mount Everest can support the region’s Sherpa communities while in Nepal by spending time in Namche Bazaar, the seat of Sherpa culture. Shop and eat here, visit the Sherpa museum and simply take time to chat with local people and guides, to find out more about the sacrifice Sherpas have made, and continue to make, in servicing climbing parties. You might also like to donate to the Himalayan Trust UK, a sister organisation to Sir Edmund Hillary’s original Himalayan Trust NZ. Since Hillary summitted Everest, this organisation has supported the Solukhumbu region, building hospitals, health clinics and over 300 schools, planting over two million trees, building bridges and repairing Buddhist monasteries.
Everest overcrowding
WILDLIFE & ENVIRONMENT
Post earthquake
Human waste & litter
Humans produce waste, and not just of the dropped crisp packet variety. The more than 700 climbers and guides who spend nearly two months on Everest's slopes each climbing season leave huge quantities of faeces and urine, a problem that is causing pollution and threatening to spread disease around the world's highest peak. A hole in the snow stands in for any proper toilet facilities once climbers head beyond Base Camp, and around the four camps positioned on the ascent, waste has been piling up for years, with the high altitude and freezing temperatures preventing decomposition.At Base Camp, porters, cooks and support staff gather during climbing season and, combined with climbers and trekkers, produce around 5,500kg of waste a year*. There are toilet tents set up here, with drums to store the waste, which are carried to a lower area and emptied once full. Sadly, though, some of this waste ends up in the waterways that nearby villages rely upon, causing local people to become ill from water contaminated by dumped human waste.
So far, the Nepalese government has not come up with a plan for tackling this unpleasant issue.
Waste disposal is also a challenging problem on the route up to Base Camp, because of the remote terrain and inadequate infrastructure of this area. Teahouse owners sometimes use septic tanks that can leak, polluting the water, and may also dispose of solid waste in huge, open-air landfill pits.
Proper rubbish disposal is another challenge facing Sagarmatha National Park and Everest itself. On the mountain, litter is a huge issue. Discarded oxygen cylinders, tents, plastics and climbing kit, and even dead bodies, which don't decompose because of the altitude, litter the mountain's sides. In 2014, the Nepalese government imposed new rules which require each climber to bring down 8kg of rubbish to Base Camp after attempting the summit; this is the amount it estimates that a single climber discards along the route. Climbing teams lose their deposit of $4,000 if they don't comply.
Around and below Base Camp, the Sagarmatha National Park Pollution Control Community, an NGO based in Namche Bazaar, is doing valuable work with local people, educating them about rubbish and correct disposal and organising litter clearance. The National Park has also banned things like glass bottles of beer.
* Source: US geographer Alton Byers quoted in Vice News.
What you can do
Disposing of litter responsibly is something anyone visiting Everest Base Camp should do. Any waste you produce should be stored and taken back to Kathmandu, where it can be disposed of safely. If you leave it up in the Himalaya, the locals will bury it or burn it, neither of which is good for the environment. If you have space in your backpack, pick up any extra litter you spot on the trail as you descend, especially harmful waste such as batteries. Try not to accept plastic bags from shops, reuse the ones you have, and buy food from markets to avoid packaging when possible. Don't buy bottled water; instead, bring your own bottle and invest in a LifeStraw or purification tablets and use them to safely treat the water supplied at teahouses.