Broughton Coburn of Wilson, Wyoming, is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colorado College. He has worked in conservation and development projects in Nepal, Tibet and India for the four decades, for a variety of international agencies. In Nepal, he worked for the establishment of the Annapurna Area Conservation Project (ACAP), which attracts thousands of tourists, domestic and foreign, every year.
Ahead of the government’s ambitious Visit Nepal Year 2020, Coburn recently spoke to Onlinkhabar about his time in ACAP and how conservation areas in Nepal have failed to live up to expectations of the tourism industry.
Excerpts:
How did you get into ACAP?
I came to Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer and was posted in Syangja. I lived with a Gurung lady, wrote two books about her and also worked in a few micro-hydropower projects.
Then I got the chance to work at the agriculture department’s division of soil science, which had a project funded by the USAID. There we developed a project exploring the potential for biogas (gobar gas). I also worked with UNESCO for a few projects.
That is when I got associated with King Mahendra’s Trust for Nature Conservation (which later renamed as National Trust for Nature Conservation). That is how I became part of ACAP.
What were your first works?
We started working on creating Nepal’s conservation areas and also worked on supporting several conservation and research projects like the ambitious proposal to develop ACAP.
When I talk about this, I have to mention the names of Dr Hementa Mishra, Dr Chandra Prasad Gurung and Dr Mingma Norbu Sherpa. With them, we went around the Annapurna region gathering information and speaking with villagers and village leaders. We then started looking at various development plans and objectives.
Looking at it now, aren’t you disappointed that it doesn’t run with the same values as it did back then?
I would say no. As sometimes happen with organisation that grows too large and exists too long and that become too accustomed to a reliable stream of revenue, they become a bit bureaucratic. But it’s not operating at the same level of motivation and energy it once had.
What are the major challenges for an organisation like these?
Well, the major challenges I see are about growth and development. These are outpacing the conservation areas’ ability to manage the resources in a sustainable manner. Apart from that, the law regulating the project is expiring on January 17, 2020, and it’s not clear what happens after it expires. These people don’t know. I have a feeling that these people think that they haven’t been helped by politics.
Is the area too big? Can it not be broken down so works can be done more effectively?
For ACAP, I think, it can be done. Also maybe for MCAP (Manaslu), but I don’t know about others. I personally feel that ACAP is too big. I think it needs to be redefined and restructured. Maybe we were too ambitious in the 80s. I feel these lowland villages can go (out) as they are not really of any environmental and touristic importance. (Don’t tell villagers that!)
Is money also a problem? No one wants to give up on it.
Well, that is one of the problems. Maybe the biggest. I think money is keeping ACAP from evolving to the next era. No one wants to give up that revenue stream. This is why I said we need to redesign it wholly.
What about the roads? Are they affecting the conservation areas?
Well, it does affect the conservation areas. Both ACAP and MCAP do not have the power to suggest that people do an environmental impact assessment. From what I’ve gathered, the EIA is regarded as an obstacle to development. Conducting the EIA and enforcing the recommendations should be their mission, but they are failing in their duty to seriously question, oversee and monitor the environmental standards of the roads that are coming into ACAP and MCAP.
Trekkers complain that the motor road has killed the trails. Do you feel so?
If you talk to ACAP, they tell you about the alternate trekking route. In some of these sections, it’s better to take the trekking route, but in some, it’s outright dangerous. I think these alternate trekking routes will be gone in a few years. The rivers in the Himalayas are prone to landslides. If they happen where the road is it’s normally cleared, okay, but if they happen where the trails are not cleared as they don’t have any budget for it, it will not become good. If a big landslide comes, the trail will be done for the season and probably beyond it.
So I’d have to agree with the trekkers.
Your thoughts on conservation area projects in general?
For someone who was involved in the early stages of the Annapurna Conservation Area Project, I am a bit disappointed. The state of MCAP is the same. There are no rangers as we go higher up and lack of management is evident.
These are protected areas and if it intends to follow the mission of providing for some sustainable development with the goal of preserving the environment, they have to be a bit serious. I don’t think they have been making serious efforts towards that goal in recent times.
Why do you think that’s the case? These places get thousands of tourists every year who pay a lot to get in. Yet the area is polluted and the trails are bad. Have they been following conservation ethics?
Well, I don’t think they have. Not adequately anyway. These questions should be posed to the NTNC, ACAP and MCAP.
Most probably they will list the things that they are doing like the establishment of the conservation area management committees and the distribution of green trash bins funded by USAID. They will also list some activities that they’ve done that will protect the environment. But it’s clearly inadequate.
They’re interested in the conservation, frankly to a large degree, because of the revenue that tourists bring in. Our group which had nine people recently paid $1,900 in permit cost to the NTNC.
But having seen what I have, I would like to ask where the money goes and how it is used. I want to see the evidence because right now I feel that nothing is done to protect tourist resources or the environment.
Could you share some incidents that you saw there?
An employee working for a new lodge in Samdo was running down to the river with a bag with waste which includes plastic bottles, tin cans, papers and dumping it in the river, sending it downstream. I had a talk with the lodge manager but he says it’s just the way it is.
These kinds of incidents sadden me because 30 years post ACAP, people still do this.
Another incident I want to share: near Bimthang and Dharapani, I saw uncontrolled goats and sheep grazing. Arguably goats in particular do not belong to the protected area which is environmentally diverse. I asked if the farmer paid a fee to ACAP but he said he doesn’t have to pay any fee and that there was no restriction. So I saw that there was no restrains on anyone, which is quite odd. They were free to do anything in the conservation area.
Goats can do a phenomenal amount of destruction in a short period of time. In landslide-prone areas, they trigger them.
By the way, what brings you back to Nepal?
Every odd year, I come to teach a Colorado College course in Nepal. It mostly happens around the Manaslu Conservation Area Project. It’s a three-and-half-week course for 15 students. It’s multidisciplinary where we look at culture, environment and socio-economic change in a high Himalayan valley.
We look at everything. We visit micro-hydro sites, meet ward chairpersons, look at flora and fauna around the area and also go see glaciers. Apart from that, we also observe livestock management and agricultural techniques.
This year, we also held a discussion with locals regarding motor roads and out-migration which is changing the face of the high Himalayas.
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