EcoVitality Integrated Conservation and Development in Poor Countries

FOREST PRESERVATION PROJECT IN NORTHERN PAKISTAN

LOGGING IN FAIRY MEADOWS FOREST

Three villages are located on the precipitous track climbing from the Indus River Gorge and Karakoram Highway to the scenic Fairy Meadows located at around 10,000 feet.   The Alpine meadows and forest stand alongside a glacier sliding imperceptibly down from the giant massif of nanga Parbat,  the ninth tallest mountain  and likely the world's largest mountain in terms of mass or bulk.  The villages--Tato, Phung Thehri (Fairy Meadows), and Byal in ascending order---have long had the traditional right to exploit wood from the Fairy Meadows Forest.  In the past ten years, they agreed to let a wealthy Pakistani resort owner and his family cut down several hundred thousand board-feet of timber from the forest, leading to a blight on scenic values and the typical environmental damage resulting from deforestation in mountainous areas.  The entrepreneur paid the people of the villages a very low fee for shipments of raw logs after agreeing that he would put in a 4-wheel drive logging road as part of the deal.  The lost scenic and ecological value of the area was ignored by villagers and timber baron alike.  The resort owner passed away recently, but his son continued the logging operation until some local people had a conflict with the logging contractor the entrepreneur had hired.   At that point, the villagers stopped allowing the entrepreneur to cut down more trees.   However, when we visited the villages in July, 1999, the villagers had not ruled out timber revenues from other potential logging operations.  We found the villagers do not really want the forest to be progressively destroyed, but they do want higher family incomes and could see no alternative way to earn them.

Fairy Meadows and the forest are at the top of the Tato Track,
Along the Raikot Glacier.    Map  © The Guidebook Company Ltd.

The environmental damage may be reflected in two passages from Pakistan guidebooks written by Isobel Shaw.   The earlier excerpt said:

The second excerpt, written only three years later, had a much different tone:

Fairy Meadows, Forest, Glacier, and Cut Trees
with nanga Parbat in the Background

LOGGING IN RAMA FOREST

During our July, 1999, visit to the area, we found extensive logging in the Rama Forest around Rama Peak, Rama Ridge and Rama Lake on the eastern flanks of nanga Parbat.  This forest area is controlled by the government of the Northern Areas, but government ownership had not prevented widespread tree felling.  The forest was filled with cut logs that were simply lying on the ground rotting, and there were log piles at frequent intervals along the two rough jeep tracks that connect the various villages in the area.  We met with representatives of the villages of Dashkin, Mushkin, Khodkisht, and Turbuling in the Astore River Valley around the Rama forest, and learned that most of the residents would prefer not to damage the nearby forests.  But, again, they were reluctant to prohibit logging in the absence of alternative sources of income.  Indeed, the community of Turbuling flatly refused to abandon logging unless we were able to provide them with improved incomes through other means.  In effect, they were trying to use the local forest as a "hostage" to blackmail environmental NGOs into offering increased economic development.  Before EcoVitality negotiated with these four villages, the people of Turbuling rejected forest conservation efforts by the IUCN--Pakistan organization because they felt the economic benefits were inadequate.

ECOVITALITY'S FOREST CONSERVATION PLAN

Our conservation plan is to provide the villagers who live in and exploit the Fairy Meadows and Rama forests with improved incomes that allow them to preserve and sustainably use, rather than destroy, their natural resources.  This income does not necessarily have to be higher than payments they have previously received for allowing the forests to be logged, though that is our goal, but the returns must be high enough for the villagers to conclude on balance that they are better off participating in EcoVitality's program than they would be by allowing continued nonsustainable deforestation.

In order to provide more lucrative economic returns and some measure of diversification, EcoVitality will provide  several means to raise the villagers' standard of living:

ECOTOURISM AND TREKKING:  While there is already a well-established market for adventure travel and trekking in the Himalayas, few tourism operators in developed countries offer tours to the nanga Parbat region despite its spectacular scenic attractions.  We intend to sponsor "deluxe" treks in this area each summer, although we will limit each itinerary to no more than four or five tours per year, with no more than 8 clients on each tour, to avoid imposing excessive ecological and cultural pressures.  Guides and porters would be hired from the villages on a rotating basis to ensure that local people benefit directly from every trekking trip.  We will also be purchasing food supplies from local producers to the greatest extent possible.  From our perspective, the closer the contacts between our clients and the villagers ,  and the more the trekkers learn about the conservation effects of our programs, the more likely these experiences are to promote return patronage, contributions, and involvement with EcoVitality projects in the future.  Everybody wins (except those profiting from damaging the beautiful Fairy Meadows and Rama forest areas).

DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS FUNDED BY ECOVITALITY PROFITS:  We have asked the Fairy Meadows area villages and the Rama area villages to create a priority list of projects they would like EcoVitality to fund using its profits from ecotourism.  The Fairy Meadows people selected repairing an existing water course and constructing a new irrigation channel as their priority projects.  The residents from Dashkin, Mushkin, and Khodkisht asked us to fund the completion and staffing of the only secondary school in the area.  And the residents of Turbuling, the poorest village in the area, have not yet chosen a specific project and may decide instead to ask for income assistance for each family in the village on a proportional basis.  If our trekking programs are reasonably successful, we will be able to fund all of these priority projects fully by the end of the 2001 summer.

WOODWORKING   SCHOOL IN DASHKIN:  In light of the large amount of fallen timber and confiscated logs in the Astore Valley villages, we agreed to construct and staff a woodworking school that will teach ten students from Dashkin, Mushkin, and Khodkisht and two students from Turbuling how to make manufactured wood products using the available dead wood.  We are also negotiating with the Government's Conservator of Forests for the Northern Areas to have the Forestry Department designate mature trees that can be harvested in the future on a sustainable basis if and when the current abundance of fallen trees and cut logs in depleted.  This woodworking school will teach the villagers basic skills and commission them to make relatively simple wood products, such as   tables and desks, that can be used for community purposes or sold in local markets.  This initiative will provide new livelihoods for the twelve students and may enable some of them to obtain higher paying employment in other areas of Pakistan if that is their preference.  We will have to monitor the wood consumption rate of the school to determine if it is ecologically safe to educate another group of students when the first twelve have graduated.

In return for the financial benefits that will accrue to the villagers from these EcoVitality efforts, we have required that they implement a few obvious but necessary conservation measures:  They must not to sell their trees to any commercial timber-cutting operator.   They must try to apprehend anyone cutting trees in the forest without the explicit permission of the government or village committee, and to turn these illegal loggers over to appropriate government authorities.  They must allow access to EcoVitality forestry experts who will assess the conditions of the Fairy Meadows and Rama forests on a periodic basis.  And in the future they will have to participate in a reforestation program, requiring the planting of several trees of the same species for each tree they cut down.   This latter program will first require development of a local nursery for indigenous species, which we would like to fund next year to facilitate reforestation of areas that have already been severely damaged.  This nursery may become another source of income for the Astore Valley villagers if they can grow more seedlings than required for local reforestation.

Will the Fairy Meadows and Astore Valley villagers agree to our terms?  After weeks of intensive negotiations in the summer of 1999, these villages did agree to all of the forest conservation provisions identified above and they also agreed to create representative village committees to implement the agreements and reach communal judgments about future development projects EcoVitality can help finance.

Agreement Between the Fairy Meadows Village Leaders and
 EcoVitality's President and Project Director in the Center

Will the villagers comply with the agreements they have made?  Only if EcoVitality delivers on its promises to combine  substantial economic development with the new forest conservation obligations, and only if our staff or experts we recruit continue to observe forest conditions in the area on a periodic basis.  This is precisely what we would like to do in the future if the area returns to a politically stable condition in which Americans are welcomed.

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