Environmental and social impact of mass tourism: a

case study of Ladakh

Florian Widmer
May 2012
1
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 2
Contents
1 Introduction 3
2 Ladakh geography 3
3 Human presence and tourism in Ladakh 4
4 Impact of tourism 5
4.1 Environmental issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2 Development issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5 Conclusion 10
Bibliography 12
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 3
1 Introduction
Tourism is widely regarded as a growth-promoting, life-improving factor, especially in
developing countries, by bringing (foreign) currency and increasing the job opportu-
nities for locals. However, tourism comes with some shortcomings. Environmental
degradation is of particular concern, and is magnied by the fact that tourism might
become the main, or even sole, source of earning, by the lack of infrastructure and
planning and because policies in developing countries, where governments might have
other preoccupations, are more easily outdated, unadapted or incomplete.[10]
These factors are even stronger in mountain regions, due to a variety of reasons:
population is low and therefore the share of tourists or non-residents is higher in relative
terms, infrastructure building and preservation is much harder than in lowland regions,
because of reduced accessibility or harsh winters. Moreover, high-altitude outdoor
activities spot ar characterized by a high seasonability, due to the fact that accessibility
or simply convenient climate is reduced to a (short) summer season.[2]
In this paper, we discuss the case of Ladakh, a remote and sparsely populated
region of the indian Himalayas. After introducing the geographical and social context,
we move on to a review of various consequences of mass tourism and outdoor activities
on the environment and, to a lesser extent, on the society of Ladakh.
2 Ladakh geography
Ladakh is the northernmost region of India, located in the state of Jammu and Kash-
mir. Ladakh borders Pakistan and China. It is located between the Karakoram and
Himalayan moutain ranges and sits almost entirely over 3,000 meters above sea level.
It comprises the upper course of the Indus river, which is its central geographic area.
Most of the big cities, including its capital Leh, are located in the Indus valley.
Due to the southern ranges of the Himalaya, Ladakh is barred from the monsoon
hitting the Indian subcontinent and is experiencing a very dry climate. Its composi-
tion is therefore mostly desertic, with vegetation patches and cultivation area located
exclusively along the rivers.
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 4
The only two roads linking Ladakh with the outside worldi one from Srinagar,
in Kashmir, and the other one from Manali in Himachal Pradesh are not open all
year round, and road trac into Ladakh is usually completely cut between Novem-
ber/December and April/May.[13]
3 Human presence and tourism in Ladakh
Ladakh is populated mostly by tibetan ethnies and has a very low population density.
According to the 2001 Census of India, the overall population of Ladakh is around
240,000.[14]
Following border disputes between India and Pakistan or China, Ladakh has become
a region of high strategic importance and was henceforth granted a large contingent
of army troops, more or less continuously increasing since the partition of India in
1947.[3][9]
However, until 1974 Ladakh was formally closed to foreign visitors, and practically
until 1979 and the opening of the Leh aireld to commercial operations.[1] Geneletti and
Dawa distinguish three phases concerning the tourist inow in Ladakh. The rst phase
between 1974 and 1989 consists of a steady growth reaching approximately 25,000
tourists visiting Ladakh in 1989. The second phase, between 1989 and 2002, shows
high variability (between 8,000 and 20,000) in the number of tourists. The third phase
exhibit an exponential growth pattern, reaching 50000 visitors in 2006 and continuing
up to date.[2]
Moreover, tourism in Ladakh is characterized by a very high seasonability: most of
it happens indeed between july and september, the summer being the most convenient
period for visiting this high altitude region. As we will see later, this makes the impact
on the environment even stronger.
Tourism in Ladakh is mostly a matter of outdoor activities, the main and largely
predominant one being trekking. Depending on the area, trekking in Ladakh takes
form either as a homestay tour where trekkers sleep in guesthouses in villages, or as
a more serious tent expedition, involving a whole team of locals (guide, cooks, boys,
muleteers, ...) and a caravan of donkeys to carry the packs.
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 5
4 Impact of tourism
The gures presented above and the vulnerability of a fairly traditional society and way
of living, and a fragile, high altitude and dry environment make the point for a strong,
maybe even catastrophic impact of tourism on the natural environment and the society
in Ladakh. We will now give a broad overview of how tourism aects Ladakh. Some
of the following points have been specically studied and demonstrated in Ladakh,
whereas other are parallels drawn from studies on similar situations, for example Nepal
Himalayas or the Manali-Keylong region in Himachal Pradesh, India. We rst focus
on the environmental issues raised by tourism, before studying the changes occuring
in the society and to a lesser extent in this paper economy of Ladakh due to the
exposure to the outside world provoked by tourism.
4.1 Environmental issues
We can distinguish a large number of various consequences of mass tourism and outdoor
activities in Ladakh on the environment. They ranges from trail degradation and soil
erosion to water pollution due to decient sewage systems or careless behaviour of
non-local residents.
Soil degradation There are several ways through which soil is degraded. Th rst,
most trivial is maybe trail widening and incision, leading to soil erosion or compaction.
This process has been extensively studied in various regions around the world, for
instance by Nepal and Nepal in the Everest region, Nepal. Trails, especially if not
maintained properly, will erode under factors like rain or water-ooding by rivers,
which in turn makes them dicult to walk and may lead trekkers or local people to go
for alternative paths, thereby inducing more damage (on vegetation, fauna habitats or
simply in terms of soil erosion and compaction).[8]
Other components of soil degradation include o-road driving, which is of particular
concern in the popular area of Changthang, in southeastern Ladakh, and impact of
pack animals, especially when grazing. Trekking expeditions are often accompanied
by a large number of ponies or donkeys, whose grazing during breaks or at night
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 6
might cause further soil compaction or vulnerability to erosion, or damage vegetation
by overgrazing (leading to deprivation of pastures for local animals, a potential cause
for conicts between tourism people and local peasants.
In their comprehensive, numerical study of the impacts of tourism in Ladakh,
Geneletti and Dawa show that there is a strong correlation between the intensity of
trekking-related activities and the state of the soil. The most aected area in Ladakh
in terms of soil degradation is the Markha valley and the Hemis national park, both
among the most popular areas for trekking in the region.[2]
Water pollution Traditionally, Ladakh toilets were waterless, and the manure was
used for soil fertilization. However, with the boom of occidental tourists, hotels and
guesthouses in urban areas, especially in Leh, became equipped with western-style toi-
lets, with two main consequences. First, they are wasting precious fresh-water from the
streams which is not abundant in the arid Ladakh. Second, Leh has no reliable sewage
and waste-water treatment system (ground water and streams are getting contaminated
by poorly maintained septic tanks).[6]
On wider scale, wilderness activities which comprises mainly trekking are causing
pollution of water in rivers, because of unhygienic habits or carelessness of tourists.
Streams (as well as footpaths) were highly considered for religous reasons, and disposing
waste or polluting them, be it by washing ones hands or body, vessel, or clothes,
was sinful. A basic explanation is probably the face that villages downstream would
themselves use this water to drink or wash
To have a shower, for instance, a person would take water from the river in a basin
and go far enough from it to wash itself. Today, it is however not uncommon to see
trekkers taking a bath directly in the stream.
These elements contributes to a reduction in the quality as well as in the quan-
tity of available water, in the urban region of Leh and in more rural areas impacted
by many trekkers. According to Bhasin, in 1999, hospital records of waterborne dis-
ease (hepatitis, typhoid) and bacterial and parasital infections of the intestinal tract
had been constantly increasing, gures one has to link with the worsening of hygiene
conditions.[1]
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 7
Wildlife disturbance A common consequence of outdoor activities, especially in
vulnerable areas, is the disturbance of wildlife.[5] No precise studies on this issue in
the cas of Ladakh have been published, but it is generally accepted that the sparsity of
wildlife in Ladakh induces, in absolute terms, a lesser disturbance of wildlife.However,
some have argued that snow leopards are aected by the increase of trekkers in the most
popular areas of Markha valley and Hemis national park (whose main objective was
actually to protect the snow leopards, see for instance Goeury [4]). It is also supposed
that the large number of tourists visiting the Changthang Wetlands protected zone,
and the areas between Tso Kar and Tso Moriri lakes, which are rich in avian fauna,
are indeed disturbing nidication and reproduction of birds. But once again, one lacks
precises studies to assess this putative impact.[2]
Waste disposal In a study of the situation in the Everest region, in Nepal, Walder
estimated that a groupe of 15 trekkers generates 15 kg of non-biodegradable, non-
burnable waste during a 10 days expedition. Similar gures can probably be assumed
to hold in the context of Ladakh.[12]
The most concerning consequence of waste dumping is ground- and surface-water
pollution, let alone the fact that it spoils the natural beauty of the landscape.[5]
On a broader scale, whereas everything used to be made out of natural, biodegrad-
able material or recycled in Ladakh, modernization has brought less durable or heavily
packaged, imported consumption items, generating lots of waste, but without appro-
priate facilities for processing it, and the growth of waste generation is still larger than
the steps taken to tackle it and the increase in waste-treatment capacities.[1][6]
4.2 Development issues
The impact of tourism in Ladakh is of course not limited to environmental and natural
factors. If this region is experiencing, as many other parts of the world, the nowa-
days common process of globalization and modernization, with their much discussed
and highly complex impacts on traditional societies and local lifestyles (e.g. appeal
for western lifestyle, increased consumption, increased worker mobility, migrations,
(medical) drugs, loss of ancestral value systems and religious beliefs, etc., all being more
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 8
or less controversial). It is not our purpose to cover these aspects of social change, since
they are linked with much broader causes. However, tourism by itself also has a more
or less direct impact on the society. We now describe a few of what we could call
development issues related to mass tourism in the case of Ladakh.
The money inow due to tourism is a powerful force to catalyse social changes, for
the better or for the worst. It is reshuing cards in a society that was until recently
almost feudal, but with the shortcoming of major population movements and the risk
for a desequilibrium in a society that was living on the edge of a sword.
Agriculture and traditional sources of income are weakened. For instance,
one can look at the agriculture. Traditionally, more than 85% of the population was
occupied in agricultural activities (mostly barley, wheat and a few vegetables plus some
apricot orchards in the lower parts of Ladakh).[7] However, with the steep increase of
tourism related activities in Ladakh during the last thirty years, many opportunities,
at rst sight attractive, were opened for local people. Veena Bhasin (1999) reports
that during the summer tourist season, many Ladakhis of the younger generation from
rural areas come to Leh to work as drivers, porters, guides, cooks, ponymen, etc., for
tourists. If this allows them to earn more cash than they would if they were doing usual
work in the elds, the fact that tourist season and agricultural season coincides let the
villages face manpower shortage when it comes to the harvest (one putative consequence
proposed by Bhasin is the employement of Nepali workers at higher wages).[1]
Another element aecting the agriculture is the use of horses for tourist-related
activities, for instance trekking expeditions. Horses are extensively used in the tradi-
tional agriculture of Ladakh, to transport the agricultural products down the lateral
valleys to the roads, or to help with the labour in the elds. As with the temporary
migration of a whole part of the primary manpower from the rural and agricultural
areas to the touristy spots, this tourism-induced need for horses competes with the
harvesting season. For a peasant, renting his horses for a trekking tour is more cash-
earning than using them on the elds, and thus the tendency to fragilize agriculture
and to reduce the autonomous production is even more accentuated. It leads in any
case, jointly with tourism (and army) inow, to a large need for food import.
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 9
Per se, it is hard to decide whether economical situations of peasants are worsened
or improved; earning more money by diverse activities could overcome the costs of an
unsucient production. However, if one cannot profess that agricultural self-suciency
is an absolute goal and that it should be preserved over tourism related activities (or
the adverse argument), it can be said whithout doubt that the process described above
is weakening traditional sources of income (agriculture) to the prot of novel ones
(tourism), and one should remember that the latter is highly dependant on many
parameters that are by no way in control of the local people. The large variations of
tourism number from 1989 to 2005 (between 8,000 and 20,000 a year as exposed above
[2]) are a clear hint that tourism is not a constant or smoothly increasing revenue
source. For instance, a sole border incident with China or Pakistan, or an upsurge of
insurgency in indian Kashmir, leading to western foreign aair departments advising
against tourism in Ladakh, would bring this now highly tourism-dependant society to
a major economic crisis.
Whom does tourism really benet In the previous paragraphs, we lightly ap-
proached the question of economic benets brought by tourism. It is however unclear
who it really benets, and whether local people are the main beneciaries of it.
In 1991 already, Jean Michaud made a review of the economic eects of tourism,
with a focus on the urban area of Leh (see [7]). If this study is relatively old, it brings
up relevant ways of thinking and considering economic eects of tourism in Ladakh.
In particular, Michaud distinguishes tourism-related activities between informal and
formal sector. The former is constituted by street sellers, family guesthouse and home-
stay owners, freelance guides or porters, and taxi drivers, and the latter comprises
large-scale hotels, tourism agencies and shops or emporiums.
The informal sector occupies mainly local people, with some Tibetan refugees mar-
keting souvenirs (but still permanently living in Ladakh, in contrast to what we discuss
below). For instance, guesthouse owners in Leh are mainly members of a small terrian
bourgeoisie, which extended their familial houses by a few rooms to accomodate some
tourists, while homestay owners in rural areas are agriculturers; in both cases, local
people. These occupations are however low-value added ones.
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 10
On the other hand, the formal sector is occupying many exogeneous groups, a large
part of it coming only during the touristice season. Michaud claims that in 1991, all
travel agencies belonging to interests in Srinagar, Kashmir, or New Delhi. Similarly
for hotels: if they might belong to a higher-class bourgeoisie/aristocracy of Ladakh, all
managers and a part of the manpower come from outside Ladakh (Kashmir, Punjab
and Delhi). These both activities tourist agencies and hotel management are
comparatively occupations with a highe added value than guesthouse administration
or street-selling.
If these gures might seem outdated (20 years is mor than half of the time Ladakh
was opened to tourism), it is not unreasonable to think that over the years following
1991, with the exponential growth of visitors inow in Ladakh following 2005, endoge-
neous groups have not been able accomodate for all the needs of tourism, and therefore
induced an increase in the economic immigration into Ladakh.
5 Conclusion
At the end of this short study, we have given what we think to be a fair picture of
the most important consequences of tourism in Ladakh. Some questions remain to
be adressed, and many challenges have to be faced if one wants to avoid irreversible
damage of the environment and unpredictable changes in the local society.
If we should draw one conclusion only, it would be that mass tourism, although
having positive consequences in terms of economical growth or infrastructure invest-
ment for instance, comes with its shortcomings, which are not easy to assess. Eciently
tackled by central or state government, these challenges will probably be for the greater
good. But if they are not adressed, if the growth of tourism continues exponentially
without adequate scaling of underlying infrastructure and services, or even if the share
of the benets of tourism is unequally divided among locals and non-locals, a senti-
ment of being unfairly treated could grow in the population and lead to clashes between
dierent groups, for instance rural agriculturers against tourism workers (guides and
porters) benetting of tourism gains to the damage of elds or pastures, or between
locals, which are mainly buddhists and exogeneous groups (maybe muslims from Kash-
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 11
mir; Leh witnessed bloody riots in 1989, initiated by buddhists who felt left apart and
rised against corruption of kashmiri, muslim government ocials set up by the state
government).
In any case development of Ladakh could turn to a catastrophic event, or go quite
smoothly with successive tweaks, as mostly witnessed in Nepal, though in that case
major environmental concerns remain. One should also take larger questions come
into account. We mentioned above the fact that globalization and modernization of
India in general probably plays a role in social evolution. The climatic changes as well
bring new challenges for Ladakh, consider for instance the expected melting of the
himalayan glaciers or extreme meteorological events (in 2010, Karakorum and Ladakh
ranges in the western Himalaya witnessed heavy, never-seen-before rainfalls, resulting
in dramatic oods and many casualties).
Florian Widmer Impact of mass tourism in Ladakh 12
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