Andreas
26.07.2002, 17:37
Battle Brewing Over Everest Airport
July 24, 2002 Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority, at the urging of a handful of foreign businessmen, is looking to make trekking to Everest Base Camp easier and faster for tourists by expanding a tiny airport at the village of Shyangboche, cutting out the three-day walk up the Khumbu Valley from the airport at Lukla. Sherpas and lodge owners between Lukla and Shyangboche aren't happy with the plan, claiming it will hurt their businesses and the environment.
The Shyangboche Airport—the world's highest at 12,204 feet—can currently accommodate only helicopters with its 1,312-foot-long runway. For short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft to gain access, the runway would need to be extended an additional 755 feet and be re-aligned to face north—south because of prevailing winds—forcing planes to fly directly over Namche Bazaar, the region's economic hub, 1000 feet below.
"Noise from an expanded airport operation will accompany trekkers for days as they hike towards Mount Everest," said Dr. Stan Stevens, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of numerous articles and books about the Khumbu and Sherpa culture. Pasang Gelzen Sherpa, the director of the Lukla-based Everest Foundation says, "The expansion will encourage a lot of unchecked development in the region that will create great strains on the natural resources."
Because the airport is located inside Sagarmatha National Park and World Heritage Site, Nepalese law requires that an environmental impact assessment be done. To date, even though construction equipment has already been moved to Shyangboche, no such assessment has been completed, or even begun.
Stevens estimates that developing Shyangboche as a functioning airport will cause the income of porters and guides to decline anywhere from 29 to 43 precent. Both are paid by the day, and if tourists began flying into or out of Shyangboche, Base Camp treks would be shortened by about three days.
For several years beginning in the fall of 1994, tourists were able to charter helicopters-Russian Mi 17s-to fly into and out of Shyangboche. During the peak seasons—March-April and October-November—there were between two and seven helicopters landing and taking off from Shyangboche daily. In 1997,after nearly 300 lodges and hotels between Lukla and Namche reported significant losses in income, area businessmen staged sit-ins on the Shyangboche runway to protest the helicopter service. The charter flights were subsequently cancelled.
Orlyn Kringstad, a part-owner of the Shyangboche Panorama Hotel with several other non-Nepalese businessmen, argues that expanding Shyangboche to accommodate STOL aircraft would actually increase tourism: "A very positive result of the upgrading of the airport will be to allow people who may not want to (or cannot) trek three days to get to Shyangboche to enjoy the experience anyway...I think that this will put more [Sherpas] to work."
An airport at Shyangboche would not completely replace the one at Lukla. Because of the increased probability of suffering from altitude sickness when flying directly to 12,000-plus-feet, trekkers would most likely continue to fly into the lower airport (Lukla is at 9,100 feet), then depart from Shyangboche to save time on the return trip,
The decision to expand the airport—a 30-minute uphill hike from Namche—caught many locals by surprise. The runway at the Lukla airport was recently paved for the first time in the fall of 2001 and a new terminal building constructed. "The Lukla airport is doing wonderfully," said Ang Karma, a Lukla Sherpa and one of the organizers of the 1997 strike. "It's nicer and friendlier than it ever has been. We certainly don't need another airport now." By plane, the Shyangboche airport is roughly three minutes from the Lukla airport.
When the improvements at the Lukla airport—built in 1965 by Sir Edmund Hillary—were unveiled in October however, a demonstration against Nepal's tourism minister and the major force behind the refurbishment project, Bal Bahadur KC, was organized by his party cadre in Lukla. The party was unhappy with the construction, saying it was of poor quality. Their actions angered Bal Bahadur KC, and when several non-Nepalese business owners with investments in Shyangboche who had long been lobbying him for a Shyangboche airport came around again, he lent the project his support. "What has happened is that the local community wasn't given any information or consulted about this project," said Gelzen Sherpa.
Last month many of the same businessmen and representatives that successfully protested in 1997 met in Namche to discuss the repercussions of a fully operational Shyangboche airport. They concluded that it would benefit five percent of the Khumbu's businessmen while negatively affecting the livelihoods of 95 percent of the area's population.
There is no scheduled date of completion for Shyangboche's runway remodel. The project has already been halted once when some of the construction equipment was vandalized.
Even if the airport at Shyangboche is halted, the Sherpas in the Khumbu have their work cut out for them. The Maoist insurgency that has killed over 6,000 Nepalese since it began in 1995 has helped tourism decline to half of what it was just two years ago. As one woman wrote to the Nepali Times, "We have to remember that it does not matter how many airports and up—market hotels are built-the tourists will not come unless there is peace."
[Quelle: outsidemag]
July 24, 2002 Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority, at the urging of a handful of foreign businessmen, is looking to make trekking to Everest Base Camp easier and faster for tourists by expanding a tiny airport at the village of Shyangboche, cutting out the three-day walk up the Khumbu Valley from the airport at Lukla. Sherpas and lodge owners between Lukla and Shyangboche aren't happy with the plan, claiming it will hurt their businesses and the environment.
The Shyangboche Airport—the world's highest at 12,204 feet—can currently accommodate only helicopters with its 1,312-foot-long runway. For short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft to gain access, the runway would need to be extended an additional 755 feet and be re-aligned to face north—south because of prevailing winds—forcing planes to fly directly over Namche Bazaar, the region's economic hub, 1000 feet below.
"Noise from an expanded airport operation will accompany trekkers for days as they hike towards Mount Everest," said Dr. Stan Stevens, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of numerous articles and books about the Khumbu and Sherpa culture. Pasang Gelzen Sherpa, the director of the Lukla-based Everest Foundation says, "The expansion will encourage a lot of unchecked development in the region that will create great strains on the natural resources."
Because the airport is located inside Sagarmatha National Park and World Heritage Site, Nepalese law requires that an environmental impact assessment be done. To date, even though construction equipment has already been moved to Shyangboche, no such assessment has been completed, or even begun.
Stevens estimates that developing Shyangboche as a functioning airport will cause the income of porters and guides to decline anywhere from 29 to 43 precent. Both are paid by the day, and if tourists began flying into or out of Shyangboche, Base Camp treks would be shortened by about three days.
For several years beginning in the fall of 1994, tourists were able to charter helicopters-Russian Mi 17s-to fly into and out of Shyangboche. During the peak seasons—March-April and October-November—there were between two and seven helicopters landing and taking off from Shyangboche daily. In 1997,after nearly 300 lodges and hotels between Lukla and Namche reported significant losses in income, area businessmen staged sit-ins on the Shyangboche runway to protest the helicopter service. The charter flights were subsequently cancelled.
Orlyn Kringstad, a part-owner of the Shyangboche Panorama Hotel with several other non-Nepalese businessmen, argues that expanding Shyangboche to accommodate STOL aircraft would actually increase tourism: "A very positive result of the upgrading of the airport will be to allow people who may not want to (or cannot) trek three days to get to Shyangboche to enjoy the experience anyway...I think that this will put more [Sherpas] to work."
An airport at Shyangboche would not completely replace the one at Lukla. Because of the increased probability of suffering from altitude sickness when flying directly to 12,000-plus-feet, trekkers would most likely continue to fly into the lower airport (Lukla is at 9,100 feet), then depart from Shyangboche to save time on the return trip,
The decision to expand the airport—a 30-minute uphill hike from Namche—caught many locals by surprise. The runway at the Lukla airport was recently paved for the first time in the fall of 2001 and a new terminal building constructed. "The Lukla airport is doing wonderfully," said Ang Karma, a Lukla Sherpa and one of the organizers of the 1997 strike. "It's nicer and friendlier than it ever has been. We certainly don't need another airport now." By plane, the Shyangboche airport is roughly three minutes from the Lukla airport.
When the improvements at the Lukla airport—built in 1965 by Sir Edmund Hillary—were unveiled in October however, a demonstration against Nepal's tourism minister and the major force behind the refurbishment project, Bal Bahadur KC, was organized by his party cadre in Lukla. The party was unhappy with the construction, saying it was of poor quality. Their actions angered Bal Bahadur KC, and when several non-Nepalese business owners with investments in Shyangboche who had long been lobbying him for a Shyangboche airport came around again, he lent the project his support. "What has happened is that the local community wasn't given any information or consulted about this project," said Gelzen Sherpa.
Last month many of the same businessmen and representatives that successfully protested in 1997 met in Namche to discuss the repercussions of a fully operational Shyangboche airport. They concluded that it would benefit five percent of the Khumbu's businessmen while negatively affecting the livelihoods of 95 percent of the area's population.
There is no scheduled date of completion for Shyangboche's runway remodel. The project has already been halted once when some of the construction equipment was vandalized.
Even if the airport at Shyangboche is halted, the Sherpas in the Khumbu have their work cut out for them. The Maoist insurgency that has killed over 6,000 Nepalese since it began in 1995 has helped tourism decline to half of what it was just two years ago. As one woman wrote to the Nepali Times, "We have to remember that it does not matter how many airports and up—market hotels are built-the tourists will not come unless there is peace."
[Quelle: outsidemag]