The Heterogeneity of Khumbu Sherpa Ecological Knowledge and Understanding in Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone, Nepal

Spoon, Jeremy

doi:10.1007/s10745-011-9424-9

Cited by 40 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The Tourism Geographies 417 settlements inside the park and the southern region along the Dudh Koshi River gorge, also known as the Pharak region, were declared park buffer zones in 2002. About 6000 people currently live in the national park and its buffer zone in the Khumbu and Pharak regions, with about 90% being Sherpa (Spoon & Sherpa, 2008). Most of the region's growth is associated with the rise in trekking, which began on an international scale in 1964 when an airport was built in Lukla, a small Sherpa village in the Pharak region, south of the Khumbu.…”

Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

Nyaupane

Lew

Tatsugawa

2014

Tourism Geographies

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The Himalayas are among the world's youngest mountain ranges. In addition to the geologic processes of mountain building and erosion, they are also highly vulnerable to human influenced change, occurring at local, national, regional, and international scales. A photo-elicitation methodology is employed to show how residents perceive those changes from historical perspectives, as well as their current conditions and impacts on their daily lives. Nepal's Khumbu region has undergone major social and environmental transformations since the 1960s when international trekking first began to influence the area's economy. The current perceptions of Khumbu residents of these changes are assessed through photo-elicitation interviews. Their responses are placed in the historical context of: (1) institutional and political changes, most of which have been driven by national government policies; (2) social and economic changes, for which the tourism economy has been central; and (3) environmental changes, reflecting the impacts of resource management and climate change. The mostly positive perceptions of Khumbu residents toward how their region has changed reflects general improvements in the physical and cultural landscapes of the Khumbu over time, as well as its continuing geographic isolation, which has helped to slow the rate of globalization, while also keeping the region a dynamic and popular tourist destination.

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Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

Nyaupane

Lew

Tatsugawa

2014

Tourism Geographies

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“…2004, Moller et al 2009). Moller et al (2004) argued that traditional ecological knowledge and Western science are most compatible in natural resource management, such as the integration of Sherpa spiritual taboos on the killing of animals, harvesting of select forest products, and pollution of water sources into protected area management (Spoon 2011a). Raymond et al (2010) added that there is no single superior method for the integration of knowledge types, rather a focus on the process of knowledge integration is more effective, such as the use of collaborative methods.…”

Section: Linked Quantitative and Qualitative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These methods were found to create more local involvement and ownership of cultural landscape research (Strang 2006(Strang , 2010, provide opportunities for the writing of alternative histories (Frank et al 2008, Archambault 2011, serve as a contextual framing for research on human-environment dynamics over time (Kalibo and Medley 2007, ColwellChanthaphonh and Ferguson 2010, Strang 2010, and offer opportunities for disparate knowledge holders to colearn, such as Indigenous peoples and protected area managers (Spoon 2011a, Spoon andArnold 2012).…”

Section: Collaborative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sherpa maintain land titles within the national park buffer zone and participate in the growing tourism market economy as lodge owners, trekking guides, and more. The national park is currently governed by the state, but does contain some opportunities for Sherpa management recommendations through the local Buffer Zone Management Committees (Spoon 2011a(Spoon , 2013. I first decided to go to Nepal because of a connection that I had with the nongovernmental organization (NGO) The Mountain Institute, particularly with Dr. Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa, which I thought would help me to inductively create more locally relevant research that could be applied in some pragmatic way.…”

Section: Sherpa Ecological Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It also showed the character of this new knowledge, such as deities gaining new powers to deal with the contemporary context. For example, the goddess who resides on Mount Everest gained the power to provide abundant tourists, as opposed to the past when she afforded the natural resources for successful harvests and grazing (Spoon 2011a(Spoon , b, 2013.…”

Section: Sherpa Ecological Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Quantitative, qualitative, and collaborative methods: approaching indigenous ecological knowledge heterogeneity

Spoon¹

2014

E&S

Self Cite

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ABSTRACT. I discuss the use of quantitative, qualitative, and collaborative methods to document and operationalize Indigenous ecological knowledge, using case studies from the Nepalese Himalaya and Great Basin. Both case studies applied results to natural and cultural resource management and interpretation for the public. These approaches attempt to reposition the interview subjects to serve as active contributors to the research and its outcomes. I argue that the study of any body of Indigenous knowledge requires a contextspecific methodology and mutually agreed upon processes and outcomes. In the Nepalese Himalaya, I utilized linked quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how tourism influenced Sherpa place-based spiritual concepts, species, and landscape knowledge inside Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone. In this method, Sherpa collaborated in the development of the research questions, the design, and in the review of results. The research in the Great Basin employed collaborative qualitative methods to document Numic (Southern Paiute and Western Shoshone) ecological knowledge of federal lands within their ancestral territory and attempted to piece together fragmented and contested histories of place. In this method, Numic peoples collaborated on the development of research questions and design; however they also conducted most of the interviews. In both cases, I selected particular suites of methods depending on the context and created forums for the translation of this information to applied outcomes. The methods were also improved and innovated through praxis.

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The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change

Allison

2015

WIREs Climate Change

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Climate change has largely been understood as a biophysical, economic, and political phenomenon. This approach has obscured the ways in which climate change also poses a challenge to human subjective understandings of self and society in relation to place, and in relation to perceptions of the sacred. Glaciers, as dominant features of high mountain landscapes, are sites of easily observable consequences of climate change, grounding the consequences of distant carbon emissions in material surroundings. They are also sites of powerful sacred and symbolic meanings for local communities. This review examines three instances of glacial decline in sacred mountain landscapes, in the Peruvian Andes, the Nepalese Himalaya, and the Meili Snow Mountains of Yunnan, China. These examples show that glacial decline is not simply a material process, but also has important implications for the ways that local people understand themselves and make meaning in relation to their surroundings. Locally grounded values arising from particular experiences of the landscape, especially from those most at risk from effects of climate change, may offer new avenues of ethical reflection around climate change that can and should influence larger climate discourses.

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The Heterogeneity of Khumbu Sherpa Ecological Knowledge and Understanding in Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone, Nepal

Abstract: The ecological knowledge and understanding of indigenous peoples and long-term settlers

Cited by 40 publications

References 30 publications

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

Quantitative, qualitative, and collaborative methods: approaching indigenous ecological knowledge heterogeneity

The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change

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