Understanding socio-economic transitions in the mountains
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay
THE perceptions of socio-economic and
cultural transitions in all parts of the world have, for a long time, been
guided and promoted by the traditional ideas of economic growth. For some time,
however, these perceptions have been facing fundamental challenges to their
utility and continuity in the process of policy making for socio-economic
transformations in general.
In addition, socio-economic transformations
in environmentally fragile and ethnically diverse regions of the world, like
the mountains or the deserts, need to be assessed with a conceptual framework
much more comprehensive than the presently used one guided by reductionist
concepts of economic growth. Accordingly, in addition to such a need to enlarge
the conceptual foundations of traditional economics, understanding of the
factors that encourage or hinder socio-economic well-being and cultural
evolution in fragile regions like the mountains, have to be recognized and
internalized in policy making.
This article addresses those factors that
relate to these features that distinguish the mountain regions and have not
been clearly internalized in the conceptual framework for the assessment and
understanding of socio-economic transitions in the mountain regions, including
the Himalaya. In common parlance, such transitions have been projected largely
as ‘mountain development’, quite unrelated to the nature of their impacts on
the well-being or otherwise of the natural environment or the communities
living in the mountain regions. This is why there are frequent instances of
conflicts over formally designed interventions and their ground realities in
the mountains, commonly projected as ‘development’.
One step in the direction of distinguishing
transformations in the mountains that promote well-being, both of the
environment and the communities, is to distinguish the social, cultural and
environmental status of the mountains in comparison with their surrounding
plains. During the last few decades, some scholars have tried to articulate and
describe the factors that represent the distinguishing features of
socio-economic transformations in the mountains.1 Rana identified
several challenges and opportunities for mountain development in the present
century.2 Ramakrishnan et al
interpreted that there has been a lack of interest among the scientists
in mountain research in such conceptual directions.3 Rhoades has stressed the need for new and
creative thinking on the mountains in the wake of the worldwide attention now
being focused on them, after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.4
Notwithstanding such a
recognition of the need for novel thinking, planned interventions or
other drivers of transformation, have only led to higher levels of new
investments, guided by the old conceptual framework that equates development
with economic growth. Such concepts have emerged in the context of economic
processes associated with in the flat plains and applied mechanically on the
mountains. This has resulted in a ‘plains bias’ in the
understanding of socio-economic transitions in the mountains. One significant
step in the direction of distinguishing desirable transformations in the
mountains from those that are to be avoided.
In a
pioneering work, Jodha articulated several ‘Mountain
Specificities’.5 Such
ideas encouraged Bandyopadhyay to provide an
eco-system-oriented set of distinguishing features of the mountains and uplands
in the form of ‘Mountain Characteristics’.6 These characteristics are described below in
this article. In order to facilitate the development of a holistic conceptual
framework for identifying desired forms of human interventions in the mountains
and uplands, the mountain characteristics are recommended as useful starting
points. In this background, the mountain characteristics will be elaborated in
the section below.
J. Bandopadhyaya in Grassroots
Environmental Action: People’s Participation in Sustainable Development. Routledge, London, 1992.
With the
brief background, the various mountain characteristics and their interlinkages will now be presented. This should be seen as
an expression based on an evolving analysis. This presentation starts with the
query about the most significant environmental factor that distinguishes
between the plains and the mountains. Under all conditions, all mountain
landscapes are characterized by their vertical formation (verticality) and
slope. These are jointly identified as the primary characteristic of all the
mountains.
The primary characteristic creates the
condition for the emergence and functioning of secondary mountain
characteristics, which are divided in two categories. The first type includes
the environmental characteristics of the mountains, representing the state and
functioning of the ecosystem. The other category includes the implications of
these characteristics on the socio-economic and cultural characteristics. The
environmental characteristics are integral to the mountains while the
socio-economic characteristics express them-selves only in the case of the
existence of human communities making use of the ecosystem services of the
environment.
All
these mountain characteristics have important operational implications. At this
stage of analysis, however, these characteristics and their implications are
mostly indicative and are subject to further indepth
refinement. It is hoped that with such refinements in future, they may directly
help in the creation and acceptance of a holistic analytical framework for
addressing socio-economic and cultural transformations in the mountains. The
primary characteristic of vertical formation and slope are obvious distinctive
features of the mountain regions and could be taken to be synonymous with the
idea of three dimensional landscape, as described by
Troll.7
Rhoades and Thompson have also taken a
similar approach to describing the distinctive features of the mountains,
providing the starting point for a new and innovative approach to the
understanding of transformations in the mountain regions.8 The introduction and description of the secondary mountain
characteristics as emerging from the primary one, is an important feature of
this presentation. This is seen as a convenient way in which a new holistic
conceptual framework for the mountain transformations could be presented in a
simple way. The environmental characteristics exist and operate even when there
is no presence of humans in a mountain region. For about 60 million years the
vertical formation has got built up without any human presence till very
recently. However, human inflows have indeed changed the Himalaya
quantitatively and qualitatively.
Various
ecological processes involving the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and the
hydrosphere generate the environmental characteristics of the mountains. Due to
their vertical formation, the mountain landscapes have much higher potential
energy generating conditions for high levels of morphological instability.
Example can be given of the many mass wasting or erosion events, like landslides
in the mountains, especially after high rainfall events. In addition, the very
tectonic/volcanic processes that contribute to their vertical formation through
uplift or accumulation of lava on land, inflict a
great deal of structural fragility. Structural fragility, here, is seen as the
first among the four environmental characteristics of the mountains. This
characteristic needs to be understood indepth and
given due importance while designing engineering interventions in the
mountains, among others the construction of roads or dams, expansion of
farmlands and recreational parks.
Closely linked with their vertical
formation, is the meteorological role of the mountains as the climate maker at both the macro, meso and micro
spatial levels. The atmospheric circulations interact with the vertical
landscape and create areas with scanty and high levels of precipitation. This
is usually seen as rainfall but in high altitudes, there will be snowfalls
also. The altitudinal zones, aspect of slopes, sunlight hours, rainfall
direction and many meteorological conditions, all generate a great mosaic of
micro-climates in the mountains including extreme climatic conditions causing
floods and water scarcity. The climatic diversity further generates favourable
conditions for rich biological diversity in the mountains. The climatic and
biological diversity conditions are jointly identified as the second
environmental characteristic of the mountains.
At a macro level, an extension of this
categorization may divide mountain regions as low and high precipitation areas,
as in the case of the Tibet Plateau with annual precipitation of about 400 mm
and the south aspect of the Himalaya with annual precipitation of about 2500
mm.9
In the
backdrop of these environmental characteristics, the mountains have a complex
ecological status. This complexity is recognized as the fourth of the
environmental characteristics of the mountains. Vertical formation as the
primary characteristic and the environmental characteristics are omnipresent
when mountains and uplands are concerned. However, they have very significant
implications when humans start to intervene in the mountain regions for
satisfying their socio-economic aspirations. In the section below, these
implications will be described as socio-economic characteristics. They play
crucial roles in the design of human interventions in the mountains aimed at
promoting well-being of the environment and the communities of the mountains.
While
the concepts of economic growth in general will change in the coming decades as
a result of the emergence of new concepts in economics, the process of
assessing the impacts of human interventions for socio-economic well-being and
environmental stability need the internalization of a different set of
parameters, which are identified in this article as the Mountain
Characteristics. These characteristics have significant influences in the
shaping of socio-economic transitions and environmental stability/instability
in the mountains and uplands. With the consideration of these implications,
backed by an updated perception of economics in general, it will be possible to
generate a new conceptual framework for socio-economic and environmental
well-being in the mountains and the uplands, opening the process of a more
accurate and effective redefinition of ‘mountain development’.
Due to their vertical formation and slope,
mountains and uplands are characterized by greater inaccessibility, when
compared with the plains. Human interventions in the
mountains and uplands to reduce this inaccessibility is as old an effort
as human presence in these regions. In this process came the walking paths for
humans, the horse tracks, ropeways, the rough roads
for hardy vehicles, the multilane tracks for high-speed luxury automobiles and
finally the helicopters, infusing a continuous decline in the inaccessibility
of the mountains.
This array of technological advancements is
considered, in the received perception, as an element of ‘mountain development’
but who gains and who is the loser in this transformation is not openly
assessed. The mountain communities want to reduce inaccessibility for easy
access to hospitals, schools, employment, etc. in the plains. The interest in
the plains is in the replacement of local village economies by an expansion of
the market system operated from the plains, followed by easier access to
natural resources of the mountains and uplands, like water, timber, medicinal
herbs and cheap labour.
The gradual but inevitable collapse of the
barrier of inaccessibility has been the flag-bearer of traditional concept of
mountain development. Within the limited scope of this article, a longer
analysis of the political economy of this decline of inaccessibility of the
mountain areas, like the Himalaya, is difficult, notwithstanding the
fundamental importance of such an analysis.
In
addition to inaccessibility, physical movement in the mountains and uplands is
made more difficult and costly, by their vertical structure. As a result, the
construction related movements have to often work against the gravitational
force. Materials and equipment for any structural construction in the mountains
and uplands have to be carried upwards against gravity over long distances.
This increases the capital requirement of such projects, as opposed to in the
plains. At the level of the communities, people in the mountains and uplands
have to use muscle power for long hours in a day for their livelihood. This
needs a fundamental modification of the traditional economics of transportation
and construction in the mountains. Such a new economics will be most useful in
the assessment of human interventions.
The
climate processes in the mountains are much more complex than in the plains. In
the context of the Himalaya, the data base on this climatic matrix is quite
insufficient for analysis, leading to the region being described as a
hydrological black box. This lack frequently leads to catastrophic extreme
climate events, leading to heavy losses to communities or structural projects.
Example may be given of the Kedarnath disaster in
June 2013 or the more recent, flash floods in the Amarnath
area, that caused extensive loss of life and property.
The altitudinal zones existing in the
mountains often provide a natural capital for the promotion of leisure tourism
from the nearby plains. In the case of the Himalaya, the small towns
established by the British from Darjeeling in the East to Mussoorie
in the west, have now become hill stations that get heavily congested by people
from the plains in the summer months of May and June, bringing great economic
growth to these locations. Spatial climatic variability is extremely high in
areas with low rainfall and high rainfall (including hail-prone areas) forming
a grand climatic mosaic. The land use and cropping pattern needs to be adapted
to such a matrix, as opposed to the plains.
Those parts of the mountains and uplands
that receive large precipitation, as snow or rain, have the potential for
hydropower generation providing a good option for ensuring well-being by the
governance of hydroprojects following the mountain
characteristics. In the absence of such a recognition,
hydropower projects often have become objects of popular opposition. More
recently, the water potential and storage capacities have linked the mountains
and the plains below, with the suggested arrangement of ‘Payment for Ecosystem
Services’, bringing in a new dimension to promoting well-being of the
environment and the communities of the mountains. With global warming and climate
advancing undiminished, the hydrological picture of the mountains, including
the Himalaya will become more challenging.
Ethnic
diversity, marginality and migration are probably the most important
socio-economic characteristic of the mountains and the uplands that needs to be
most seriously internalized in the new conceptual framework. Mountains and
uplands host a wide ethnic diversity while acting as a barrier to the rapid
demographic movements. Pushed by their relative inaccessibility and energy intensity
of movement, mountain landscapes encourage human settlements to be small and
scattered. This, in turn, causes marginality of the mountain and upland
communities. On the other hand, the societies and economies in the plains, generate strong economies and market forces,
attracting people to migrate from the mountains to the plains for jobs, mainly
as manual labour. The handling of this marginality thus is key
to the generation of a new conceptual framework for assessing interventions to
promote well-being of both the communities and the environment.
As described above, the concept of Mountain Characteristics will be most useful for the creation of a new and more accurate conceptual framework for addressing and assessing well-being in the mountains, like the Himalaya.
Footnotes:
1. N.J.R. Allan, G.W. Knapp & C. Stadel (eds), Human Impacts on Mountains. Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, 1988; M. Sanwal, ‘What We Know about Mountain Development: Common Property, Investment Priority and Institutional Arrangements’, Mountain Research and Development 9(1), 1989, pp. 3-14.
2. R.S.J.B. Rana, ‘Mountain Development Towards 2000: Challenges and Opportunities’. Proceedings of the International Symposium and Inauguration of ICIMOD, Kathmandu, 1983.
3. P.S. Ramakrishnan, A.N. Purohit, K.G. Saxena & K.S. Rao, Himalayan Environment and Sustainable Development. Indian National Science Academy, Diamond Jubilee Publication, New Delhi, 1994.
4. R.E. Rhoades, ‘Pathways Towards a Sustainable Mountain Agriculture for the 21st Century: The Hindukush-Himalayan Experience’. ICIMOD, Kathmandu, 1997.
5. N.S. Jodha, ‘Mountain Perspective and Sustainability: A Framework for Development Strategies’. Paper presented at the International Symposium on Strategies for Sustainable Mountain Agriculture, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, 1990.
6. J. Bandyopadhyay, ‘From Environmental Conflicts to Sustainable Mountain Trans-formations’, in D. Ghai, and J. Vivian (eds.), Grassroots Environmental Action: People’s Participation in Sustainable Development. Routledge, London, 1992.
7. C. Troll, ‘Comparative Geography of the High Mountains of the World in View of landscape Ecology’, in N.J.R. Allan, et al. (eds.), Human Impact on Mountains. Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, 1988.
8. R.E. Rhoades & S.I. Thompson, ‘Adaptive Strategies in Alpine Environments: Beyond Ecological Particularism’, American Ethnol-ogist 2, 1975, pp. 535-51.
9. Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Sayanangshu ‘Modak, Governing the Water Tower of Asia’. Observer Research Foundation, Monograph 25, March 2022, pp.16-17. https://www.orfonline.org/research/governing-the-water-tower-of-asia/