Possible problems a n d possible solutions do not m e e t up with one another in some value-free void;**** they come together only when t h e r e exists a pos- sible perspective for them t o come together in. Then, and only then, can appropriate and socially viable management styles emerge. Such possible per- spectives a r e socially-shaped. value-impregnated, and aesthetically- a r t i c u l a t e d Surprising though i t may seem, i t is aesthetics and not econom- ics, or engineering. or applied science, or systems 'analysis, t h a t has t o be accorded t h e central role in formulating an approach to the problems of t h e Himalayas. It is writers, painters and poets who profoundly change t h e world;
economists, engineers. scientists, system analysts a n d be it said, interna- tional agencies, just tinker with it.***** Rather than succumbing t o t h e t e m p tation t o see ourselves a s t h e saviours of t h e Himalayas, we should heed Lord Keynes' salutory advice and aim t o be "like dentists". [Keynes 19311.
*We might refer the reader to the book of that title by Lesley Stevens and also to Thomas Uann's
& M a g i c hwrhin and t o the film Thc Sund OJ Music as the supports and evidence for this par- ticular park ideal.
**Thoreauls Wddun, John Yuir's whole life (but see his & Childhood Md Youth) and, in particular, his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt are sufficient to give some impression of the strength of this park ideal.
***This i s not puitr correct. There are some tiny specks to be seen wdldng up the Western C w m of Everest in a photograph wrongly captioned " h a p urna".
****Or "garbage can", to use the organisation theory terminol y.
*****For an elaboration on this perhaps disconcerting theme s
SR
Bouiding (1983).Aesthetics, of course, is to t h e artists what ornithology is to the birds but, even so, i t can help us t o tinker in a more effective way. Parks, like other social and cultural institutions, have followed a developmental path. We have had private parks, municipal parks, national parks, bi-national parks* and now, for t h e first time, we have in t h e Himalayas a de facto international park.
since the same aesthetic forces t h a t have shaped the parks we already have are, even now, busy shaping t h e parks we a r e about to get, t h e r e is much to be said for trying t o understand these f o r c e s - t h e different perspectives within which possible problems and possible solutions can come together, and t h e different park management styles t h a t can emerge from these conflations.
The aesthetic of t h e playground shapes the Euro-park; t h e aesthetic of t h e wilderness shapes the New World park; the aesthetic of man-and-nature- in-rustic-harmony shapes the British park. All t h r e e aesthetics (and, perhaps, others as well--the Japanese park?) a r e currently competing to shape t h e Himalayan park. We should enquire whether these competing aesthetics a r e inherently contradictory. If they are, then it is a waste of time trying to create a single management style out of them, and t h e solution is t o frac- tionate t h e Himalayas (along the lines of the pattern in t e r m s of renewable a n d convertible resources) a n d t o encourage t h e application of t h e appropri- a t e aesthetic and management style to each fraction-the wilderness style in the parts t h a t a r e (or could feasibly become) sparsely populated (Hongu, for instance). t h e playground style in the areas (like Khumbu) t h a t have already evolved in that direction, a n d t h e man-and-nature-in-rustic-harmony style in those more densely populated a r e a s where man's impact is greatest.
If, on the other hand, t h e rival aesthetics are not entirely contradictory then. to the extent t h a t they a r e not, i t may be possible to negotiate (or, more properly, facilitate) between t h e m w i t h a view to moving towards a new syn- thetic aesthetic appropriate t o t h e Himalayas. Or, rather, since t h e Himalayas themselves a r e f a r from homogeneous, towards a n u m b e r of dis- t i n c t aesthetics-one (or more) appropriate t o the Indian Himalaya, one appropriate t o the Nepal Himalaya,
...
one appropriate to the Bhutan Himalaya.Such negotiations, of course, a r e already being a t t e m p t e d - i n t h e social forest/commercial forest distinction highlighted by the Chipko Movement in India [Agarwal 1982, Gadgil and Sharma 1982, Tucker 19811, in t h e experimen- tal efforts to establish National Parks in Nepal,** and in the careful prepara- tions for t h e development of tourism in Bhutan [Jest and Stein 19821.
The tentative conclusions t h a t can be drawn from these negotiations sug- gest t h a t t h e r e is little prospect for achieving any viable synthesis of these aesthetics. In i t s early a t t e m p t s a t establishing National Parks, Nepal would seem t o have fallen foul of t h e s e contradictory park ideals by choosing (under external aid pressure, no doubt) one t h a t was inappropriate. In many cases, it can be argued, t h e British ideal of man-and-nature-in-rustic-harmony would have been more appropriate t h a n the American (and New Zealand) wilderness ideal t h a t was initially chosen.
"National parks can be recommended only if the rights of the local inhabitants can be safeguarded. A totally misguided proposal t o eva- cuate t h e Sherpa inhabitants from a Khumbu National Park h a s for- tunately been abandoned. But the tragedy of the Rara National Park m u s t be a warning t o planners prepared t o sacrifice human needs t o
*For example, between the US and Canada.
**Nepal hna already parcelled out development zones to different national aid mimiom ao & to avoid conflictm between their different, and perhaps irreconcilable, approaches.
the establishment of wild life sanctuaries.
On the banks of Rara Lake t h e r e used to be two medium sized Thakuri and Chetri settlements, which greatly contributed t o t h e attractiveness of t h e locality. Neither had encroached on the surrounding forests, and t h e cul- tivation of crops of barley and potatoes utilized only a small area. The lake was full of fish which the local people caught only by spearing. Such was the position in t h e early 1970s. When a Wild Life Sanctuary was esta- blished, the inhabitants of the two villages, who had Lived t h e r e for many generations, were forcibly evacuated, and moved from an environment situated a t 10,000 feet above sea level to the lowlands of t h e Terai without being provided with adequate aid for their resettlement. it is reliably reported that the communities disintegrated a n d many perished within a short span of time." [Fiirer-Haimendorf 19831
INTERNATIONAL
MD
AND INADVERTENT CULTURAL IMPERIALISMThe first thing to notice about these various park management styles is t h a t they all involve management, not facilitation. A s such they a r e antitheti- cal to a political margin t h a t h a s t o sustain its precarious autonomy by play- ing off against one another (in the nicest possible way. you understand) t h e ] various external pressures t h a t bear upon it. As Long as it is successful in doing this i t will keep itself largely free from hierarchical patterns of control.
Of course, there is some control in t h e margin, and i t .is hierarchically organ- ised, but it is remarkably undeveloped. A comparative study [Schloss 19831 of Russian, American, Chinese. British and Indian road construction projects in Nepal shows that, though each country adopted a distinctly different manage- m e n t style, they all encountered serious and unexpected diEiculties in match- ing their styles t o a situation where the machinery for administrative and financial management and control scarcely existed.
Their surprise is r a t h e r like t h a t of the British colonial powers who, hav- ing chosen the principle of indirect rule as t h e best means of extending a n d consolidating their empire, found themselves up against some peoples in West Africa and the Sudan who simply did not have any c h i e f s a n y permanent posi- tions of leadership--through which t h a t indirect rule might be channelled*.
There a r e two ways of coping with such a surprise: keep t h e external style and change t h e indigenous organisation, or keep the indigenous organisation and change t h e external style. The first way leads to c u l t u r a l imperialism; t h e second way leads to appropriate institutional development.
If
we assume t h a t imperial aggrandisement is not the aim of those who provide this aid, then what we a r e faced w i t h is a facilitation problem on a glo- bal scale. At t h e macro level an international park Looks like a good idea but, as i t moves from t h i s provider level down to the delivery level, i t s t a r t s run- ning into difficulties. The challenge is to resist t h e temptation t o push it through regardless (a temptation that, alas, i t is particularly difficult for t h e bureaucrat t o resist) so a s t o allow a learning process t o move up in t h e reverse direction a n d modify t h e initial design to suit t h e local conditions.A successful buffer draws a sharp distinction between itself a n d what Lies outside it. Though governments in t h e Himalayas can do very little t o directly control their hill farmers, t h e y can (and do) exercise considerable direct
*These are the celebrated acephalous societies. See. for example, Bohannan and Bohannan (1960).
control over their foreign tourists (and other visitors). They issue them with visas, they count them in and out, they grant or withold trekking permits for various areas, they add and remove mountains from t h e list of available peaks, they insist on trekkers taking kerosene or gas fuel with them in the Everest region, and they demand t h a t adequate insurance be taken out on the lives of high altitude porters engaged for mountaineering expeditions (they also exer- cise much the same sort of control over research and aid projects). There are, of course. certain constraints on their freedom to channel this alien influx--to irrigate their land with tourists. Just as water will only flow downhill, so tourists (with a few notable exceptions--the Chitwan Game Reserve in t h e Terai, for instance, and river rafting) will only flow uphill.
towards the mountains that are the object of their pilgrimage. Tourists are also very localised, culturally and spatially. They all want their four-minute breakfast eggs and they all want to go t o the honeypots of Leh, Kashmir, Kath- mandu. Annapurna and Everest, and in consequence. the very considerable sums of money t h a t they spend a r e not a t all evenly spread throughout t h e vil- lages.*
But, even so. by closing to tourist traffic this airstrip here and opening up t h a t airstrip there, by stipulating t h a t if you fly into the Everest region you must walk back (or vice versa), by granting o r witholding trekking permits for different areas
...
by initiating or discontinuing tourist buses along different roads, those who manage the powerlessness of the buffer a r e able t o gain con- siderable scope to ease the tourist flow this way and that. In so doing they modify the social contexts, and hence the strategic behaviour, of remote vil- lagers whose lives they are scarcely able to touch by any direct means (and it is, of course, an excess of direct control t h a t i s inimical to the inner worbngs of t h e buffer).So the sharp distinction between t h e inside and the outside of the buffer is t h e key t o the successful modification of the park management styles as they make the transition from the provider to the delivery level. By frac- tionating the issue, so that direct control is exercised over the alien tourist and only indirect control over the indigenous hill farmer, t h e buffer is able to have t h e best of both worlds. The tourists, a s they a r e carefully channelled to the places where they are needed, can enjoy all t h e blessings of a n Interna- tional Park whilst t h e hill farmers, pretty well immune from any such con- trols. can get on with their lives in what is for t h e m a working and lived-in landscape. Just as, to the Sherpa, mountaineering is simply another kind of trading so, to the hill farmer. the International Park can be simply another way of making some of his natural resources more valuable to him.
*And, of courae, much of it never reaches the villages but stays in Kathmandu and even California.
Quantification and science a r e often bracketed together, and it is indeed t r u e t h a t they a r e often in one another's company, but quantification is not a necessary condition for science. This is just as well because, if it was, we could not develop any scientific approach to uncertainty, apart from t h a t which aims to convert i t into certainty or into r i s k - a n approach that, a t present, is making little headway in the Himalayas. But fortunately science proceeds. first a n d foremost. by reducing the a r b i t r a r i n e s s of description and this is what we have tried to do in getting to grips with uncertainty.
The Himalayas, we c a n safely say, abound in heterogeneity. There is t h e ecological heterogeneity t h a t results in perhaps ninety percent of "the prob- lem" being caused by perhaps ten percent of t h e land; t h e r e is the social and cultural heterogeneity t h a t , by endowing or witholding technical and institu- tional capacity, dramatically modifies the environmental effect of population;
there is t h e resource t r e a t m e n t heterogeneity t h a t transforms the raw material of t h e forest into a patchwork of renewable and convertible resources; t h e r e is t h e aesthetic heterogeneity generated by t h e social and political forces t h a t shape t h e various contradictory park ideals; there is t h e geo-political heterogeneity t h a t results in such markedly different control modes a s we go from t h e inside t o t h e outside of t h e buffer. In recognising this heterogeneity, in uncovering t h e patterns in which i t is arranged, and in identifying t h e processes t h a t lie behind those patterns, we c a n discard all t h a t conceptual baggage t h a t assumes homogeneity. We a r e left with remark- ably little; a description in t e r m s of linked patterns a t t h r e e levels (physical, social and cognitive) and of t h e institutional forces t h a t sustain a n d transform those patterns, and a strategy for intervention based on a limited number of management styles a n d t h e i r appropriateness in relation to the heterogeneity t h a t is revealed by t h a t description. Though we may sometimes despair a t t h e inability of o u r institutions to cope with the complexities of our world, t h e r e remains t h e simple fact that, like it or not, those institutions a r e all t h a t we have. Rather t h a n despair we should make t h e most of them.
A
CLOSER
LOOKAT" THEPROBLGM'
The wide uncertainties t h a t currently exist at the biophysical level- uncertainty as to whether the consumption of fuelwood exceeds or is comfort- ably within the r a t e of production, uncertainty a s t o whether deforestation is a widespread or localized phenomenon, uncertainty a s to whether i t is popula- tion pressures o r inappropriate institutional arrangements t h a t lie behind instances of mismanagement of renewable resources
...
uncertainty a s to whether deforestation in t h e hills (if i t indeed exists) has any serious impact on t h e flooding in t h e plains-mean t h a t a wide range of mutually contradic- ,tory problems a r e credible. The Nepalese ambassador to t h e United States, for instance, is convinced t h a t t h e r e is widespread deforestation in t h e hills and t h a t t h e r e is also a strong connection between i t a n d the flooding in the plains whilst Charles Houston, for his part, is convinced t h a t the forests of Khumbu are in as good shape now a s they were twenty years ago. These positions.given their policy implications, are inevitably thrown into contention. One position justifies one policy, t h e other position another policy, and the stage is all s e t for the acrimonious exchange of accusations of self-interest. If, by remedying what is happening in a nation of 14 million souls, the welfare of 350 million more c a n be assdred then. of course, resources should be committed t o t h e small'root of t h e huge problem. But, i f the forests are not really disap- pearing t h e n who, we should ask, stands t o gain by convincing u s t h a t t h e y
are? The whole international eco-lobby, of course-the professional foresters, conservationists, agronomists, and so on who need serious (but curable) environmental problems every bit as badly as anti-poverty campaigners need poor (but deserving) clients.
The perhaps unpalatable point we wish to make (and it is t h e point on which the whole trans-science approach rests) is t h a t , if we wish to retain any shred of scientific integrity, we must extend legitimacy to each and every problem definition t h a t can be formulated i n s u c h a way t h a t all i t s a s s u m p tions lie within the c u r r e n t bounds of uncertainty. To demand to know which of these problems is the' right one is simply t o encourage the arbitrary tyranny of one uncertain position over all t h e others, and we do not wish to be a party t o t h a t s o r t of thing. On t h e other hand. if the price of keeping an open mind on t h e subject is the acceptance of a world view so cynical t h a t
it
can see behind these rival positions nothing o t h e r than the ill-disguised and predatory advancement of craven self-interest, t h a t too is a pretty unattrac- tive option. So is i t a straight choice between Arbitrary Tyranny and Cynical Resignation?
No. We can, a s they say in international negotiation, fractionate t h e issue; we can separate c u r r e n t certainty from c u r r e n t uncertainty and handle each by its appropriate mode. We can visualise the boundary between cer- tainty and uncertainty moving this way and t h a t in response t o two opposing forces--the drive towards certainty t h a t advances under the banner "what a r e the facts?" and t h e drive towards uncertainty t h a t i s the inevitable by-product of people variously choosing, from among available (but contradictory) facts, those that comport best with their various socially induced predilections.
Only those who subscribe t o the sociological fallacy, and believe t h a t t h e universe can be anything they want i t t o be, could seriously consider a situa- tion in which this boundary was pushed so far out t h a t nothing was certain;
only those imbued with the positivistic optimism of Victorian science could t r u s t in t h e foreseeable arrival of t h e day when all uncertainty will finally be squeezed out of our environment. Not wishing t o position ourselves a t e i t h e r of these polar extremes. we began by conceding t h a t in any policy debate uncertainty will always be contained within a noose of certainty a n d t h a t two complementary modes a r e available for t h e progress of t h a t debate: we can strive t o tighten t h e noose and we can strive t o understand the forces t h a t resist t h a t tightening. The first is t h e a d v e r s a r y m o d e , familiar t o u s in such grand institutions as the courts of law and t h e scientific method,* in which we ask "what a r e t h e facts?"; t h e second is the e z p l o r u t o r y m o d e , less familiar t o us perhaps but subtly built into most constitutions and into many political systems, in which we ask (in effect) "what would you like t h e facts t o be?" The first, when successfully applied, allows us t o get rid of what we cannot live with; t h e second, when successfully applied, allows u s t o live with what we can- not get rid of.
When we apply this s o r t of fractionating approach to the policy debate over Himalayan deforestation we see t h a t t h e n o m e of certainty is, a t present, r a t h e r loose and that, since there a r e many importmlt variables (like local fuelwood consumption rates) t h a t (unlike oil a n d gas reserves) a r e intrinsi- cally measurable, t h e r e is clearly much progress t o be made by t h e pursuit of the adversary mode (especially if data are not torn from their contexts). At the same time, t h e scientist who operates within this mode soon becomes aware of all sorts of institutionally mediated pressures (from the granting and
*But not in science itself which is complex mix of adversary and exploratory modes.
withholding of resources by the agencies that fund his research, through the screening processes built into the editorial policies of the journals in which he aspires to publish, to the systematically biased responses of t h e villagers h e interviews in order to assemble his data). The institutions, you might say, have got t h e r e ahead of t h e scientist a n d have interposed themselves between him and the facts he is so anxious t o uncover. Thus, t h e r e is a very real sense in which t h e institutions are the facts.