Senior tourism entrepreneur of Nepal and first Nepali to summit seven continents highest Seven Summit – Mr. Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa shares his worry about Everest and its region along environment in recent years. He spent nearly about two months in the Everest region and success scaling top on May 17, completing all seven continent highest summits.
He tells that Everest is now in danger stage of its originality into extinction. If the current base camp has not been moved some meters below , then its going to be disappear from existing place. He even added , the unmanaged of tents, human waste are the biggest threat to the Khumbu glacier. Improper and lack of seriousness can cause disaster in coming recent time. He even says lack of government’s monitoring activities at the base camp and expeditions agencies too been unaware on these. This season, approx. of nearly 3,000 people who spent two months at the base camp was on open toilets. This will definitely make Everest and its environment along residing downstream who consume water from Dudhkoshi River are affected in health along climatic ways too. Every season, expedition operators dig out snow at the base camp to place their luxury tents. This even slowly effect the base camp soil and is on extinction of origin looks of what base camp was in past and to future.
Unmanaged helicopter flights above the base camp is another serious issue, which has adversely impacted the cryosphere. Except the emergency evacuation, cargo flights to Camp II can be allowed to minimise risk in the treacherous icefall section. Limiting the permits and number of climbers is not only a solution but serious way of management and monitoring from the government side is equally needed. Fixing ropes too shouldn’t be given to a Kathmandu-based Expedition Agency . This has to be assigned to well trained Icefall doctors from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC). Traffic jams on Everest have degrade Nepal’s prestiage in world in recent years. He suggest atleast two separate ropes for ascent and descent can be fixed in order to minimize the issue of traffic jams. Also Everest royalties, garbage deposit and helicopters’ landing and take-off charges can be raised instead of limiting the number of climbers on Everest. Also Nepal two big telecommunication Nepal Telecom and Ncell need to be upgrade and manage their network communication in Everest high camps too inorder to reach Nepal high ways of development .
Camp IV with highly polluted due to tents, tents litter left behind by the expeditions team is huge and hard to be clean out . Thus he urges Nepal government and association umbrella organisation to coordinate with nternational community, including the United Nations to help Nepali stakeholders look for alternatives to the tents currently in use. He proposed on inventing biodegradable tents be explored to keep the mountain clean and as it is. He concludes to keep the mountain environment clean, he will also personally lobby with the SPCC, buffer zone, national park and rural municipality to ban the use of plastic in the Khumbu region and manage to keep Everest pristine.