Issue of Mount Everest Region: Waste Management and Sustainable Development

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DISCUSSION PAPER
(Issue of Mount Everest region)

ISSUE OF MOUNT EVEREST REGION
Table of Contents
1. Position statement..................................................................................................................2
2. Background context...............................................................................................................2
3. A statement of need................................................................................................................5
4. Scope of the proposed plan....................................................................................................7
5. Proposed process....................................................................................................................9
Reference..................................................................................................................................10
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ISSUE OF MOUNT EVEREST REGION
1. Position statement
“Yatra" is one of the famous tourism companies of India. The main objective of the company
is to deliver better goods as well as services to the customers. Other goals of the company are
to create opportunities for employment along with bringing socio-economic benefit to
communities, especially in the remote and interior areas and in this way to develop those
areas. Apart from that, another objective of the organisation is related to the preservation and
protection of natural resources for achieving sustainable development.
In the recent years, the number of climbers in the Everest region has increased rapidly. As a
result, waste in the different places in the mountain, especially around the base camp has
risen to a large volume. However, to provide better service rubbish management needs to be
handled carefully. Therefore, the new objective of the company is to make amendments in the
policies that could help in the mitigation of the problems effectively.
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ISSUE OF MOUNT EVEREST REGION
2. Background context
As opined by Conger (2019), the climber of Mount Everest increased to 7 % in the last few
years compared to the previous years. Besides, from a recent report, it has been known that
near about 2500 people have climbed the mountain since 2010. In the next year, it was seen
that a large number of people waited for climbing and this created a hazardous situation for
all the parties who were involved. As a result, different kinds of problems are arising which
directly effects the environment of the particular region. One of the most significant issues is
the issue of rubbish management. The mountain area has become a dumping ground. As
stated by Ketchell (2019), nearly 55 tonnes of rubbish have been accumulated beyond the
base camp of the Everest. The litter consists of food cans, ropes, torn tents, oxygen cylinders,
human waste as well as dead bodies.
The amount of rubbish is not decreasing even after implementing the periodical cleaning
process. This is because the number of climbers has been increasing by leaps and bounds.
The base camp of Everest looks like a tent city. It can be observed that the majority of the
climbers of nowadays are not as capable as the mountaineer of some decade ago. This is
another reason for which the waste is increasing in the mountain region. According to the
Alton Byers who is one of the famous mountain geologists, the mountain keeps itself
apparent by the publicised clean up expedition every year. However, much of the land
surrounded by the hill is suffered due to the reason that the excessive volume of waste that is
generated by climbers.
Though a lot of waste were buried and burned and at the same time a large volume of waste
is landfilled, yet there is no sign of reduction of the trash in the mountain region. This
burning process also impacts on the environment in a negative way (Iran, 2019). Open
burning creates smoke that is made up of fine particles. Breathing these fine particles can
raise the respiratory problem and can create severe problems like asthma as well as chronic
bronchitis. It is a critical concern for the climbers as the air is polluting in an excessive
amount. Burning of wastes affects not only the air but also the groundwater (Rai, 2017).
From a recent report, it can be known that a lot of tourists became sick due to human waste
which was being dumped into the rivers of the local areas. Near about 12500 lbs of the
human waste are generated in each season around the base camp of the Everest, and this is
dumped into the water sources. As a result, most of the visitors are getting sick; it has also
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