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Mountains still to climb as land of the Himalayas looks to future
He lives and works here but Surya Subedi is playing a vital role in protecting his native Nepal. Sheena Hastings reports.
THINK Nepal and what do you see in your mind's eye?
Probably the Himalayas, whose crown jewel is the mighty Mount Everest; possibly also heavenly visions of Shangri-la, propagated by hippie travellers in the 1960s. Nepal is indeed unique and breathtaking in many respects, and those who love the country want it to remain so.
It is home to eight of the world's top ten highest mountains, all found in the north of this multicultural, multi-lingual landlocked South East Asian country that is bordered by India and China.
Across its five climate zones, Nepal has many other incomparable natural landscapes, from mighty rivers to tundra, and a wealth of stunning flora and fauna. It has a population of around 28m, and a further two million Nepalese live abroad. More than 40,000 visitors travel to Nepal each year from the UK alone.
In its 57,000 square miles tea, rice, corn, wheat, herbs, sugar cane and tobacco are grown. Unemployment is high and per capita income is only $470 a year, so many Nepalese people move to India to find work.
After a dozen years of civil war, last year Nepal was declared a Federal Republic, and those who now run the country are hoping for a politically stable future, in which the impoverished economy can flourish.
Watching from afar are Nepal's many loyal ex-patriots, some of whom left the country as part of the "brain drain" of the last few decades. One such ex-pat, whose heart is clearly very much in his homeland is Surya Subedi, professor of international law at Leeds University and a practising barrister.
He has been in the UK for 20 years, after finishing his first degree at university in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu then working as an international lawyer for the Government and later travelling to England, where he gained a masters degree at Hull University and a doctorate at Oxford. He taught at universities in London, Hull, New York, The Hague and Sweden and moved to Leeds with his family five years ago.
Prof Subedi says he is honoured to have just been appointed a governor of the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal, a job which will involve mobilising international organisations to support the country and its special eco-systems which include threatened species
such as rare plants, the single-horned rhino, Asian tigers and many breeds of Himalayan birds.
"Some natural habitats are on the verge of extinction already, due to water pollution from industrial waste," says Prof Subedi. "Deforestation is also a problem, with roads being built through forests to expand industry without proper consideration of environmental damage."
Nepal has signed up to all the international agreements on the management and conservation of nature and natural resources as well as protection of human rights, but so far little has been done to police how well those standards are put into practice, says the professor.
Not only must the rules be enforced by existing industry, but those who are now keen to move into Nepal and exploit its low labour costs must also be made to give guarantees before they are allowed to operate, says Subedi.
"As well as older businesses, such as tea, herbs and rug-making, newer concerns like distilleries, cigarette factories and component making for heavy industry in India are coming into the country.
"Some damage has already done, but we can't allow it to
go any further.
"In many developing countries, they realise too late. While we want the economy to grow and for people to enjoy better lives, the risk is that not enough safeguards will be built into
the system like proper environmental impact assessments."
With his nature conservation hat on, Prof Subedi will travel back to Nepal for meetings three times a year and hopes that one of the successful results of lending his experience and expertise will be the creation of a robust framework for the enforcement of international conservation treaties.
With unemployment among young people running at around 20 per cent, it's vital to help young people who want to stay and prosper in their homeland, rather than feeling they have
to travel to India or beyond to make a decent living, says Prof Subedi.
"With the expansion of global TV and the internet, people in Nepal see the prosperity of other parts of the world and want
that for themselves. One of our aims is to attract foreign investment and develop skilled jobs so that Nepal can compete with other places.
"What we don't want, though, is foreign investment without high standards of respect both for the environment and for human rights. Some major multinationals do go to poorer countries to exploit them without any discussion about what benefits they will bring and what contamination they could potentially create to the land and its fertility.
"It's time to say that we intend to improve our environmental and human rights standards and enforcement, and they can invest in Nepal on our terms."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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