Environmental beauty of Pokhara amidst the interrelationship of tourism and environment

Available documents reflect that there is not a very long history that the writers have published articles and books raising the concern of environment regarding this Pokhara city.  However, some of the authors, Devendra Bahadur Lamichhane, Bisho Kalyan Parajuli, Krishna KC., and K.B. Parajuli have already done some researches and have published their outcome  to  prevent Pokhara from environmental  pollution. Similarly, the great poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota has expressed his environmental concern by composing a poem about ‘Pokhara’. The poet presents the blooming beauty of Machhapuchhre in the tranquil Lake Fewa. Devkota even a few decades before predicted that Pokhara in future would be the famous tourist spot. He meditates, “This earth paradise will be an interesting tourist destination in the world” (Devkota 2004).   He has praised nature as a paradise and Pokhara as one of the major tourist destinations of the world. He argues that the only truth is the truth of environmental consciousness that connects the soil, air, the mountains and the humanity.

Regarding the interaction that exists between tourism and the environment, Andrew Holden argues that it is necessary to understand the complexity of tourism. It is in fact a product of a variety of interacting factors in our home environment. Nature conservation and tourism in the contemporary sense date from the first half of the nineteenth century and, to a large extent, have developed parallel to one another (Holden 2008). It shows that the concept of tourism is complex and reveals heterogeneous factors associated with environment. Tourism development commonly has been advocated as an alternative to traditional natural resource-based

economic development, such as timber production, agriculture, mining, etc. Recently, many advocates of tourism have promoted seemingly new environmentally friendly tourism concepts, such as nature-based tourism, ecotourism, and sustainable tourism, among others. (Kline 2001).   In this context, sustainable tourism is a derivative of the more general concept of sustainable development brought to prominence with the publication of “our common future”; the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WECD 1987). The term Sustainable Development came into appearance just after the release of Brundtland Report 1987 (Bhatta 2006). Sustainable tourism is tourism attempting to make as low impact on the environment and local culture as possible, while helping to generate future employment for local people.

Transport by air, road, and rail is continuously increasing in response to the rising number reported that the number of international air passengers worldwide rose from 88 million in 1972 to 344 million in 1994, and in 2011 the figure is observed 980 million (UNWTO 2012). One of the consequences of this rapid increase in air transport is that tourism now accounts for more than 60 percent of air travel, and is therefore responsible for an important share of air emissions. According to Hillman (1996), it is estimated that a single transatlantic return flight emits almost half the CO2  emissions produced by all other sources (lighting, heating, and car use) consumed by an average person yearly.

With an area of 1, 47,181 sq km, Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, has diverse climatic zone ranging from tropical to arctic. This has enriched Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, with diverse flora and fauna across a distance of 120 km (Kunwar 2010). Eighty three percent of the total land is covered by high mountains and undulating hills while rest of the 17 percent by alluvial lands of Terai in Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, (Bhatta 2006). The blending of the unique natural and cultural attractions is in fact the world-class primary tourist attractions which are second to none in the international tourism market. The abundance of spectacular tourism resources amidst the large population of poor people residing in rural and remote areas has positioned Nepal, the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, , the beautiful country, tourist based country, to go for ecotourism with pro-poor thrust.