THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

This chapter looks at how many of the assumptions made about the
environment by scholars working in Nepal have been challenged in recent
years, and what these challenges mean for ecological anthropology in the
country. It then goes on to chart the history of this sub-discipline of
social anthropology with a view to establishing what contributions
social anthropologists might be expected to make to the study of the
environment in the Nepal case. In particular, it looks at the potential
for and implications of a 'post-environmentalist' anthropology in the
study of the Yakha, as a prelude to the rest of this thesis.
2.2 Ecolo~ical Anthropolo~v in Nepal: Bevond Environmentalism
"In bygone ages the Himalaya seemed eternal; men's onslaught has
rendered them among the most fragile eco-systems of the earth" writes
Moddie (1981:342), presenting, as do many 'environmentalist' authors, a
doomsday scenario in which much of the blame for the environmental
changes believed to be taking place in the Himalaya are placed on the
shoulders of local people. Because of population growth, many of the
basic resources on which people in the hills of Nepal depend for
subsistence (such as fuelwood - Eckholrn, 1975) are considered to be
dwindling fast: an ecological catastrophe, it is predicted, is imminent.
This section looks at recent work which has brought many of these
assumptions into question,
The Effects of Population Growth
This environmentalism is tied to concerns about population growth.
At the national level, Goldstein calculates on the basis of the 1981
census that the population of Nepal is growing at an average rate of