Practice 2

Practice 2

Action, Adventure and the Environment

    Tourism in Nepal started in the Annapurna area, before Everest was climbed. The spectacular view of the Dhulagiri and Annapurna ranges from Pun Hill; the mountain heights and valley depths of the Annapurna sanctuary; the vast Tibetan plateau in the Northern Annapurna: all this has helped to make the area the most popular trekking destination in Nepal. This year's visitors are due to the top 40,000 trekkers who visited in 1992.
   But the years of booming tourism brought problems. Lodges for trekkers proliferated - there are now over 650 in the area and our rhododendron and bamboo forests were cleared to make way for them. Rapid deforestation resulted in landslides and soil erosion. Rubbish accumulated and water became polluted. The social life of local residents began to change beyond recognition and in response to this we campaigned to make the region Nepal's first conservation area. In 1986 the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, Nepal's leading environmental organization, succeeded in launching the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP). ACAP's approach is 'putting the local interest first'. Unlike national parks and reserves in Nepal, it didn't drive local residents off the land or seek military assistance. It invested in people.
    Local representative committees were encouraged to participate in all areas affecting them: health, education, infrastructure improvements, tourism, forestry and agriculture. In 1988 the project was granted permission to collect entry fees from visiting trekkers. The revenue has been used to create an endowment fund for future projects. Above all, ACAP invested in conservation education and extension programmes. The project emphasized changing attitudes among local residents, managers, workers and, not least, the trekkers themselves.
    At the end of May. When the spring trekking season ends, Lodge Management committees of all villages in the Annapurna Area meet and discuss their plans. They control every aspect of lodge management from menu pricing to sanitation and send their plans to ACAP. Today the villages of Southern Annapurna are full of committees and groups for virtually everything. Each winter they decide on community works: bridges, schools, drinking water systems and trails. In midsummer they deal with forest and agricultural programmes. Women's groups raise money by singing and performing dances in honour of visitors. Their funds are invested in community programmes and projects aimed at improving women's standing in their communities.
    The villagers in the Southern Annapurna no longer hunt or collect more fuel-wood and timber than they require. The forests no longer belong to the Government, but to their own communities. ACAP's success has earned them management rights for another ten years. After that, ACAP hopes that local people will be able to manage their lands and affairs by themselves, without much help from either their Government or other agencies.

I. UNDERSTANDING TEXT ORGANISATION

1. The underlying structure of this text is that problems → their solution. Using paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 for reference, complete the following summary:
(a) Tourism in Nepal started (when, where and in what form?)
(b) The success of trekking led to the building of , which meant that
(c) This led to some specific problems:
(i)  
(ii) 
(iii)
(d) The main steps taken to solve the problem were:
(i)  
(ii) 
(iii)

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II. CHECKING COMPREHENSION

1. The success of ACAP may be largely due to its policy of 'putting the local interest first'. Fill in the gaps in the table bellow to show what goes on at local level and when.

Time of year	Group	What they do
(a)	Lodge Management Committees	e.g. menu pricing and sanitation
(b)	Village committees	(c)
mid - summer	(d)	(e)
?	(f)	raise money by singing and dancing for visitors

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2. The writer of this article refers to himself and others as “we” (line 23). Which of the following probably best describes the writer?

(i) Company executive of Trekking Unlimited, a major adventure tour operator
(ii) Conservation Officer for the Annapurna Conservation Area Project
(iii) Chairperson of an Annapurna Lodge Management Committee
(iv) Director of the King Mahandra Trust for Nature Conservation

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3. In the text there are several examples of cause and effect (a situation which leads naturally to a particular result) and action and purpose (something which is done intentionally in order to achieve a particular result). Complete the following tables using information in the text.

Cause	Effect
Spectacular views, mountain heights and valley depths (para.1)	(i)
(ii)	landslides and soil erosion (para. 2)
creation of national parks and reserves (para.3)	(iii)

Action	Purpose
(i)	Make room for trekking lodges (para. 2)
collect entry fees from visiting trekkers (para 3)	(ii)
(iii)	To improve women's standing in local communities (para. 4)

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III. DEALING WITH UNFAMILIAR WORDS

1. Find words and expressions in the text with the opposite meaning to those listed below.

Word or expression	Word or expression meaning the opposite
(a) solutions (para.graph 2)
(b) failed (paragraph 2)
(c) discouraged (paragraph 3)
(d) denied (paragraph 3)
(e) expenditure (paragraph 3)
(f) destroy (paragraph 3)
(g) almost nothing (paragraph 4)
(h) still (paragraph 4)

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2. Find three words in paragraph 2 which refer to an increase in quantity or amount.

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TOURISM'S CHALLENGE: SPREADING THE TOURIST LOAD

    1. Many though certainly not all, problems produced by modern travel, can be explained by two well-known phenomena: the tremendous concentration of holidays and travel into just a few weeks and weekends, and the congestion it produces: everybody at the same time for the same reason, in the same places. The flight from the mass into the mass. The concentration of holidays in time and space is responsible for the huge plague of travellers, who are sometimes perceived as a burden and a threat both by tourists themselves and their hosts. The over-exploitation of recreational areas can be explained by these reasons too. Despite that, it is debatable whether many travellers would want to be quite alone on their trip. Even if they did, moving so many thousands of people, all at the same time, to their holiday homes and back again, can never be done in smaller units. So it looks as though massivity is here to stay. What we should try to do is control and reduce its scale. The question of tolerable numbers must be a central issue for the planning of tourism in the tourist destination area.
    2. Efforts must therefore be made to break clown the travel periods by staggering school and. works holidays. Information about the advantage of staggered holidays should be made available at all levels. This question must be given a new priority in international organizations (e.g. the World Tourism Organization, the OECD, the EU etc.) and take its place in national policies as well
    3. Tourist facilities in holiday areas should be more rationally distributed to follow the principle of "decentralized concentration". The tourist infrastructure should be expanded to a larger number of centres and small-scale projects should be promoted so that less developed areas get a share of the economic benefit produced by tourism.
    4. That the holiday period should be staggered as a matter of urgency is now generally accepted. But there is also widespread resignation about the fact that decades of political discussions about the subject have produced no tangible results. People seem to have resigned themselves to the holiday rush, accepting it as an immutable fact of life. But renewed efforts to change this situation must be made, for their success would significantly improve the preconditions for the well-being of all participants in tourism and for the preservation of recreational areas. If people were given more say in the organization and scheduling of their working and leisure time, every person would have a much greater possibility of avoiding the holiday peaks and bottlenecks; whether he or she would use the chance is less certain.
    5. The second demand, namely that tourism should be decentralized and its scale thus reduced, is not so uncontroversial. The honey pot theory, as it is called, has many advocates: the best solution, they claim, is to set up large "honey pot" - i.e. holiday centres, in which tourists will assemble in their thousands like insects looking for food, while all other areas will be kept free of the "tourists plague". Though other formulations are not always so extreme, growing resistance to tourists development which is engulfing the whole country, can be observed in many areas.
    6. According to this view, tourism should be allotted certain zones and the rest of the country protected from it (see the proposition relating to artificial holiday centres). We should point out that our own demand for more decentralization at the over concentration would be replaced by dispersion. Such a development would have dubious consequences both for the environment and society. What is needed is a middle - of - the road solution in which the costs and benefits will be better distributed from the point of view of all participants.

I. UNDERSTANDING TEXT ORGANISATION

1. Which of the following (a) or (b), represents the underlying structure of this text?

(a)	(b)

2. What do the followings refer to?
a) these reasons (para. 1)

b) this question (para. 2)

c) this situation (para. 3)

d) this view (para. 5)

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II. COMPREHENSION

1. What is decentralized concentration?

2. Imagine the author is addressing an audience. Using words from the text, complete her proposals for dealing with the problems caused by massivity.
If we showed people the resulting (i) , they would agree to stagger works and (ii) holidays, that is, have holidays for different people at different times. (iii) policies should deal with this important issue, as should international organisations such as (iv) (v) and the (vi) . We should not only (vii) tourist facilities to more centres but we should also encourage them on a smaller scale in (viii) areas which could benefit (ix) from tourism.
3. If staggering holidays is such a good idea, why isn't it practised more?

4. What does the author mean when she calls for a 'middle-of-the-road' solution to the problem of massivity?

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III. VOCABULARY

1. A number of two-word expressions are used in the text. Match the word in column. A with one in column B and check you understand the meaning of the expressions you make.

A	B
(a) central (paragraph 1)	(i) issue
(b) tourist (paragraph 1)	(ii) efforts
(c) national (paragraph 2)	(iii) polices
(d) tangible (paragraph 4)	(iv) consequences
(e) renewed (paragraph 4)	(v) results
(f) dubious (paragraph 6)	(vi) destination

2. The prefix "over" attached to a word often conveys the sense of more than what is desirable or suitable. In the text find examples of words thus prefixed and check you understand the meaning of each.

3. What is the singular of 'phenomena' (para. 1)?


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