They appear tranquil soaring above Himalayan forests, but a string of cable car projects in Nepal have sparked violent protests, with locals saying environmental protection should trump tourism development.
In Nepal’s eastern district of Taplejung, the community has been torn apart by a US$22 million government-backed project many say would destroy livelihoods and damage ancient forests they hold as sacred.
Across Nepal, five cable car projects have opened in the past two years — and 10 more are under development, according to government data.
Photo: AFP
Critics accuse the government of failing to assess the environmental impact properly.
Protests in Taplejung last month escalated into battles with armed police, with four activists wounded by gunfire and 21 police officers injured.
The protests calmed after promises construction would be suspended, but erupted again this week, with 14 people wounded on Thursday — 11 of them members of the security forces.
Photo: AFP
“We were in a peaceful protest, but hired thugs showed us kukris [large knives] and attacked us — and we countered them,” protest committee leader Shree Linkhim Limbu said after the latest clashes.
He vowed to continue demonstrations until the project is scrapped.
About 300,000 Hindu devotees trek for hours to Taplejung’s mountaintop Pathibhara temple every year — a site also deeply sacred to the local Limbu people’s separate beliefs.
Chandra Prasad Dhakal, a businessman with powerful political ties who is also president of Nepal’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in 2018 announced the construction of a 2.5km cable car to the temple.
The government calls it a project of “national pride.”
Dhakal’s IME Group is also building other cable cars, including the 6.4km Sikles line in the Annapurna Conservation Area, which the Nepalese Supreme Court upheld.
The government deemed the project a “national priority,” thereby exempting it from strict planning restrictions in protected areas.
The Supreme Court scrapped that controversial exemption last month, a move celebrated by environmentalists, but activists fear the project could still go ahead.
Taplejung is deeply sacred to local Mukkumlung beliefs, and residents say that the clearance of about 3,000 rhododendron trees — with 10,000 more on the chopping block — to build pylons is an attack on their religion.
“It is a brutal act,” Limbu said. “How can this be a national pride project when the state is only serving business interests?”
Saroj Kangliba Yakthung, 26, said locals would rather efforts and funding were directed to “preserve the religious, cultural and ecological importance” of the forests.
The wider forests are home to endangered species, including the red panda, black bear and snow leopard.
“We worship trees, stone and all living beings, but they are butchering our faith,” said Anil Subba, director of the Kathmandu-based play Mukkumlung, which was staged for a month as part of the protest.
The hundreds of porters and dozens of tea stall workers that support trekking pilgrims fear for their livelihoods.
“If they fly over us in a cable car, how will we survive?” 38-year-old porter Chandra Tamang asked.
The government says the cable car would encourage more pilgrims by making it easy to visit, boosting the wider economy in a nation where unemployment hovers at about 10 percent and GDP per capita is just US$1,377, according to the World Bank.
“This will bring development,” said resident Kamala Devi Thapa, 45, adding that the new cable car route would aid “elderly pilgrims.”
The cable cars symbolize Nepal’s breakneck bid to cash in on tourism, making up more than 6 percent of the nation’s GDP in 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
Beyond the Pathibhara project, the government’s environmental policy is in question — in a nation that is 45 percent forest.
More than 255,000 trees have been cut down for infrastructure projects in the past four years, according to the Nepalese Ministry of Forests and Environment.
“Nepal has witnessed massive deforestation in the name of infrastructure,” said Rajesh Rai, professor of forestry at Tribhuvan University. “This will have severe long-term consequences.”
Unperturbed, the cable car builder assures his project would create 1,000 jobs and brushes aside criticism.
“It won’t disturb the ecology or local culture,” Dhakal said. “If people can fly there in helicopters, why not a cable car?”
The argument leaves Kendra Singh Limbu, 79, unmoved.
“We are fighting to save our heritage,” he said.
It has split the community, local journalist Anand Gautam said.
“It has turned fathers and sons against each other,” Gautam said. “Some see it as progress, others as destruction.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS