The co-production of disasters: how the nexus of climate change, tourism, and COVID-19 increases socioeconomic vulnerability in Mustang, Nepal

ABSTRACT

How do high mountain communities, facing the grave effects from climate change and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local tourism industry, perceive and navigate multiple protracted disasters? This article takes up this question from the perspective of a specific mountain community, that of Mustang, a culturally Tibetan region of Nepal bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China. Our findings stem from collective ethnographic research conducted with Mustangi communities in Nepal and among the diaspora in New York City to investigate the nexus between high mountain livelihoods, particularly tourism, and the consequences of two distinct yet interlocking disasters: climate change and the global health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the pandemic has undermined elements of Mustang’s economic future and simultaneously prompted a resurgent appreciation for and reliance on more traditional modes of community governance and social support. The fact that these dynamics are unfolding amidst ever-present concerns over the effects of climate change in the Himalayas, against the backdrop of labor- and education-driven outmigration, adds a profound layer of complexity to thinking about the future of tourism but also of Himalayan lives, from built infrastructures to the community resilience needed to sustain both.

KEYWORDS:

• disaster
• climate change
• tourism
• COVID-19
• Nepal

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank communities throughout the Mustang district and Mustangi communities elsewhere in Nepal and New York City for sharing their perspectives and extending their hospitality during field research. We acknowledge that this research dealt with challenging topics during stressful and difficult times for many families, and we appreciate our interlocutors’ willingness to participate in this work.

Notes

1 Bön is the term used to describe the pre-Buddhist religious traditions of Tibet. Bön is one of five schools of Tibetan religion, the others of which are Tibetan Buddhist in orientation. While Bön and Buddhist households coexist in many villages in Mustang, Lubrak is the only remaining village in the district that identifies fully as a Bön community. See Ramble 2008; Samuel 1993; Shneiderman 2006.

2 Kumar 2021.

3 Aijazi 2015, 15.

4 Childs et al. 2014.

5 The Hindu Kush Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau is a region often referred to by scholars and researchers as the “water towers of Asia” or the “third pole” in reference to the largest areas covered by glaciers and permafrost outside the north and south poles (Erikkson et al. 2009; Lord 2016).

6 For more on the diaspora population in New York, see Craig 2020; Gurung et al. 2021; Amburgey and Gurung 2021.

7 More specifically, we draw on ethnographic data collected between January 2020 and November 2021 in Mustang, as well as on previous collaborative scholarship that focused on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on notions of mobility and precarity among Mustangi migrants to New York City. For the latter, see Gurung et al. 2021.

8 Similar realities played out in other areas of post-earthquake Nepal. See Shneiderman et al. 2020a; Shneiderman et al. 2020b; Spoon et al. 2020.

9 Childs et al. 2021; Childs et al. 2017.

10 Ojha et al. 2016.

11 Maldonado 2016.

12 Aijazi 2015, 15.

13 Barrios 2017.

14 Aijazi 2015, 24.

15 Gagné 2019, 842-843.

16 Barrios 2017; Gagné 2020.

17 Ojha et al. 2016, 418.

18 Klein 2007; Nightingale 2020; Paudel and Le Billon 2020.

19 Chakraborty et al. 2021; Chaudhary and Bawa 2011; Sharma 2019.

20 Parajulee et al. 2020; Hutt 2021.

21 Aijazi 2015, 24.

22 Nixon 2011.

23 Das 2006; Oliver-Smith 2016.

24 Gurung et al., 2021; Salick et al. 2020.

25 Gautam and Khatri 2021. According to official data, Nepal had 1.17 million tourist arrivals in 2019, generating Rs. 240.7 billion.

26 Rijal 2020.

27 Behbahani et al. 2020.

28 Sah et al., 2020.

29 According to Galen Murton, “Today in Mustang, as in so many other places around the world, road developments are at once promoted as great equalizers even as they, in fact, reinforce long-standing social and economic stratification.” Murton 2017, 540.

30 Carlson 2021; Craig 2020.

31 Personal interview, October 3, 2021, Yara.

32 Personal interview, July 24, 2021, Lo Monthang.

33 Klein 2007; Paudel et al. 2020.

34 McGranahan 2010, Murton 2019; Ramble 2008. It is also important to note that communities throughout Mustang historically have governed themselves, despite Mustang’s geopolitical sensitivity as a borderzone.

35 Such dynamics around disaster management and response are not unique to Mustang or Nepal. Deadly floods in Pakistan in 2010 and 2022 demonstrated how insecure land rights rooted in a British colonial political patronage system makes it challenging for farmers who rent land to make changes or prepare for climate-induced disasters. See Aijazi 2022.

36 On July 12, 2021, Oli was replaced by Sher Bahadur Deuba in the wake of allegations that the Oli administration had violated constitutional principles. See Gurubacharya 2021. ⁣⁣

37 Bista et al. 2022.

38 Schmall 2021. Unusually long monsoons throughout South Asia are a sign that frequent and extreme rainfall will likely worsen along with the rapidly changing climate. See Schwartz 2021; Bates-Eamer 2019; McDowell and Koppers 2017; Mukherji et al. 2019; Sherry et al. 2018.

39 For more information about homestays in Lubrak, see: https://www.communityhomestay.com/homestays/mustang-bon-community-homestay.

40 Carlson 2022; von der Heide 2016; Shrestha and Prasain 2016; Devkota 2013.

41 Many residents of Dakarjhong and Phelak spend the better part of the year in Kathmandu, leaving their homes and fields in the care of migrants from Dolpo, a district just west of Mustang where conditions are, in some respects, even harsher than in Mustang.

42 Despite growing global interest in Himalayan environments, “international environment and development agencies have consistently sought to understand and address the challenges of the Himalayas … but without any effective impacts on the livelihoods of local people or the mountain ecology.” Satyal et al. 2017, 49.

43 Satyal et al. 2017.

44 Sharma 2021.

45 Collins and Holder 2021. This low vaccine rate is despite the fact that Nepal has a strong public health infrastructure, particularly for vaccine rollout, in the form of Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs), who reach even remote mountain regions of the country such as Mustang.

46 Thapa and Maru, 2021; Citrin et al. 2021.

47 Giri 2021.

48 Craig et al. 2021a, b

49 Lord and Murton 2017; Craig 2022.

50 Childs et al. 2021.

51 Blaikie et al. 1994; Hewitt and Mehta 2012; Hewitt 2013.

52 Gagné 2019.

53 Gagné 2019, 859. See also Zeiderman 2016.

54 Gagné 2019, 841.

55 Murton and Lord 2020; Huber 2019.

56 Davis et al. 2021, 29.

57 Nixon 2011, 2.

58 Nixon 2011, 2.

59 Chakraborty et al. 2021, 49.

60 Rusk et al. 2022.

61 Mosley 2022.

62 As Omer Aijazi has noted, “communities strategically locate and employ the socially embedded resources available in their life worlds, proving that ultimately they are the source of resilience and strength in their recovery journeys.” Aijazi 2015, 21.

63 ICIMOD 2022. In November 2021 and May 2022, landslides in southern Mustang damaged forests and agricultural fields, injured residents, and killed livestock.

64 Gurung 2017.

65 Gurung et al. 2021.

66 Smith 2006.

67 Sherry et al. 2018, 190.

Additional information

Funding

Field research in Nepal was supported by the Public Scholars Initiative and the Liu Institute for Global Issues, part of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada; the Claire Garber Goodman Fund, Department of Anthropology, and the Office of the Provost, at Dartmouth College; and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Research grant in Decision, Risk and Management Sciences (DRMS).

Notes on contributors

Emily Amburgey

Emily Amburgey ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her work explores the impacts of climate change and labor migration in high altitude regions of Nepal’s Himalaya.

Tashi W. Gurung

Tashi W. Gurung ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. His research interests lie in climate change, tourism, migration, and sustainability, focusing on Himalayan communities in Nepal.

Yungdrung Tsewang Gurung

Yungdrung Tsewang Gurung ([email protected]) is a freelance researcher, conservationist, and photographer from Mustang, Nepal. Yungdrung has worked on research projects with Yale University and University of British Columbia faculty and students, as well as assisted with several short film and documentary productions.

Sienna R. Craig

Sienna R. Craig ([email protected]) is Orvil Dryfoos Professor of Public Affairs in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. With expertise in medical anthropology as well as migration and social change, she has written several books focused on Mustang, including, The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020).