Reading Himalayan Landscapes Over Time : Environmental Perception, Knowledge and Practice in Nepal and Ladakh

Contents: List of authors. Acknowledgements. Conventions. List of acronyms. Foreword. Introduction/Joelle Smadja. Preliminary chapter: Snippets of knowledge stolen from an impenetrable country/Joelle Smadja. I. Unstable and often densely populated environments: 1. Geographic units and landscapes in Nepal: Local terminologies/Joele Smadja. 2. Ladakhi landscape unites/Pascale Dollfus and Valerie Labbal. 3. Some elements structuring the Himalayan mountains/Olivier Dollfus and Monique Fort. 4. Population densities and resources in the study of Nepalese landscapes/Philippe Ramirez. II. Perceptions and representations of landscapes: 5. The Nepalese landscape: Exegesis and appropriation of the country/Marie Lecomte-Tilouine. 6. A reading of the Salme Tamangs\' territory and landscape/Joelle Smadja. 7. A foray into Ladakhi place names/Pascale Dollfus and Valerie Labbal. 8. Christian and Hindu share of the territory in the Magar Village of Pathardi/Lucile Viroulaud. III. Historical data on land use and resource management: 9. Agriculture in the Himalayas: A historical sketch/Pascale Dollfus, Marie Lecomte - Tilouine and Olivia Aubriot. 10. The Nepalese state and the transformation of landscapes according to administrative documents dating from the XVIII and XIX centuries/Philippe Ramirez. 11. The Khimti Wilderness: Regulations and conflicts: A legal and historical approach/Bruno Muller. 12. Discourse and law: resource management and environmental policies since 1950/Blandine Ripert, Isabelle Sacareau, Thierry Boisseaux, Stephanie Tawa Lama. IV. Local practices, between choice and constraint: 13. Environmental protection impoverishment of men: Botan village on the periphery of Rara National Park/Satya Shrestha. 14. Resource management and changes in landscapes within the Annapurna Conservation Area Project: The example of Modi Khola/Isabelle Sacareau. 15. Parcelling of land, privatization along with collective management of space and resources on the Salme Mountainside/Blandine Ripert. 16. The Balamis, Nepalese woodcutters deprived of forest/Gerard Toffin. 17. A Bocage landscape, Masyam and the Hamlet of Kolang/Tristan Brusle, Monique Fort and Joelle Smadja. Conclusion/Joelle Smadje. Annexes. Glossary of the main Nepalese terms mentioned in the texts. Index. Bibliographic references.

"In choosing to study the relationship between Himalayan societies in Nepal and Ladakh and their environment, the authors of this book propose a new interpretation of present-day landscapes, of their diversity as well as of their transformation. Natural data on the Himalayan range, demography, perceptions and representations of milieux, their history, current local examples of resource management, especially tree management, are the subject of often unprecedented investigations. ....

In light of this, what about preconceived ideas in terms of the environmental crisis affecting the Himalayas-Ganges Plain area, the causes generally invoked and the recommended solutions? What can be said of the predicted disasters and of the factors identified so far?

By associating various disciplines (geography, social anthropology, history, agronomy...) with the knowledge imparted by the populations studied, meticulous fieldwork, as well as archive research, this book prompts us to re-examine the catastrophist theories on the degradation of Himalayan environments by placing them in a spatial, temporal and cultural context. Thus, in these mountains, the issue seems not so much one of environmental problems linked to deforestation - which is, moreover, supposedly a recent phenomenon - as of problems of a society that, in trying to protect its environment, leaves the most underprivileged populations by the wayside. It would also appear that any intervention in these milieux needs to take into account their symbolic and religious dimension, as well as the very precise knowledge populations have of them. Finally, this work contributes to fuelling debates on major environmental changes on a planetary scale and no doubt to reformulating them.

This book was first published in French in 2003 under the title : "Histoire et Devenir des Paysages en Himalaya. Representations des milieux et Gestion des ressources au Nepal et au Ladakh", CNRS editions."