Sustainable tourism development in Everest region:Analyzing the linkages (rural-urban; local - global), interactions (high land - low land; development - environment) and potential impacts of mountain tourism

Development of tourism in this region needs rural-urban development linkages. In the case of ‘Tourism in the Everest region’, the linkage is where goods and services are provided by the urban cities like Kathmandu. There is already a strong link between Kathmandu and the Everest region, which is a high land area with more concentrated settlements in the upper belt, but still having rural settlements in the lower belt.

Besides summarising the existing linkages, this paper aims to provide information on the possibilities for exploring the  sustainable dimensions of rural-urban linkages and high land - low land interactions.

The following linkages will be examioned:

• development linkages (administrative links for mountain development programmes),
• organisational and institutional networks for mountain development,
• global policy networks,
• regional and local development initiatives.

The ecological and economical dimensions of high land - low land interactions are described. As this paper addresses the issues of sustainable mountain tourism, the impacts of tourism in the Everest region are analysed with the help of information on the evolution of mountain tourism in Nepal, trends of development of tourism in Nepal, impacts (both positive and negative) on the environment, ecology, society, landscape, culture and traditions etc. so as to explore the socioeconomic issues that need to be addressed for sustainable mountain tourism development.