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aquatic ecosystem and other wildlife habitats and caused slope instability,
landslides, and degradation of land around the mining areas. The impacts
of mining, particularly pollution, opening access to undisturbed areas
and changes in local social dynamics and economies, are reported often
widespread and reaching all across the Andean mountains. Furthermore,
resource-use confl icts, especially water, are becoming increasingly common,
and are expected to become more severe as climate change affects water
availability. In Andean mountains of Argentina and Chile large mining
projects have caused depletion of glaciers.
Owing to inaccessibility of terrain, remoteness, lack of infrastructure and
strong community opposition, the mining activities are not very common
in the Himalayan mountains. The ruling of the Apex Courts of India and
Nepal against mining in the fragile Himalayan mountains contributed
signifi cantly towards bringing awareness to the risks of mining in these
fragile mountains (Bandyopadhyay and Shiva 1985). However, extraction of
lime-stone, building-stone, magnesite has already caused devastating effect
in many parts of the Indian Himalaya during the last century. Nevertheless
China has expanded its mineral exploration and extraction activities in the
western and north western parts of country.
Tourism in High Mountains
Tourism is now one of the fastest growing industries in the world with
direct as well as indirect impacts on, natural ecosystem, economy, society,
culture, perception and attitude of people. Tourism and recreation are
major industries in many mountain regions. Tourism and recreation are
both affected by global change, and at the same time they also constitute
a form of global change themselves. The improvement in transportation
system has now opened access to increasing number of tourists to almost
all mountain regions of the world. Tyrol in Austrian Alps, for example, has
experienced a remarkable spatial expansion of settlements, commercial
and transport infrastructure, primarily caused by the shift from a largely
agrarian society to a service society shaped by tourism (Borsdorf et al.
2010). The Alps are among the earliest nature based tourist destinations.
Tourism and the leisure industry have become a major economic factor in
the rural areas of the Alps with the advent of mass tourism in the 1960s as
tourism was contributing 12% employment and as much as 16% of GDP
(Bätzing 2003). During the last three decades, a long-term trend towards
skiing-based winter tourism has emerged with signifi cantly higher added
value than summer tourism in the Alps (Borsdorf et al. 2010). However,
tourism activities are very unevenly distributed over the mountain regions.
As mentioned above, tourism is one of the fastest growing industries
in the mountains of the world with direct as well as indirect impacts on,
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