By Frank Giustra
Food has never been the main attraction—or even a side attraction—of my trekking adventures. Instead, it has primarily been an inconvenient necessity, largely consisting of rice, beans and other forms of sustenance. Without fresh vegetables, herbs and garlic, it all starts to taste the same after a day or two.
Of course, mountain adventures aren't about the food. They are about fulfilling ambitions, testing both your physical and mental limits and maybe learning something new about yourself. Sometimes, too, there's a lesson in there about horticulture.
Last year, I trekked with a group of friends to Everest Base Camp for our second high-altitude adventure. (Two years earlier, we summited Kilimanjaro at 19,300 feet.) Everest Base Camp wasn't as challenging as Kilimanjaro—it was 2,000 feet lower than Kilimanjaro and not nearly as steep of a climb.
But there was more to see on the Everest walk. Kilimanjaro was mostly bare rocks, while the Everest views were filled with snowy peaks and tiny villages. We slept in small lodges and visited cultural sites along the way, including a monastery where we were blessed by a Nepalese monk.
And then there was the food, including the unexpected gardens. During our Kilimanjaro trek, our daily sustenance consisted of the aforementioned rice and beans and a lot of ginger tea. But on our Everest trip, we had a much wider variety of food. There were lots of potatoes and French fries, processed meats, soups and, at one point, yak cheese (which I can tell you is nothing like Asiago or Parmesan).
However, the food took a surprising turn when we reached the house of our lead guide, Ang Temba Sherpa. Temba had summited Everest once and would have attempted it again if he hadn't promised his mother that he would never go back after she found out he had gone up the first time. He and his wife, Yangzee, live at 13,100 feet in the village of Pangboche, on the trail to Mount Everest. Once we had taken off our boots and settled in for a rest, Yangzee made us a delicious dinner, the most memorable parts of which were the vegetable side dishes and a fresh salad.
The Sherpas in the area can normally only grow potatoes. They live amid some of the most spectacular high-mountain scenery in the world, referring to the Khumbu Valley as "beyul," which means "blessed sanctuary." But it is a hardscrabble life high in the Himalayas. The Sherpa people must travel throughout the year to survive—in monsoon season, when they can graze their yaks, they move up the valley. To purchase rice, salt, spices and staples, they trek down the valley to the trading village of Namche Bazaar. Everything is carried by porters or on the backs of yaks. There are no wheeled vehicles, bicycles, ox-drawn carts or motor vehicles in the Khumbu—the trails are just too steep.
So, in 2012, without an alternative means to get fresh vegetables, Temba and his wife decided to build their own greenhouse at 13,000 feet. Using stones and mud for the walls and corrugated plastic and plastic sheeting for the roof, they crafted a utilitarian greenhouse. Now, they are able to grow tomatoes, bok choy, broccoli, cucumber, squash and lettuce throughout the year, as well as flavor-boosting herbs like mint, chives and coriander.
In recent years, the growing staple of Khumbu (Sherpa) agriculture at these altitudes has changed: Sherpas began to bring in outside seeds for potatoes, as the new varieties grow faster. But they also lack flavor and longevity and rot much faster when stored in the ground, as Sherpas have traditionally done. Buckwheat, a nutritious grain that is essential for growing children who live at high altitudes, is also widely grown in the area.
Another challenge in recent years has been a lack of snow on the ground during winter. While temperatures are still extremely cold—perhaps even colder than before—without the snow cover, the soil is too dry in the spring, making the start of growing season difficult. Then add monsoon season—the constant rains from mid-June to early September—to the mix. Here, farmers are seeing more rain than ever before—and too much of it.
Difficulties aside, Temba and his wife are rightfully proud of their greenhouse and gave me a tour, describing each vegetable variety as if it were one of their children. We enjoyed a great evening at their lodge, which included a viewing of Everest memorabilia and fascinating photos that they had collected over the years. But the best part had to be that salad at 13,000 feet.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Modern Farmer.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.