BEIJING, July 15 (AFP) - China and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are putting the final touches onto an ecotourism project on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, UNDP sources said Tuesday.

The project, centred on the already-designated Everest Nature Preserve that borders onto Nepal, aims to promote ecotourism in a bid to alleviate desperate poverty in the region, where many people earn less than 300 yuan (36 dollars) a year.

"The project is in its draft stage and there are still many things to be finalised," said a UNDP officer working on the project.

"We still need to get final approval from the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region," she added.

The UNDP has already spent 1.2 million dollars on poverty alleviation schemes in Tibet, and plans to allocate another 400,000 dollars to the ecotourism project.

Although fears that tourists could upset the fragile mountain ecosystem are among the biggest concerns for the project, Li Bosheng, a leading botanist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the area was already facing difficulties from a quickly expanding population.

He said tourist dollars were the only way he could envisage effective ecological protection in the area.