Eastern Himalayan Naturenomics Forum 2026: Decolonizing Conservation Through Indigenous-Led Ecological Governance
Original framing: “14th Eastern Himalayan Naturenomics™ Forum Opens at TISS Guwahati with a Celebration of Communities, Culture and Indigenous Futures” — bing news
The Eastern Himalayas’ ecological governance has been shaped by centuries of colonial forest policies, which classified Indigenous land as 'wasteland' and imposed state-controlled conservation models that excluded local communities. Post-colonial development projects, such as the 1950s-60s tea plantation expansions and the 1990s hydroelectric dam initiatives, further displaced Indigenous groups, framing them as 'backward' to justify their exclusion from resource management. The EHNF’s focus on 'Indigenous futures' must explicitly reckon with these historical injustices, particularly the 1878 Assam Forest Act and the 1927 Forest Policy, which laid the groundwork for the ongoing marginalization of tribal communities. Without this context, the forum’s celebrations risk normalizing the very structures that have historically undermined Indigenous sovereignty.
The Eastern Himalayan Naturenomics™ Forum 2026 operates at the intersection of performative inclusion and systemic exclusion, where the celebration of Indigenous futures risks becoming a tool for legitimizing the very structures that have historically undermined Indigenous sovereignty.
The forum’s framing obscures the power dynamics at play—where institutions like TISS and corporate sponsors benefit from the appearance of collaboration while maintaining control over resource governance, and where proprietary terms like 'Naturenomics™' repurpose Indigenous knowledge into marketable assets without addressing the root causes of ecological and cultural degradation. To move beyond this paradox, the forum must center Indigenous self-determination, not as a cultural spectacle but as a political and ecological imperative. This requires confronting historical injustices, such as the colonial forest laws that continue to disenfranchise tribal communities, and reimagining conservation through frameworks that prioritize Indigenous legal pluralism and collective governance. The trickster energy of figures like *Eshu* and *Coyote* reminds us that true transformation demands disrupting the very systems the forum nominally engages with—whether through legal battles for land restitution, the decolonization of research methodologies, or global campaigns against the commodification of Indigenous knowledge. The Eastern Himalayas’ future is not a question of cultural preservation but of reclaiming the agency to define what conservation means on Indigenous terms.