Beyond the Teesta: Building economies that belong to the mountains

Since writing about the Teesta and the conversations surrounding it, one observation has stayed with me.

Whenever the river is discussed, someone inevitably says, “Isn’t this just a Lepcha issue?”

It is easy to think that. Much of the resistance has emerged from Dzongu, the ancestral homeland of the Lepcha people, and many of the loudest voices have come from Indigenous communities defending a landscape they have lived on for generations.

But if that is where the conversation ends, we miss the larger picture.

The Teesta is not simply about one community. It is about how we imagine the future of mountain landscapes. It is about rivers that sustain towns and villages far beyond Dzongu, forests that regulate water and climate, biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth, and local economies that are increasingly vulnerable to ecological decline.

The questions raised by the Teesta are no longer just questions for the Lepcha community; they are questions for everyone who believes the Himalayas deserve a future that is both ecologically secure and economically just.

And that is where another question inevitably follows.

If not this, then what?

If large-scale extraction cannot be the only language of development in the mountains, what can? If young people continue leaving because opportunities lie elsewhere, how do we create livelihoods worth returning for?

How do we ensure that protecting forests and rivers is not seen as standing in the way of prosperity, but as the very foundation upon which prosperity can be built?

For decades, our answers have looked outward. We borrowed development models designed for the plains and expected them to work in landscapes governed by entirely different realities. Bigger industries. Bigger roads. Bigger infrastructure. Bigger economies.

Yet mountains have never functioned according to the logic of “bigger.”

They function through relationships between forests and rivers, people and place, ecology and culture.

We leave the mountains chasing heera and moti, convinced that the world beyond the hills holds everything we seek. Years later, many return carrying stories, experience, and perhaps a little success, only to find themselves drawn back to the very things they once left behind.

The old wooden house feels warmer. The mountain air feels lighter. Prodigal daughters and sons slip back into their haapen, sip cheeni chiya, and rediscover the comfort of homemade ghyu roti. 

For years, we have sought answers to mountain development elsewhere. The task before us is not to import another model, but to learn to recognise the value that has quietly existed here all along.

One framework attempting to do exactly that is the Creative Mountain Economy, developed by Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen through La & Echostream, a design-led initiative working at the intersection of ecology, culture, material innovation, and livelihoods in the Eastern Himalayas. 

The Creative Mountain Economy is not presented as a universal solution, nor does it claim to replace every existing development model.

Rather, it offers a different way of thinking, one roadmap among many that could help shape long-term, place-based futures for mountain regions.

It begins with a simple yet profound shift in perspective: instead of asking what can be brought into the mountains, it asks what already exists here that deserves recognition.

The Eastern Himalayas are not resource-poor landscapes waiting to be developed. They are among the richest ecological and cultural regions on Earth. Their forests nurture bamboo, nettle, cane, medicinal plants, wild foods, natural dyes, and countless other materials.

Their communities carry generations of knowledge about weaving, farming, forest stewardship, architecture, food systems, and seasonal cycles. These are not remnants of an old world waiting to disappear. They are living systems that have sustained mountain societies for centuries.

The Creative Mountain Economy proposes that these very systems can become the foundation of a contemporary economy.

It imagines development not as extraction, but as regeneration; not as replacing traditional knowledge, but expanding its relevance; not as asking mountains to imitate cities, but allowing mountain landscapes to shape economies that are uniquely their own.

Its principles are both practical and philosophical. Healthy forests become productive infrastructure. Rivers are recognised as economic assets because every livelihood they support depends on clean water.

Culture is understood not merely as heritage but as accumulated knowledge. Production becomes distributed across communities rather than concentrated in distant factories.

Design adds value without erasing identity. Circularity ensures that waste is minimised, materials remain in use, and ecological limits are respected.

These ideas are not abstract.

They are already being embraced in places like Dzongu.

There, Himalayan nettle is helping demonstrate what a Creative Mountain Economy can look like in practice not because nettle alone will transform the mountains, but because it reveals a larger possibility.

A wild fiber that once held everyday value is becoming relevant again through thoughtful design, community ownership, and contemporary markets.

Women harvest nettle from healthy forests, process it using traditional knowledge refined over generations, spin it into yarn, and weave textiles whose value extends far beyond the fabric itself.

Each stage depends on a living ecosystem. Healthy forests provide the fiber. Clean rivers are essential for processing. Seasonal knowledge determines when harvesting is sustainable.

Skilled hands transform raw material into cloth. Income flows back into the community, creating an incentive to protect the very landscapes that make the livelihood possible.

In this way, a textile becomes much more than a product. It becomes an ecosystem woven into fabric.

Nettle is only one example. Across the Himalayas, bamboo, wool, natural dyes, traditional agriculture, regenerative tourism, forest foods, medicinal plants, and countless other place-based enterprises hold similar potential.

The Creative Mountain Economy does not ask every community to weave nettle. It asks each landscape a far more important question: What can only you create?

That is its greatest strength.

Rather than prescribing a single answer, it offers a way of thinking. A roadmap that encourages every mountain community to begin with its own ecology, its own culture, and its own knowledge systems. Some places may build futures around fibers, others around food, forests, architecture, or biodiversity.

The principle remains the same: when livelihoods emerge from the health of the landscape rather than its depletion, conservation and development cease to compete. They begin to reinforce one another.

The story of Himalayan nettle in Dzongu is one expression of that idea. It is not the destination. It is the doorway into a much larger conversation about what mountain economies can become.

When people ask whether this is “just a Lepcha issue,” they may be asking the wrong question. The deeper question is (yet again) : what kind of future do we want for the Himalayas?

A future where rivers are valued only for the electricity they can generate? Or one where rivers, forests, cultures, and livelihoods are recognised as parts of the same living system?

The conversations around the Teesta have always been about more than a single river or a single community. They ask us whether development in the mountains should be measured only by what we can extract, or also by what we can sustain, regenerate, and pass on.

If the mountains are asking us to listen all along, the answers we have been searching for may not lie beyond the hills.

They may already be here, in our rivers, our forests, our knowledge, and in the communities that have long understood that the health of one depends on the health of all.

The future of mountain economies does not lie in becoming miniature versions of cities; it lies in becoming more fully themselves.

Also Read: Himalayan Headache: Why Sikkim’s fiscal deficit is a problem