High in the mountains of Tawang, where the air is thin and the terrain unforgiving, a centuries-old way of life is fighting to survive — and Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu wants the state to have a plan to save it. On Sunday, 18 October 2026, Khandu addressed the Yak Economy Summit 2026 and Yak Mela in Mago, Tawang district, calling for a concrete roadmap to strengthen yak conservation and improve the livelihoods of the Brokpa herding communities who have called these mountains home for generations.

In his post, Khandu framed the challenge in unmistakably human terms: 'For our Brokpa families, the yak is more than a source of livelihood. It is a part of their culture, their identity and their way of life.' That framing — yak not as livestock but as civilisational anchor — set the tone for what the summit was designed to address.

Mago, Tawang: where the summit met the mountains

Mago is a remote high-altitude village in Tawang district, the westernmost corner of Arunachal Pradesh, sharing a long and sensitive border with China. It is Brokpa country — a landscape shaped as much by yak culture as by Buddhist traditions. Hosting the Yak Economy Summit here was deliberate: policy being shaped where the problem actually lives.

The Brokpa are an indigenous community whose entire pastoral economy revolves around the yak. Milk, meat, fibre, dung fuel, and pack transport — the animal underpins every aspect of high-altitude survival. As younger generations migrate toward lower-altitude towns and climate pressures alter grazing patterns, the herd population and the knowledge systems around it face quiet erosion.

The push for a yak conservation roadmap

Khandu's call for a 'clear roadmap' signals that ad-hoc support is no longer sufficient. The summit's intent points toward structured interventions — potentially including breeding programmes to strengthen yak genetics, better market linkages for yak wool and dairy products, and recognition of traditional grazing rights. No specific scheme outcomes have been announced yet, but the summit's convening at this scale marks a shift in political attention toward the issue.

The Himalayan border districts of Arunachal Pradesh have long sat at the intersection of ecological fragility, cultural preservation, and national security. Investment in communities like the Brokpa is simultaneously a livelihood question, a conservation question, and — given the proximity to the Line of Actual Control — a quiet strategic one. Settled, economically stable border communities are themselves a form of soft national presence.

Northeast's pastoral tribes in the development frame

The Yak Economy Summit fits into a wider state and central government pattern of mainstreaming tribal livelihoods in India's northeastern Himalayan belt — linking traditional pastoralism with sustainable development goals without uprooting the cultural roots that give those livelihoods meaning. The challenge, as Khandu implicitly acknowledged, is translating intent into durable policy before the herding tradition thins past the point of recovery.

The real test comes next: whether the 'clear roadmap' Khandu called for in Mago materialises as funded schemes, breeding support, and market access — or fades into the altitude.