Telangana-based water conservationist M. Karunakar Reddy with the first “Jadav Payeng International Award”

Guwahati: Jyoti-Protap Education Trust in an award Distribution ceremony at Jyoti-Protap Gyan Marg Vidyalaya in Jorhat district of Assam conferred the Telangana-based water conservationist M. Karunakar Reddy with the first “Jadav Payeng International Award” on Sunday.

The Trust named the award as ‘Jadav Payeng International Award’, which carries ?2 lakhs, a citation, and a memento after Assam’s Jadav Payeng, a grassroots green activist better known as the ‘Forest Man of India’. The trust announced the award in November 2024.

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The Trust stated that Payeng himself, along with a five-member selection committee, chose Reddy for his exceptional work.

Upon receiving the award, the environment conservationist Reddy stated that, climate change and resultant water crisis is a global problem.

He said as the solution lied with people, we should encouraged everyone to plant trees, not to waste water and reuse it.

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“India contributes 20 percent of the global population. However, it has only 4 percent of the world’s resources. We have to properly measure and manage this disparity,” Reddy stated.

Notably, Payeng is a green activist who has planted and tended trees on a Brahmaputra sandbar, turning it into a forest reserve, straddling 550 hectares, in Jorhat district.