Water conservationist Karunakar adorns with Assam's "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.

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.

“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.