INSPIRING STORIES OF

ENVIRONMENT
CONSERVATION
PRANAV TEJA P

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Our team takes this opportunity to
thank ESB maam who gave us this
great chance and helped us improve
this project by giving suggestions.

THE FOREST MAN OF INDIA

Padma ShriJadav "Molai" Payeng(born
1963) is a Mishing
tribeenvironmentalactivist and forestry
worker fromJorhat, India.Over the course of
several decades, he planted and tended trees
on asandbarof the river Brahmaputraturning
it into a forest reserve. The forest, calledMolai
forestafter him,is located near Kokilamukh
ofJorhat, Assam,Indiaand encompasses an
area of about 1,360 acres / 550hectares.In
2015, he was honoured withPadma Shri, the
fourth highest civilian award in India.

THE FOREST MAN OF INDIA

In 1979, Payeng, then 16, encountered a large
number of snakes that had died due to
excessive heat after floods washed them onto
the tree-less sandbar. That is when he planted
around 20 bamboo seedlings on the sandbar.He
began his work when the district launched a
project. He chose to stay back after the
completion of the project even after other
workers left. He not only looked after the plants,
but continued to plant more trees on his own, in
an effort to transform the area into a forest.
The forest, which came to be known as Molai
forest, now housesBengal tigers,Indian
rhinoceros, and over 100 deer and rabbits.

SHUBENDU SHARMA
Shubhendu Sharma left his high paying job as
an engineer to plant trees for the rest of his
life. Using the unique Miyawaki methodology to
grow saplings, Afforestt converts any land into
a self-sustainable forest in a couple of years.
He has successfully created 33 forests across
India in two years. Heres how he made it
possible. It all started when Sharma
volunteered to assist a naturalist, Akira
Miyawaki, to cultivate a forest at the Toyota
plant where he worked. Miyawakis technique
has managed to regenerate forests from
Thailand to the Amazon, and Sharma thought
to replicate the model in India.

SHUBENDU SHARMA

TAKING THE PLUNGE

Shifting his career wasnt easy.Especially, convincing
the family was very tough. They could not understand
why I was benton quitting a high-paying engineering job
at Toyota to plant trees all my life,Sharma says.
Sharma was adamant on making his idea work and
started the company without his familys knowledge; it
was only after a couple of months of operation they got
to know about it and finally made peace with it.
My friends were a great support to me which gave me a
boost. Till date, they take interest and engagein the
activities of Afforestt,Sharma says.
Having started on his own, Sharma now has a team of 6
that works fromBangalore. Initial troubles with finding
the market and sustaining the business were solved to
some extent when they received their first order from a
German furniture maker to plant about 10,000 trees.
Since then, Afforestt has served around 43 clients and
planted over 54,000 trees.

THANK YOU
WE HOPE YOU HAVE BEEN INSPIRED
TO CONSERVE THE ENVIRONMENT.