Jorhat, Aug. 21: From a small hamlet on the bank of the Brahmaputra, Jadav Payeng, popularly known as “Forest Man of Assam”, has made it to a global forum, where he will wax eloquent on the state’s rich bio-diversity and sustainable development.

Payeng will attend the seventh edition of Planetworkshops’s international conference on sustainable development in Paris from September 24 to 26, as a special guest to speak at the event, which will have 900 speakers in total.

Excited about the prospect of flying abroad, Payeng said, “I might get only about five minutes to put across my speech and in that small amount of time, I would like to draw the attention of the world to the heavy erosion problem which the river island of Majuli faces. I would like to suggest that orchards of coconut trees should be planted all along the sandy banks so the roots can bind the soil together and prevent it from getting eroded by the Brahmaputra.”

With regard to sustainable development, he said the selling of coconuts and fibre would also aid in the socio-economic development of the people of Majuli, who are mostly dependent on fishing, rearing pigs and other agricultural activities for their livelihood.

He would also make a case for the small sparrow, which was slowly disappearing from the skies of Assam because of deforestation. The kopou phul (a kind of orchid) which blooms in March-April in the region and associated with Bohag Bihu festivities will also find a place in his speech.

“Assam is identified by the beautiful kopou phul and growing it on a large scale and exporting it outside, can also be economically beneficial and become a part of sustainable development,” the forest man said.

Jawaharlal Nehru University honoured Payeng with the title “Forest Man of Assam” a few months back.

Now in his fifties, he is credited with single-handedly planting trees on 300 hectares of land on Owna chapori, a desolate sand bar in the middle of the Brahmaputra.

At considerable risk to his life, he religiously guards this forested area which has become home to deer, buffaloes, reptiles and innumerable species of birds.

He has had confrontations with timber smugglers as well as poachers but Molai’s (his nickname) kathoni (woodland) still stands tall, a testimony to a man who has spent more than three decades planting trees in a barren landscape, with the help of the forest department under the social forestry scheme.

Even after the social forestry scheme ended in 1988, he and his family still guard the woodland. “He has grown a forest single-handedly,” a forest official here said.

Planetworkshops is a thinktank, which brings together leaders from various fields to challenge conventional thinking in order to implement initiatives with a positive social and environmental impact and also serves as a communication channel for the participants.