Jadav Payeng : ‘The forest man’

Auji Nabilah Abdul Razak  and Shantanu Baruva

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Key Words: social justice, environmental sustainability, biodiversity

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Background

Jadav Payeng is a 49-year old man who was born in Jorhat District of Assam in India. At the age of 16, Jadav found that frequent floods close to the area where he resided caused many reptiles to die as they were washed up by the water on the banks of the river Brahmaputra and lacked shady protection from the sun. This encouraged him to start planting trees himself in the area to prevent this from happening. Years later, the trees grew and spread into what is now known as “Molai Kathoni”, meaning Molai’s woods, a forest of 1,360 acres on the river island of Majuli, Assam, in India. Today, the Molai wood is home to primates such as the Indian rhinoceros, tigers, deer, elephants and many different bird species.

In the 1990s, Jadav was recruited by the Assam Forest Department to plant trees on land near the village of Aruna Chapori and eventually reached a plantation size of 1,400 acres. However, in 2008, Jadav’s endeavour to forest the area of Assam caught the government’s attention as local residents of Aruna Chapori complained about the increase of “animal disturbance” in the area (Messenger, 2012).

 

Applying a political ecology framework

Using political ecology as a framework, we will critically assess the initiative of re-planting the forest. For this particular case-study, Dobson’s (2003) theoretical work is useful to unpack the relation between social justice and environmental sustainability, which he argues are not always compatible. In doing this, we must keep in mind the two main questions Dobson highlights as essential for applying a political ecology framework to real case studies. Firstly, what is to be sustained? Secondly, what is the principle of distribution?

In order to answer the first question, Dobson argues that three types of environmental goods can be sustained: critical natural capital, biodiversity, and the value of natural object (Dobson, 2003: 88). Jadav Payeng initiative valued the need to sustain and recover biodiversity in the sandy area of Assam after the floods washed away many reptiles. The benefits to biodiversity of his project were, in fact, recognised by the Forest Department. Even after the project was completed, Jadav Payeng continued his activity until he had planted a forest reserve that attracted many animal species and increased biodiversity in the area.

In response to the second question that is concerned with the principle of distribution, we must complicate the way “the environment” is perceived, whilst being conscious of the issue that different understandings of the term change according to scale.  Even though the project was taken under the wing of the government, Jadav planted primarily because he entertained a passion for turning the area into a forest reserve and build homes for a wide variety of plant and animal species. As argued by Berkes (2004), re-establishing harmony in a natural system requires ecological knowledge and a complete understanding of the ecosystem. From there, individual projects can be “scaled up”, a point made by Brown and Purcell (2005). In Jadav Payeng’s case, though he started re-planting alone, his initiative drew attention from national and international media and was supported more globally. However, Jadav’s success has received criticism from the people living in the local villages, who faced a difficult and at times dangerous situation with the animal migration to the forest. The villages have been attacked by rhinos and elephants, plantations were destroyed by monkeys and elephants and domesticated cattle were attacked by tigers. These incidents are regular occurrences and have affected the economic activities of the local residents (Sharma, 2012). The lack of direct communication between the villagers and institutions promoting the project is an obstacle to satisfying both social justice and environmental sustainability. Jadav Payeng has worked for the forest without necessarily understanding the immediate needs of the local residents, which has led to conflict between local residents and Jadav Payeng himself. Hence, while Jadav implemented positive changes in terms of restoring ecologies and biodiversity in the area, his plantations had negative repercussions on the “environment” as understood by the local population.

 

Conclusion

Although the project was a success in achieving environmental sustainability, it has failed to be just to the local villagers. One man’s effort meant a big change to the community, but not necessarily in a positive way for the local inhabitants. Hence, social justice and environmental sustainability are not always compatible, confirming Dobson’s argument.

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CITE THIS ARTICLE

Nabilah, A. and Baruva, S. (2014). Jorhat – Man Animal Conflicts | UCL Encyclopaedia of Political Ecology. [online] Available at:https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/esd/category/jorhat-man-animal-conflicts/

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Bibliography:

Berkes, F., (2004), ‘Rethinking Community Based Conservation’, Conservation Biology, 18 (3), pp.621-630.

Brown, J. C., and Purcell, M., (2005), ‘There’s nothing inherent about scale : political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian Amazon’, Geoforum, (36), pp.607–624.

Dobson, A., (2003), ‘Social justice and environmental sustainability: ne’er the twain shall meet’, in Agyeman, J., Bullard, R., D., and Evans, B., (eds.), Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world, (London: Earthscan Publications Ltd), pp.83-95.

Messenger, S., (2012), ‘Indian man single-handedly plants a 1,360-acre forest’. Mother Nature Network, [Online], Available at: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/indian-man-single-handedly-plants-a-1360-acre-forest. [Accessed: 30th November 2013].

Sharma, M., S., (2012), ‘The man who made a forest’, Indiatimes, [Online], Available at: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-01/special-report/31269649_1_forest-wild-elephants-red-ants. [Accessed: 30th November 2013].

Yashwant, S., (2012), ‘The Strange Obsession Of Jadav Payeng’, Sanctuary Asia, [Online]. Available at: http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/magazines/features/191-features/9122-the-strange-obsession-of-jadav-payeng.html. [Accessed: 30th November 2013].