The Entrepreneurs Associates (tEA) Chief Executive Officer Neichute Doulo receives the Earth Care Award 2025, under the ‘Community-Based Climate Action’ category in Mumbai on April 16.
Dimapur, April 17 (MExN): The Entrepreneurs Associates (tEA) emerged as the winner of the 12th edition of the Earth Care Award 2025, under the ‘Community-Based Climate Action’ category.
The award recognized tEA’s Trees for Wealth (TfW) movement as an innovative and groundbreaking effort in addressing the global climate crisis.
tEA Chief Executive Officer Neichute Doulo received the award from Sangita Jindal, Chairperson of the JSW Foundation, and Sivakumar Sundaram, CEO (Publishing) of the Times Group, at an event held in Mumbai on Wednesday.
As per a press release received here, the Earth Care Award is considered one of the highest honors in the country for recognizing climate champions, instituted by the Times of India Group and JSW Foundation. The awardees were selected from 1,554 applicants after rigorous rounds of interviews and due diligence conducted over a period of five months.
Receiving the honor, Doulo acknowledged that the collective efforts of each and every individual matter in combating the current climate crisis.
Reiterating the slogan for the TfW movement, ‘Micro by one and Volume by mass,’ he also encouraged every individual to consider climate action a personal responsibility and a duty towards the planet.
While thanking the organizers for the initiative, tEA’s founding CEO added, “More of these efforts from people who are in a position to contribute and impact works towards restoring our climate is the need of the hour.”
According to the release, TfW is an “audacious movement” to plant 3 billion trees—1 billion fruit trees and 2 billion non-fruit trees—in India’s North Eastern Region (NER) and Myanmar by 2050.
So far, over 30 lakh trees, including 7 lakh fruit trees and 23 lakh non-fruit trees, have been planted across Nagaland, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh, working with over 6,000 farmers, it informed.
TfW engages the strategy of roping in communities, institutions, and individuals to take up tree plantations in abandoned farmlands, community land, homesteads, and kitchen backyards to reduce the impacts of climate change, it added. To increase participation and motivate farmers, income generation and livelihood enhancement through fruit trees, intercropping with cash crops, and processing of fruits and vegetables is integrated into the program.
Under the movement, the release noted, community plantations have been facilitated in village lands where oak and other local tree species have been planted.
tEA is also developing a model farm in Peren district, where experimental trees and cash crops are being planted to demonstrate the powers of agroforestry in a region where land is owned by individuals and communities, it said.
Leveraging the NER’s location as the 6th biodiversity hotspot in the world, the TfW aims to make the region the ‘fruit hub’ and the ‘oxygen bank’ for the rest of the country and the world at large, it added.
The Earth Care Awards were instituted to recognize the work of individuals, organizations, and communities in combatting climate change, from reducing their carbon footprints to developing innovative technologies and initiatives.
The award recognises works in various categories such as Emerging Business in Climate Action, Women Leaders in Climate Action, and Urban Centre Climate, and even introduced the ‘Young Climate Changemakers Award’ this year.
