3 days ago
'Sort of saddening': Santa Fe student's video on deforestation wins international award
Fourteen-year-old Alisha Wald may live in a desert state. But the recent graduate from the Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe has seen the creep of deforestation in the rainforest firsthand.
Every few years, Wald visits her grandparents in Malaysia. Across the road from their home is a rainforest. Each year, Wald sees it shrink bit by bit.
"It was sort of saddening to see that land that was right in front of my grandparents' home was slowly disappearing," said Wald, who will enter ninth grade in the fall. "It made me think of all the animals, since we used to go on trips to the rainforest and we saw all the animals there, like monkeys, and I just thought about all the biodiversity and all the creatures that are affected from just the deforestation."
Wald recently won first place in the World of 8 Billion International Student Contest for her video on the rainforest, competing against thousands of students in 67 countries. The contest, which for middle schoolers comes with a $600 prize, asked students to make videos about the impact of a growing global population on three topics: child well-being, rainforest ecosystems and sanitation.
The organization behind the contest, Population Connection, is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that says it "educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth's resources."
There's a high global demand for food from the tropics, Wald explained in her video. But deforestation in the rainforest can lead to a loss in biodiversity and an increase in carbon emissions; a 2021 study published in Nature found that, in areas of the Amazon rainforest impacted by deforestation, forest areas that had once acted as carbon sinks — absorbing carbon — were now releasing it.
Rainforest Deforestation
Deforestation isn't a problem limited to the world's rainforests, Wald said. The loss of trees and biodiversity in the rainforest is a global issue.
"That really stuck out to me about how, as it's burned or chopped down and degraded, it really impacts it ... as the carbon increases and goes up to the environment," Wald said. "I tried to use data to really dig deeper into my topic. But through that, I built on the idea of how it impacts everyone, not just those 1 billion people directly."
But Wald wasn't just trying to identify an issue — she also was looking for solutions.
Initially, Wald, who plans to study engineering, was thinking high-tech solutions. But her world geography teacher, Amanda Burkybile, encouraged her to look at existing practices to address deforestation.
Enter agroforestry.
Agroforestry mixes native trees with crops and livestock, rather than cutting down trees to establish a monoculture.
"I learned about agroforestry, and through research it said that it's existed for thousands of years," Wald said. "It was essentially just introducing the land and like planting and agriculture with other animals and other native plants to make it replicate the land in a way, make it just better for the overall environment."
The practice can help sequester carbon, Wald said.
Her mother, Azuhana Azid, said she watched her daughter painstakingly edit her video into just 60 seconds.
"She likes to try everything, and when she tries something, she wants to do the best that she can," Azid said.
Wald, a clarinet player and striker for the soccer team, is heading to Santa Fe High School next year. Wald also took first place in the Santa Fe Public Schools District Science Fair earlier this year and received an honorable mention in the Aldo Leopold Writing Contest for her essay on her connection to nature.
Wald will be recognized for her video Tuesday in an online ceremony.
