Green Inspiration is a series of articles developed by Local.mx to showcase the most relevant environmental projects. In collaboration with Rolex's Perpetual Planet initiative, our goal is to raise awareness, inspire new generations and encourage all good ideas that improve life on Mother Earth. Rolex is supporting inspiring organizations and individuals on a mission to make the planet perpetual. #PerpetualPlanet. For more information visit rolex.org
In a world that is at once so diverse, magnificent and complex, ideas that, no matter where they come from, function as the seed from which great changes are born where they are most needed, are valued more than ever. The stories behind a Rolex Award for Initiative are so inspiring precisely for that reason, because in addition to being projects of enormous potential, they are carried by researchers, scientists and activists willing to put them into practice, make them grow and help them multiply in every corner of the Earth.
In 2021, five laureates joined the list of 155 men and women who have been recognized throughout the history of the Rolex Awards for Initiative. And although at first glance they are very different from one another - they work in very different regions and environments and their goals seem to have little in common - in reality they all pursue the same goal: to understand and improve the conditions of all living beings.
In the dark depths
Photo: ©Rolex/Franck Gazzola.
Luiz Rocha is a Brazilian ichthyologist with a passion for the enormous marine biodiversity. So enormous, in fact, that even today much of what inhabits the depths is still unknown. His project focuses on uncovering the mysteries still hidden around the Maldives, which have been only superficially explored. Rocha goes deep into the abyss of the mesopelagic zone - the level of the ocean where the last traces of light reach - on dives of up to 150 meters to identify species that have not yet been classified. Doing such challenging dives, he believes, has a great reward: the fact of showing these species to the world allows us to expand our knowledge of the natural wealth that is so urgently in need of protection.
On uneven terrain
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim and Felix Broooks-church focus their efforts on balancing the playing field so that all people have access to equal rights.
Ibrahim, a native of Chad, is an activist and defender of indigenous rights. Her concern is the communities around the once gigantic Lake Chad, which has lost 95% of its flow in just two generations. To help resolve conflicts between the various peoples of the Sahel region, who today fight each other for water and food, she works on the recovery of traditional knowledge, which translates into the creation of community maps, which are then translated into two- and three-dimensional versions. Thanks to this combination of ancestral knowledge, cartography and technology, all available resources can be managed more equitably and in mutual agreement, thus restoring harmony between historically close communities.
Meanwhile, in the most remote regions of Tanzania, Brooks-church faces micronutrient deficiency (also known as "hidden hunger"), an epidemic that affects 2 billion people worldwide, especially young children and their mothers. He invented a machine, light and easy to use in any mill, which makes it possible to fortify corn flour - the staple food in much of the country - with the necessary dose of vitamin B12, zinc, folic acid and iron to complete the scheme of good nutrition. Today, its dosing machine helps more than two million people a day. As an affordable and easily scalable project, he has been able to take it to other countries in East Africa and continues to expand.
In the freezing -inhospitable- heights
Rinzin Phunjok Lama and Gina Moseley are working in ice territory.
Moseley, a British speleologist, goes into the northernmost caves of the planet, in Greenland, to collect samples of stalactites, stalagmites and calcite flows, with the aim of studying, in its millenary layers, the entire history of the climate of our planet and, specifically, of the Arctic, one of its most fragile regions today. Not only will this research increase our knowledge of this region, as these caverns have never been explored before, but its findings will allow us to understand how the world has functioned in climatic conditions different from the present and help to create long-term strategies to face the climatic adjustments to come.
Lama, on the other hand, focuses his work on the Transhimalaya, in Nepal, where he is originally from. The biologist and conservationist discovered that his mission was to preserve the habitat of the animal species that have fascinated him the most, starting with the mythical snow leopard. However, aware that environmental protection cannot be the responsibility of a handful of environmentalists, he began working with the region's communities to make preservation a collective responsibility. The creation of local leadership, businesses and ecotourism services is the backbone of a project focused on the direct benefit of the people and, consequently, of all the living creatures with whom they share an environment that is undoubtedly icy and hostile, but also wonderful.