In a button-up shirt and slacks, Santa Fe Prep student Benjamin Becker is noticeably well dressed for a seventh grader. He meets SFR outside his home in the hills southeast of the city and takes us around back, where a small greenhouse sits against a steep slope. Inside, a tray of herbs, chard, lettuce and strawberry plants nestled in gravel sits perched above a 330-gallon tank, the roots dangling in the water. A school of 25 baby tilapia flit eagerly to the surface and then disappear as Becker tosses them a handful of fish food. This fully-functional aquaponics set-up marks the fulfillment of a dream Becker’s harbored since he was just 9 years old.
Earlier this month, Becker won a $1,000 grand prize in the Climate Innovation Challenge for a short video explaining how aquaponics could help protect food security and farmers’ livelihoods in the drought-stricken Southwest as the climate climbs hotter and drier.
“I wanted to make an aquaponics system since long before the Climate Innovation Challenge,” says Becker, “but the challenge really just gave me the motivation and the drive to do it now.”
The Climate Innovation Challenge is an annual competition hosted by CAVU, a local nonprofit that explores environmental issues in New Mexico through film and other media. Students must submit a video project about a solution that could help their community handle the impacts of climate change. Last year, students from around the state submitted 42 videos and presentations. This year, the competition received 155 submissions. CAVU educator Phil Lucero plans to expand the competition to include other states in 2022.
“Adaption is the theme of our challenge, but it’s also what our students and teachers have been doing this year,” says Lucero. “Teachers are having to figure it out on the fly and they’re having to adapt. And so we’re kind of playing off that in regard to thinking about climate adaptation.” The challenge is part of a full curriculum delving in to climate change and solutions. It’s designed for teachers to use in their classrooms or parents to use at home and also includes lessons about videography and visual storytelling to help prepare students to participate in the Climate Innovation Challenge.
Lucero says the program encourages students to think forward and backward, pushing for solutions , such as planting mangrove forests in coastal areas—a species that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere while acting as a barrier to slow down storm surges. The Climate Innovation Challenge portion of the program focuses on adaptation because it’s not a topic that is generally covered in schools, even those that do teach about climate change more generally. Lucero says he thinks that’s partly because discussion with kids about adaptation can be thorny. “When you think about adapting, that means you’re admitting to the fact that it is going to get worse,” says Lucero. Facing that reality can be scary. I’m hoping that this program can help students realize their potential to be a part of the solution.”
Read the complete article at www.sfeporter.com.