Mayris Nascimento grew up surrounded by the lagoons of Alagoas. Devastated by the deforestation and polluted waters, she couldn't stand idle while her local ecosystem was in peril. Mayris decided to take the matter into her own hands and take action.
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00:00It's the cradle of nature, because there we find everything.
00:05It's the cradle of fish, shrimp, catfish, catfish, oyster, and many other things.
00:14To this day, the lagoon is the mother of fishermen.
00:17My grandmother used to say when I was a child,
00:19as long as there are fish and crustaceans in the lagoon, no one goes hungry.
00:23I thought, how can I give a social and environmental return to my community?
00:27Today I'm replanting mangroves.
00:29It's very gratifying to see them all moving around the convent for us.
00:33It's a way of thanking us for what we've done for them.
00:36Before, there were several places that didn't have mangroves.
00:39Everything was devastated.
00:41And now we are more than 14,000 mangroves planted in the town.
00:45It's very beautiful.
00:48My name is Mayrin de Nascimento.
00:50I'm the daughter of a fisherman.
00:53People call me Maya.
00:56When I can't pronounce my name, they say,
00:58I'm the girl of the mangrove.
01:00I'm currently the mayor and founder of our mangrove.
01:13I'm from Maceió, Alagoas.
01:14In the middle of the community, the sea meets the lagoon,
01:17and forms this wonderful meeting.
01:19It's a community that, for the most part,
01:21is made up of fishermen and landowners.
01:24There's also the beautiful sunset,
01:26the lagoon's shores,
01:28and next to it, that beautiful ecosystem,
01:30which is the mangrove.
01:32I was practically born in the lagoon.
01:34My parents came here to fish so we could have something to eat.
01:37And even today, this ecosystem kills the hunger of so many other people here in the lagoon.
01:42Most of these areas used to be deforested.
01:45And that would directly imply what we eat.
01:47Because if there's no mangrove, there's no fish, there's no sururu,
01:50there's no shrimp, there's no other species.
01:52So I thought, how can I recover this ecosystem?
01:56And then we started to really do some plantings,
02:00and really have this notion that we could become a business
02:03and make money with it.
02:06At first, people didn't understand, right?
02:08Why would we do this? Out of love?
02:11Out of love? To take care of nature?
02:13And people would say, oh, it's crazy.
02:15You spend all day in the woods recovering mangroves.
02:19But over time, we started to gain regional and national recognition.
02:24And then people started to demystify this vision.
02:32We create a slogan, right?
02:33The mangrove is yours, the mangrove is mine, the mangrove is ours.
02:36Precisely because we have this perspective
02:38that everyone should take care of this ecosystem.
02:42The mangrove is a species that is in a transition area.
02:45It's in an ecosystem transition between the sea and the lagoon.
02:49Lagoon, because the water has a salinity theorem.
02:52Because of this meeting of the tides, right?
02:54From fresh water to salty water, so the water is salty.
02:57And the mangroves exist precisely in these areas of transition.
03:01We take the mangroves, we take some of the vineyards over there.
03:0390 days is like a meter, more or less.
03:06The importance of the mangrove for fishermen
03:08If there were no mangroves, there would be no fish, there would be no crab.
03:11It's there that the name of the fight is told, right?
03:13Always in the fight, always fighting, and let's go ahead.
03:16I've been fishing since I was 15 years old.
03:19I'm going to be 70 soon.
03:21The mangrove and the fish are together.
03:22And he takes the shadow more, right?
03:24Hiding, dating.
03:25And he already has his lunch, right?
03:27The mangrove before, for us, was not like it is today.
03:30Because at that time we cut the mangroves a lot, right?
03:34And the fish could not be produced.
03:36Never reserve today.
03:38No one is messing with him anymore.
03:40And even today it's a beauty.
03:46This is where we produce the species of mangroves.
03:48We produce three types of species.
03:51This one is the red mangrove.
03:52This one is the black mangrove, okay?
03:55This little one you see here is the white mangrove.
03:59And here we bring the students from school too
04:02to see this experience of producing the mangroves.
04:05And our boat has that step up front
04:09that it aims to collect this garbage
04:13that is floating in our lagoons.
04:16And then we also work inside the mangroves.
04:19It's a very shrubbery place, right?
04:22And it serves as a kind of filter.
04:25As you can see, a lot of the waste gets stuck in those roots
04:29and stays there for years and years.
04:31And there are several species of mangroves.
04:34Both mangroves and fish.
04:38That's why our lagoon is an important estuary
04:42and a natural mangrove of many, many species.
04:45That is, many species come here to reproduce.
04:49And this garbage from the current in this environment
04:54it greatly damages this scenario.
05:02In some countries, they are starting to recover the mangrove areas
05:06to fight tsunamis and floods.
05:08The mangrove manages to kidnap 10% more greenhouse gas.
05:12But the mangrove also has the ability to kidnap heavy metals,
05:15control the salinity of the water.
05:17And before they called us crazy,
05:19today they start to applaud our work and want to be part of it.
05:22I see Pontal da Barra, 10 years from now,
05:24as one of the biggest reference neighborhoods
05:27in terms of preservation and conservation of mangrove areas.
05:30I can also encourage other young people to change their realities
05:33from what they have available in their community.
05:36Because I believe that everyone has a purpose in life.
06:00For more UN videos visit www.un.org