Senior Satvika Iyer spoke virtually at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Science Summit on Sep. 21 about the importance of the arts and humanities in scientific progress, she said.
At the summit, which was held live in Manhattan, New York, Iyer described environmental advocacy projects she has been working on and how the arts and humanities were integrated into them, she said.
“I was one of the fourteen students chosen internationally last January to serve as a mentor for environmental projects around the world as a member of the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Program’s Future Blue Youth Council (FBYC),” Iyer said. The council provides grants to environmental
advocacy projects around the world.”
One of her projects, The Mudzi Cooking Project, supports a single mother in the African country of Malawi and her discovery of using biomass briquettes as an alternate fuel source to limit harmful effects from the everyday burning of firewood in the rural Chisinga Forest, she said.
“As a mentor, I organized a cooking station in the forest with food made from the briquettes, as taste is an essential factor to the fuel switch,” Iyer said. “The grant supported the single mother with implementing her idea with community fairs which promoted climate education through art.”
Iyer’s role in the Mudzi Cooking Project was to organize community festivals and an educational curriculum to make the big concepts of climate change more accessible, she said.
“Through the use of songs, dances, and skits, the community festivals were able to involve the arts to publicize the main attraction, a workshop on making the biomass briquettes,” Iyer said.
“Future Blue Council’s purpose is to add the arts and humanities to different advocacy projects because they believe where science can’t be as universal, the arts and humanities will be.”
The mission of the Bow Seat Foundation is to empower youth to connect, create, and communicate for the planet, said Linda Cabot in an email interview, the founder of the Bow Seat Foundation’s FBYC.
“I started Bow Seat because I wanted to teach the next generation about what was happening to our blue planet,” Cabot said. “I am an artist, and I love nature, and wanted to combine these two passions to create a platform that could educate young people through the arts.”
Iyer and the other members of the Future Blue Youth Council submitted one proposal to the UNGA Science Summit Committee to have a speaking session at the UN summit, and were the only youth-led group present, she said.
“Since we are part of Bow Seat and their mission is for the humanities, we decided to talk about the aspect of arts and humanities and the importance of it in scientific progress,” Iyer said. “Environmental advocacy
projects are not always going to be completely science-based. So we decided to take the spin on the session to say, ‘With the projects that we’ve done, what aspects of humanities have we seen with
our mentors and mentees in what they’re implementing?’”
As Iyer is applying to college for majors in environmental engineering with public policy, she continues to see the need to bridge the gap between the sciences and humanities, Iyer said.
“I know that you cannot just have the science and then expect to make a change,” Iyer said.
“I could see myself working in a lab, but I know that I have to work with government systems to implement data-driven policy. To make a difference, you would have to do both.”
Despite the seemingly little progress made in environmental advocacy, Iyer looks up to people who want to make a difference, she said. She wants to harness those traits in college and career to create clean energy, food, and water systems, she added. “I stay hopeful through action,” Iyer said. “I want to dedicate my life to this because it’s something that makes me feel like it’s beyond the individual. The impact is greater than me.”