Marcela de Oliveira Fernandes
Brazil, 17
She/Her
Project: RAÍCES
Across the Amazon, governments have opened Indigenous territories to outside settlement while agribusiness, mining, and logging encroach on what remains. Marcela's grandfather's tribe lost its ancestral land, along with generations of cultural practice rooted there. She founded RAÍCES to defend the Amazon against biodiversity loss through Indigenous knowledge and youth-led environmental science. RAÍCES equips young people to collect and analyze geotagged biodiversity data, restore degraded ecosystems with agroforestry and native seed banks, and develop conservation strategies alongside Indigenous communities. Those findings inform schools, governments, and municipal planners, shaping decisions with both Indigenous knowledge and scientific research. RAÍCES has engaged 2,000+ students across Latin America in restoration benefiting 8,000+ community members. Marcela is now working to implement Indigenous knowledge in school curricula continent-wide and expand economic opportunities from native crops and medicinal plants, so protection of the Amazon is led by those who have long called it home.