Vision of Grove wins Rep. Judy Chu’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 28th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Vision of Grove, the student said, “I first learned about the importance of mangroves to communities during an event at my school where filmmaker and activist Kalyanee Mam discussed the effects of sand-dredging along the coasts of Cambodia. Losing entire mangrove forests, the local communities face economic hardships due to losses of jobs such as fishing and eco-tourism. I further learned about the impacts of mangrove loss on my school’s Global Initiatives Program trip to Costa Rica surrounding environmental sustainability. These experiences sparked my interest to delve further into the world of mangroves and the impacts of their deforestation. Upon further research, the Sundarbans area stood out to me as it is the largest mangrove forest in the world, with over 16 billion mangroves throughout its 10,000 square miles. I came upon several news articles that discussed the significance of mangroves in protecting these coastal communities from recent cyclones. For example, mangroves stabilize the shoreline with their roots, act as a natural barricade towards wind and waves, and store water from surges. One statistic that caught my eye was that over 15 million people around the world would be at risk of facing floods annually without mangroves. Furthermore, mangroves are vital to the economy of the Sundarbans, with 79% of the local communities’ income from mangrove forest products, such as fishing and honey collection. However, over the past three decades, the Sundarbans has lost nearly a quarter of all its mangroves due to the establishment of dams, which prevent sediment from flowing downstream, and the waves and wind from cyclones, which are only increasing in intensity due to climate change.

As temperatures rise in parts of our world, the added heat acts as a fuel to these storms, making them more destructive than ever. While mangrove restoration projects do exist, they are often difficult to implement, with nearly half failing. These projects are also very expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars for just a few hectares. This leaves detrimental impacts on the livelihoods of the four million people living in the Sundarbans, an area prone to cyclones, with major cyclones killing hundreds of people a year and harming millions more. One of the purposes of this app is to help determine where the most vulnerable communities of the Sundarbans are in order to help allocate resources of mangrove reforestation projects to places of most urgency.”