The air is thick with smoke as towering clouds rise from the largest landfill in Delhi — Ghazipur, a grim monument to the city’s ever-growing waste crisis. The stench is overpowering, the sky a murky shade of grey, and the ground beneath is alive with the relentless hum of bulldozers, pushing more waste up the towering heap.
Since 1984, the landfill has been accumulating trash for decades, rising over 200 feet into the sky and casting a long shadow over the lives of the people living nearby. Beneath the surface, toxic gases leak, contaminating the groundwater and posing a serious threat to public health.
In November 2021, Ghazipur emitted an astonishing 156 tonnes of methane per hour. The ongoing pollution from this massive landfill is an environmental time bomb, and for Malaika Vaz, an award-winning filmmaker and National Geographic explorer, it’s this environmental crisis that fuels her work.
Co-founder of ‘Untamed Planet’, a media company that harnesses the power of bold, investigative storytelling, Malaika’s work focuses on the world’s most urgent environmental threats. Her most recent documentary, Sacrifice Zone, explores the devastating effects of pollution on vulnerable communities across four cities — New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge, and La Guajira.
‘It has to mean something’
Growing up in Goa, India, Malaika’s world was defined by a constant push and pull between the untamed outdoors and an insatiable curiosity about new media. Her days were spent climbing mountains, swimming in the ocean, sailing, windsurfing, and interning at local crocodile banks.
“I had many jobs before filmmaking — from hosting a TV show at 14 to working at a crocodile bank with snakes and crocs as an intern. These experiences gave me a more holistic perspective of the world,” she tells The Better India. “But after a certain point, I realised that I could keep going on these adventures, but ultimately, it has to mean something.”
Malaika always found herself enamoured by legendary communicators like David Attenborough and Anthony Bourdain, whose documentaries connected people to the beauty and complexity of nature. By the time she was 16, she was already working on community initiatives focused on women’s empowerment, which broadened her understanding of the world and her commitment to using media as a tool for change.
“Because of where and how I grew up, I wanted to bring the environment into the mainstream, tell stories about nature and our connection with it. The goal was to make films that reach a wide audience through both traditional and new-age media platforms,” she shares.
Malaika’s early years were steeped in experiences that left her with infinite curiosity and questions about the world around her. Through filmmaking, she found her true calling — capturing the delicate relationship between humanity and nature in ways that could change the way we see our planet.
Her documentaries take us into ecosystems on the brink, showing the impact of big industries on communities and wildlife alike. Her work has earned her accolades like the Wildscreen Panda On-screen Talent Award or ‘Green Oscar’, and a place on Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30’ list. But for Malaika, the real reward is in the process itself.
”What really keeps me going is actually the process of making films, truly committing to it, working with the team collaboratively, creating a vision in your head, and then being challenged for what you actually encounter in the field,” she shares.
Her approach to storytelling is first and foremost to respect the communities she covers, Malaika explains. She is quick to acknowledge that as an outsider, parachuting into a community without understanding its context can be problematic.
“It’s really important to have a team of people who represent different identity groups and also diverse perspectives,” she says. “They help us not only get access but truly understand how to tell the stories in a nuanced way.”
Over the years, Malaika’s team has travelled across the globe — from Colombia to Qatar, from Louisiana to Bangladesh, and from China to countless other corners of the world. “When I go in as someone who might not fully understand a local context, I try to be open-minded about it,” she says. “I really try to focus on making sure that I am listening to community members, that I am willing to change my story based on the actual realities at the grassroots level, and that I am ready and excited to be challenged.”
For Malaika, it is also crucial that she tells stories that resonate not only with global audiences but also with the local communities featured in her work.
“When the local community watches, the story should feel like it represents them in a way that’s respectful, impactful, and complex,” she says. “Part of it is also to make people feel awe and respect for their own accomplishments as conservationists and storytellers.”
One of the issues that Malaika is mindful of is shifting the narrative away from the vilification of local communities living alongside wildlife.
“For the longest time, we’ve focused on stories of people trafficking wildlife, or killing or poaching,” she points out, acknowledging that she has told some of those stories herself. “But it’s critical to tell stories about communities who are at the front lines, defending nature and protecting our natural resources — often with very little resources themselves,” she says.
“People open up their lives to me,” she reflects. “I get to live with some of the community members. It’s not an interview where I meet them and then I go away. We become friends, we share space and ideas, and we collaborate for months, sometimes years.”
Changing perspectives mid-journey
Malaika’s work is often shaped by the need to adapt to the ever-evolving realities on the ground. The path from research to film is rarely linear, especially when the stories she is uncovering challenge preconceived notions and demand a deeper, more nuanced approach.
“It happens all the time,” she says, reflecting on the fluidity of the storytelling process. “We did a story about traditional medicine and its impact on wildlife, and we went into it thinking that the demand was rooted in tradition.”
What she discovered in Guangzhou, China, was far more complex. While traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was part of the equation, the real driver was a booming business demand, marketing the medicine as “traditional” to appeal to consumers. This revelation shifted the direction of her film and deepened her understanding of the forces driving wildlife decimation.
Similarly, when she began working on Sacrifice Zone, she set out to focus on environmental pollution in Asia — specifically in India, Bangladesh, and Mongolia. But after shooting the first segment in Delhi, she was moved to change perspectives.
“As an Indian woman now living in the West, telling a story about environmental pollution but only focusing on Asian countries is problematic,” she says. The issue of pollution didn’t belong solely to the developing world. “Very often there are large historical polluters who are accountable — it’s the nations that have had the first head start in terms of development.”
This led her to approach National Geographic and suggest a broader scope for the film. “I want to tell a story about the global impact of the extractive industry, not just the Asia impact.” With their support, the film expanded to include communities in Louisiana, Colombia, Florida, and New Delhi.
“We need to be intentional about the larger societal and geopolitical message,” she explains. This intentionality requires flexibility and an openness to change, even when it means rewriting the script based on new insights from the field. Her documentaries have often evolved mid-production, as she uncovers complexities that demand a more layered, global perspective.
‘You can’t do business on a dead planet’
Beyond the environment, Malaika’s work also extends to using the power of visual media to connect people and inspire change. Alongside ‘Untamed Planet’ co-founder Nitye Sood, she is focused on mainstreaming environmental stories and expanding their scope to include broader issues.
“I’m most passionate about using the power of media to connect people with the things that matter and make them feel a sense of agency,” she says. As someone who has travelled the world and seen its complexities firsthand, Malaika believes that film is one of the most powerful tools for bridging divides.
Yet, she also points out that the challenges we face today are interconnected. “You can’t do business on a dead planet,” she says. From climate change to the health of biodiversity, every sector is contingent on a healthy planet.
Malaika is a strong advocate for bringing the private sector and governments into the conversation. “We need to ensure that we are not antagonistic,” she urges, “but rather working collaboratively to get every sector on board.”
The green transition — the shift from legacy extractive industries to cleaner, sustainable practices — could and should be happening now. “We’re at the precipice right now,” she says. “My journey is about how we communicate that transition. How do we tell stories about technology, communities, and industry that build momentum for the change that is already happening?”
Leveraging tech
Malaika’s work has had a far-reaching impact, with her films airing in over 150 countries, starting conversations on a global scale. Behavioral change and narrative shifts don’t happen overnight but she believes that when various stories converge, they have the power to change the course of history.
One of the most profound examples of this, she recalls, was a film about elephant trafficking with the BBC. “When that came on TV, we had young people reaching out on social media, saying that they had no idea that elephants were being trafficked for the captive tourism industry,” Malaika recalls. As a result, many of these viewers pledged to never ride an elephant again. “That’s one less person supporting an industry that tortures these very social, sentient beings.”
For a project focused on Kashmir’s wildlife, led by Nitye Sood, the team didn’t just create a broadcast film. “We also created a virtual reality film that is being watched by community members in Kashmir who go to see Dachigam National Park.”
This innovative use of technology brought nature closer to people who may never have the opportunity to track bears in the wild or observe elephants in their natural habitat. “I’m a big tech nerd,” Malaika admits, “and it can be a great tool for bridging some of these gaps.”
‘Nature is sacrosanct’
When reflecting on her journey as a filmmaker, Malaika admits that her initial reaction to environmental violations was one of anger and judgment. “When I initially began making documentaries and saw environmental violations, it made me livid. It made me feel like these people were inherently different from me, and that they are bad people.” But over time, she found that empathy, not anger, was a more effective approach. “I have that journalistic rigor, I’ll ask the hard questions, and I’m also curious about how we understand these issues on a human level.”
Malaika also believes in the importance of bridging political divides in the fight for nature conservation. “No matter whether you’re extremely right-wing or extremely left-wing, nature conservation is entrenched in most religious systems. It’s entrenched in most political systems. Everyone thinks that nature is sacrosanct,” she says.
This belief that nature can unify disparate groups was reinforced during a recent shoot in Louisiana. There, Malaika met with women who were fighting for justice in communities facing severe health impacts from oil and gas pollution. “I met these amazing women in their 60s and 70s who are fighting for justice for their communities,” she recalls.
Despite the cancerous impact of local pollution, these women continued to fight for their community’s health. “To see these women, some of them had cancer, continuing to fight their cancer, still going there and still working in policy as activists…if they can keep doing it at that age, with those difficulties, coming from a marginalised community, then we can too.”
Hope then comes from the resilience of both the people and the planet. “We live on a very resilient planet,” she says. “If we do the work, it can bounce back.”
Edited by Arunava Banerjee
