Listening for What Matters: Reflections from the Sustainable Storytelling Evening at SRI
- maggiedugan
- Jun 27
- 3 min read
Stories move us in ways that facts alone often can’t. They remind us why the work matters, and who it’s for. That spirit was at the heart of the Sustainable Storytelling evening at this year’s Sustainability, Research + Innovation Congress (SRI). Hosted by Inclusive Innovation and the Belmont Forum, the event invited researchers, artists, and community leaders to share personal stories that revealed the human side of sustainability. The audience heard powerful narratives that illuminated not only the science of sustainability, but also the personal passions and lived experiences driving that work.
Seven storytellers stepped into the spotlight to share personal, vulnerable accounts of challenges they’ve faced and the changes they’re helping to bring about. We heard from a Malaysian artist who played a key role in halting deforestation, and from an ecologist who is making urban wildlife more visible so city dwellers can rediscover the nature around them. One storyteller shared the quiet heartbreak of returning to a beloved childhood tourist site, now overgrown, and recognizing that nature will ultimately reclaim what humans cannot manage. One storyteller hosts a podcast highlighting stories of urban regeneration and sustainability. Several Indigenous scientists reflected on what it means to find voice and purpose in the face of cultural erasure, climate crisis, and systemic barriers.
If you were in the room - thank you. Your presence, and generous listening, turned the event into something larger than the sum of its stories. Although I’d heard each narrative during our rehearsal earlier in the day, their impact was even greater with a full and attentive audience.
A Baobab’s Plea
Every story was touching in some way, but the story that lodged deepest in my heart was told by Onja Razanamaro of Madagascar. As founder of ARO BAOBAB, she works to conserve and restore the ancient baobab forests, whose massive trunks and thousand-year lifespans make them icons of resilience, yet their future now hangs by a thread. Deforestation for crops and minerals, and increasingly frequent wildfires have broken the natural regeneration cycle: there are virtually no intermediate-aged trees left.
Onja’s team was painstakingly raising seedlings to re-seed the forest until last February when a disaster struck. A cyclone and floods wiped out more than half of the seedlings. Reflecting on that loss, she posed a question that quieted the room:
Are electric vehicles truly our future for climate change mitigation if their production leads to the destruction of the very biodiversity we also need to protect?”
Her words stayed with me, long after the applause. Years ago, I took a midnight tour of a baobab grove in Senegal and felt dwarfed by their silent grandeur. I remember how the trees loomed in the moonlight, steadfast, ancient, like wise elders. The idea that those giants could disappear is unbearable.
Onja’s restoration work continues—now buoyed by a GoFundMe campaign and while she seeks new and additional sources of funding and partnership.
Why These Stories Matter
Sustainable storytelling isn’t about data points or policy briefs. It’s about meaning – about feeling the weight of a baobab’s loss or the triumph of a wildlife sighting in the heart of a city. Stories illuminate the trade-offs we rarely see in the fine print, the human stakes behind words like “green transition” and “climate justice.” They help us ask better questions, like Onja’s, before signing off on solutions that might cost more than we think.
We’re grateful to every storyteller for their courage, to our audience for their open hearts, and to our partners at the Belmont Forum and SRI Congress for making space where stories like these can do their quiet, catalytic work.
Go Further: If Onja’s question resonated with you, consider sharing her story and supporting ARO BAOBAB’s GoFundMe restoration campaign. The next generation of baobabs, and perhaps our own, may depend on it.
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