Karachi Zoo is proof that man is the cruelest animal

I had never set foot in a zoo before; I now wish I hadn’t.

As a mom of two feline monarchs who rule my home and a self-appointed custodian of strays that stumble into my orbit, my lessons in love have come padded in fur and whiskers. Cats, after all, love without surrendering their sovereignty. They teach you that affection can be fierce yet uncompromising of selfhood. That dignity breathes in freedom. And if dignity breathes in freedom, naturally, captivity is its slow suffocation. Few places advertise that suffocation as boldly as cages built in the name of leisure and ‘education’.

So when my editor assigned me a story on the Karachi Zoo, I knew it wouldn’t be one of those breezy reporting days, neatly filed away before lunch. This one would sit heavy.

But journalism, inconveniently faithful to reality, does not make exceptions for personal aversions. Zoos exist whether I approve or not, and my job was to bear witness. So, I went (a naïve corner of my heart clung to the hope of encountering some grace).

I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, the zoo surprisingly brimmed with life, just not the kind its caged inhabitants could claim. It was a life monopolised by the visitors. There were no roars, screeches, growls, or chirps — the very sounds I had imagined would dominate a place primarily built for animals. There was only the droning hum of speakers pumping out Bollywood classics from the 90s that I could have happily grooved to anywhere else. Children shrieked with delight as they bounced on trampolines and kicked footballs; families engrossed in mere mirth and laughter as they spread chadors across the sun-kissed grass for their little picnic.

And then came the long queue of people waiting for the boat ride — a waterbody so vast that I couldn’t help but wonder if the space, in some alternate reality, might have been used to expand the cages. The distractions only multiplied. A zip line whirred overhead, offering a burst of adrenaline. Around the corner, a 3D cinema, a bowling alley for children, a replica London bus shuttling families through concrete enclosures, cafés lined up along the sidewalks.

My personal favourite was The Forest cafe. The space opens into a semi-outdoor seating area under a lattice of tangled vines and dangling bulbs. The white plastic chairs and simple tables contrast with the deliberate attempt at an earthy aesthetic. The rustic wiring strung between branches, and soft yellow orbs of light seemed to mimic fireflies. Not even a fraction of this detail could be spared describing the animals’ barren enclosures.

It was, in essence, a festival of human joy, set against the backdrop of suffering animals who had never tasted freedom in such, or indeed, any capacity.

Survival of the ‘un’fittest

I saw the king of the jungle first — albeit dethroned.

A lion stretched in stillness, eyes half-lidded, radiating a kind of existential fatigue perhaps only captivity can breed. Whatever vitality once thundered through his veins seemed to have been sucked out of him. His “kingdom” measured roughly 20×20 foot, half claimed by a stagnant green puddle and a lone, leafless branch.

A ring of eager faces pressed to the bars outside his enclosure, waiting for something, anything, to happen. But the king, long resigned from the business of performance, offered nothing. No matter how many whistles pierced or hands clapped, he did not so much as flinch.

I was making observations, notebook in hand, when a small voice piped up beside me.

“Mama, look! A white lion!”

Curious, I glanced over. A little boy was tugging at his mother’s arm, eyes wide with excitement.

She leaned forward, squinting through the iron bars. “White?” she murmured, puzzled. “He looks brown to me.”

“The sign says it’s a white lion,” the boy insisted.

They were both right: the lion was technically white, but appeared brown; its fur caked with filth and devoid of any sign of basic grooming.

Next to his cage, in a stroke of remarkable satire, stood Café de Lion. While the king wasted away in his shrunken dominion, his name had been franchised into local food. There, people laughed over bun kababs and chaat, basking in the spray of a makeshift waterfall — oblivious, or perhaps uncaring, of an apex predator dying a slow, psychological death a few steps away.

At a little distance, monkeys sat listlessly in their rusting cages. One licked chipped paint flaking off the metal bars, while another ran in endless circles, a raw wound glaring across his back. There was no bandage to cover it, and no staff in sight to notice.

Their cage appeared barren. No ropes, branches, objects, or varied textures to mimic a natural habitat; only a corroded and abandoned ladder leading nowhere. The floor was a flat stretch of tiles, offering no soil, sand, or grass. Monkeys are considered arboreal by nature and in the wild, their lives unfold to rustling foliage, shifting light, and changing smells and sounds. Here, that world was stripped to sameness; they had nothing to swing from, nothing to stir instinct.

Rano, the Himalayan brown bear, was perhaps the most heartbreaking, exhibiting classic signs of captivity-induced psychosis. Her natural habitat lies in the cold alpine meadows of Deosai National Park and other mountainous regions of northern Pakistan — a world away from the suffocating confines of her enclosure.

All she did was pace with mechanical precision. Left to right. Right to left. Over and over. A life whittled down to a loop. You didn’t need the credentials of an animal behaviourist to sense there was something wrong with her; you only needed to pay attention.

As I stood watching her, one thought kept returning: If Karachi’s brutal heat can melt its people, what must it do to a bear bred for the cold north? There was no snow to hibernate under, no forest to disappear into; only a single dead tree trunk which seemed to mock the wilderness she was destined for but will likely never know.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Rano is being treated for a festering head injury, likely inflicted when she repeatedly rammed into the metal bars of her cage. The wound, now infested with maggots, is a testament to the neglect she has endured for years.

Adjacent to the chaos of the mammals, a ticketed enclave housed the reptiles. Inside, lizards, crocodiles, and snakes lay almost perfectly still within their cramped confines. I tried to take a closer look at their condition, but the view was obscured by fractured glass filmed with dust.

International codes of practice and guidelines from animal welfare organisations demand reptile enclosures to replicate natural habitats with heat lamps, textured surfaces, vegetation, and varied water features to stimulate movement and thermoregulation. Here, such enrichment (at this point, unsurprisingly) was conspicuously absent.

The chimpanzee, tigers, antelopes, deer, peacocks, and turtles fared no better.

An elderly chimpanzee lay seemingly depressed inside a dinghy room littered with juice boxes, gutka wrappers and plastic bags. A lone rooster walked in circles on a cement floor, unable to feel soft earth beneath its feet. Tucked away in one corner, jackals ran back and forth in what seemed like confusion. Animals built to thrive in open plains, dense forests, and flowing waters withering away in barren pens or circling stagnant ponds with their instincts suffocated at the source.

A prison… or worse

A “zoo”, they say. But experts and activists peel back the curtain and call it what it is: a prison.

Zohare Ali Shariff, a veteran in wildlife management and former theme park operator in Rawalpindi, builds on this sentiment with unapologetic clarity. “Don’t call it a sanctuary,” he said before I even hit the record button. “A sanctuary is a place where animals or people are looked after, where they de-stress from the outside world. You can’t tease them. This is just the opposite. These are prisons, essentially.”

But this isn’t new. Zoos, after all, began as menageries — pits of spectacle where animals were paraded as curiosities, dying in droves during capture or transit. As far back as 2500 BCE, Egyptian and Mesopotamian rulers collected giraffes, elephants, bears, dolphins, and exotic birds as living trophies of power.

The history of captivity, Shariff explained, is older than our moral compass, stretching back to the very origins of human civilisation. “Human beings were hunter-gatherers until about 10,000 years ago. It was only with the advent of agriculture that they began domesticating animals such as cattle, horses, and sheep. What started as a relationship of coexistence and mutual benefit, gradually evolved into a sense of fascination. Over time, that fascination hardened into ownership, sowing the first seeds of captivity — the roots of which continue to entangle us.”

That fascination-turned-desire-for-ownership found its most brutal stage in the Roman Empire. Beast hunts were an integral part of public entertainment, not just to thrill audiences with exotic spectacles, but as a theatrical show of Rome’s ability to conquer nature.

Lions, leopards, elephants, and bears were yanked from Africa and Asia, shipped across seas, and paraded into arenas. While ancient art and literature tell us much about the blood-soaked performances, the logistics (the mass capture, trade, and transport of animals on such a scale) remain only partly understood. What is clear is that countless animals died before ever making it to the amphitheatre and nobody was bothered.

It took nearly two millennia and a creeping public conscience for the model to change. In Europe, private menageries evolved into public zoos (still steel-barred and concrete-floored). Then, barely a century ago, a different concept took root: “simulated natural habitat.” Shariff credited Karl Hagenbeck, a man who began as an animal trader and ended up an advocate, for pioneering spaces that at least tried to look and feel like home for the captives.

Tragically, what began as a promise of freedom amounted to little more than a cosmetic change. While the language has shifted from “menageries” to “zoos,” the substance remains much the same.

Shariff argued that animals in captivity are often kept in conditions that are more akin to penal institutions than habitats. Many develop zoochosis, a psychological disorder where wild animals spiral into compulsive, repetitive behaviours alien to their natural state (case in point: Rano). The restless back-and-forth pacing, eerily reminiscent of inmates trudging cell corridors, reflects long stretches of monotony, boredom, and stress.

Mahera Omar, animal activist and co-founder of the Pakistan Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), drives the point further. She stressed that creatures that roam thousands of square kilometres in the wild are reduced to a fraction of that space in captivity, stripped of the chance to fulfil even their most basic behavioural needs. “It is, in effect, a psychological prison — one that denies animals both liberty and their natural way of living,” she said.

And yet, to call it a prison almost flatters it. In Karachi, human prisons are learning the language of rules: a new app now ensures every visit to Central Jail is logged, scheduled, and bound by a 20-minute window, with visitors submitting IDs and photographs before stepping inside. Captivity there, however grim, is at least codified and monitored.

Contrast this to Karachi Zoo, where animals languish without such protections. They don’t have visitation protocols, oversight of their mental well-being, or binding rules about space or enrichment. The irony is hard to stomach: a prisoner serving time for an actual crime has a regulated framework safeguarding their access to family and food, while animals, guilty of simply existing, are confined for life without rights or recourse.

The absence of and the need for enrichment

In Karachi Zoo, Rano and her companion (an Asiatic black bear) lived in the infamous pit — an archaic relic from Europe’s 300-year-old blueprint for cruelty — until the latter died in 2020, after only three years in captivity.

“It was when a bunch of concerned citizens and animals’ rights advocates filed a petition to the Sindh High Court that Rano bear was moved into a cage 15 times bigger,” Shariff said. However, he asserted that space without enrichment is a hollow victory. “On busy days, animals need to hide. Make a den for Rano. Plant trees for her to climb. Give her water to play in and varied terrain to roam. All she has is one miserable log. It doesn’t cut it.”

He breaks down the idea of reform into two essential dimensions: environmental enrichment (the right terrain, trees, water) and behavioural enrichment (keeping instincts sharp).

With the eye of both scientist and caretaker, Shariff described, in loving detail, how to design a tiger enclosure: grassy earth, undulating terrain, trees to scent-mark, and a pond for their water-loving tendencies. “A full-grown male tiger is capable of leaping 18 to 20 feet in a single bound. To account for this, the perimeter fence must reach at least 24 feet, topped with an inward-facing overhang so that even if the animal climbs, it cannot scale the barrier. The extra four inches serve as a critical safety buffer,” he noted, explaining the science of their confinement.

As far as behavioural enrichment is concerned, Shariff in his Rawalpindi park, spiced up the mornings for tigers with chicken blood trails leading to hidden “prizes,” giving captive-born predators a taste of the hunt. It made tigers stalk, ears twitching, eyes alert. They were made to forage for scattered food to mimic their 17-hour daily wanderings in the wild. “You have to do these gimmicks,” he said, almost with mischief, “because otherwise they’ve covered every inch in days.”

But the enrichment must be backed by care and that’s not exactly a department where Karachi Zoo has earned bragging rights. This is work that requires love, vigilance, and dedication — scrutinising faeces for early signs of illness, reworking the layouts overnight to keep animals stimulated, tailoring diets to species and seasons.

Instead, Shariff recalled reaching out to the management, only to discover they didn’t even maintain a basic record of their animals. No documentation of ages, sexes, or medical histories. If the paperwork was this neglected, it was hardly surprising that medical care fell through the cracks too. In many cases, he claimed, veterinary intervention arrives only when an animal is on its deathbed followed by an obituary blaming ‘old age’ as the cause of death.

For Jude Allen, an animal rights activist, enriching the lives of captive animals is about recreating a slice of their natural habitat. “Take lions, for example — they’re essentially giant cats. They play just like kittens do,” he explained.

He stressed that the solution doesn’t have to be complicated. A large ball, a stretch of greenery, space to run — these are small interventions that can spark enormous joy. “You’ll see them acting like complete goofballs because they’re so playful. That’s all they want. They want room to run. They need greenery. They need an environment that feels natural,” he said.

Captivity, he noted, is a compromise but one that can still allow for meaningful social bonds. “Even if they are in a zoo, they need a caretaker who bonds with them, because at the end of the day, that’s the only social interaction they’ll get. All animals are social. If you have a lion alone in a cage, he is going to need someone to bond with.”

Yet, he acknowledged that what may seem like simple measures are, in reality, distant milestones for those managing Karachi Zoo. During repeated visits, Allen has urged the administration to switch off a radio blaring near the lions’ enclosure. “It’s not just contributing to noise pollution, it’s actively distressing the animals. How can we talk about enrichment when the administration isn’t even trying to improve their day-to-day living conditions?” he asked, emphasising the basics.

However, for Daniyal Alishan, director media and spokesperson for the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), the music and announcements are no more than background noise. “There are songs that play but it’s not throughout the day,” he countered. “Sometimes we also get stuck in traffic and there’s noise of horns, rickshaw engines revving, vendors calling out, even the wail of an ambulance. It’s very normal.”

Normal, perhaps, for a commuter jostling through Karachi’s rush hour at Sharea Faisal. But for a lion, whose entire existence is reduced to concrete walls and enforced idleness, the comparison collapses.

Where’s the money going?

“Exploitation,” Allen remarked, “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

He explained that the Karachi Zoo receives an annual budget from the KMC that covers all operational expenses from staff salaries and administrative costs to utilities, and maintenance. “The problem isn’t the absence of funds, it’s that they’re not being utilised,” he noted.

According to him, much of the rot stems from ghost employees — staff members who exist only on paper — while those actually working are underpaid and overworked. “You’ll find caretakers responsible for dozens of animals without proper equipment or veterinary support. When I talk about exploitation, I’m talking about a chain — one that begins with the animals and extends all the way to the lowest-paid worker.“

Beyond the official budget, Allen said, the zoo generates additional, unaccounted revenue through various commercial activities such as shop and restaurant rents, as well as ticket sales for rides. “That’s still not the big picture,” he continued. “During Eid holidays, the footfall can reach around 200,000 visitors per day, and that’s on the conservative side.” He broke down the math: “If you multiply that by the Rs50 entry fee, that’s around one crore rupees a day. Over four days of Eidul Fitr and four days of Eidul Azha, that’s eight crore rupees — none of which is officially accounted for.”

He claimed that this money, along with income from other public holidays, is “internally distributed among the higher-ups” rather than being spent on animal welfare. “You look at the enclosures, the conditions, the lack of medical facilities and then you hear these numbers. There’s enough money to make the zoo a sanctuary. It’s infuriating,” he said.

When confronted with allegations of mismanagement, ghost employees, and unaccounted-for revenue at Karachi Zoo, Alishan, spokesperson for the KMC, was quick to push back.

“We have a technical team of doctors; a staff of 11 people who take care of the animals, feed them and bathe them,” Alishan insisted. “Recently, people exaggerated Rano’s self-inflicted injury and blew it out of proportion. If she has been here for a decade and survived it happily and healthily, then concerns about enrichment don’t hold valid.” Survival, per his judgement, is proof of contentment. The implication is that enrichment, the internationally accepted benchmark for captive animal welfare, is irrelevant if the animal is breathing ten years on.

When pressed on how he defines happiness and health, Alishan reduced it to a narrow metric: “As long as an animal can walk, eat, weighs what it should and looks physically fine, it is healthy. The expressions that come across as happy or sad fall into the emotional category, not medical.”

Rano, long regarded as the zoo’s poster case for abysmal conditions, has been the subject of campaigns by activists and citizens. But Alishan dismissed suggestions of veterinary neglect. “She has a wound because she keeps pushing herself against the bars. I wouldn’t even call it an injury, it’s just swelling. It should heal in two to three days. Think of it like when you or I hit our heads accidentally. It happens,” he noted, adding that he’s a pharmacist by training. But what other specialists might call a symptom of stress and deprivation in captivity, he recast as nothing more than a mishap.

He also rebuffed the idea that Karachi Zoo is exceptionally inhumane in any way. “If you go to zoos in Bangkok or Singapore, the bears there also hit themselves. It’s not unusual, and it’s not a sign of mistreatment.“ As for the charges that animals appear despondent, he claimed that it’s usually the visitors who unsettle them by whistling, tossing wrappers, and teasing.

On the issue of funding, Alishan dismissed allegations that money meant for the zoo is siphoned away by higher authorities. He explained that the Sindh government does not allocate funds directly to the zoo; instead, they are channeled to the KMC through the Octroi Zilla Tax (OZT). KMC also retains all revenue generated from the zoo’s commercial activities, disbursing funds back to it based on its operational expenses and the needs of the animals under its care.

“Our revenue is calculated on a fiscal basis from July 1 to June 30. This year, for the first quarter, the zoo generated about Rs10–15 million, which was received by the KMC. Of this, around 15 per cent was earmarked for the zoo,“ he clarified.

According to him, criticism of Karachi Zoo suffers from a lack of perspective and an unwillingness to acknowledge what he deemed hard-won progress. “Compare the state of the zoo a decade ago to what it is today. The difference is immense; we’ve completely transformed it,” he emphasised, lamenting that no one gives the administration credit for it. Alishan also pointed out that many educated voices and even celebrities “make a mountain out of a molehill”, framing the zoo’s condition as if the animals are being tortured; an assessment he considers unnecessary and unfair.

The spokesperson also hinted at expansion of the zoo rather than downsizing. “A whole lot of animals and birds are about to be added to Karachi Zoo by the end of this year,” he remarked with pride.

Plausible alternatives on the table

For Allen, the founder of the “I Am NoorJehan” movement, a civil society organisation advocating for animal welfare, the challenges facing Karachi Zoo are not merely about upkeep; they are questions of ethics, expertise, and long-term vision. “We need people with a high level of commitment,” he said. “Most of the animals in the zoo have been born in captivity. We can’t simply release them back into the wild. That’s another dilemma we face.”

“You can’t simply shut down the zoo,” Shariff concurred. The reason is deceptively simple: animals born in captivity cannot survive in the wild.

“If I put a captive tiger in a jungle, he wouldn’t know how to hunt. He’s never stalked prey, never ambushed, never learned how to open a carcass. Even if, by some miracle, he manages to kill a deer, he wouldn’t know what to do next. There’s a tediously long process behind reintroducing captive animals into the jungle. With many, it’s simply not possible,” he explained, arguing that the alternative is not closure, but a drastic reinvention.

Creating awareness, Shariff insisted, must sit at the heart of any reimagined zoo. This means going beyond the perfunctory signboards that simply label an enclosure with the word “lion” or “sher”. Visitors should be told what these animals eat, how they behave in the wild, their role in ecological balance, and the threats they face from human activity.

He proposed interactive experiences: trained volunteers — preferably passionate young people — engaging with families, answering questions, and even narrating anecdotes about the animals’ personalities. Giving animals names, highlighting their quirks, and telling stories about their habits, he believes, can humanise them in the eyes of visitors. It replaces the perception of ‘dangerous beasts’ with an understanding of them as sentient beings with distinct lives, deserving of respect.

For Karachi Zoo, he sees only two viable paths: “ban the import of new animals, care for the existing ones until their natural deaths, and then shut it down. Or, privatise it.“ In his view, private management, with accountability and incentives to perform, would ensure a relatively higher standard of care than the bureaucratic neglect the zoo suffers today.

For Shariff, the debate must shift from patchwork fixes to a fundamental rethink of what role zoos should play in the 21st century. “If we are serious about animal welfare, we must retire the outdated, colonial-era model of zoos. Instead, we need large-scale, professionally managed sanctuaries where animals can truly heal.”

But even as he outlined reforms, he cautioned that the conversation cannot be reduced to larger cages or superficial upgrades. “No matter how enriched the environment appears — be it large enclosures, simulated habitats, or artificial terrain — the fundamental issue remains: captivity is inherently restrictive.”

The deeper cultural malaise and the myth of education

In recent years, Pakistan has witnessed a disturbing surge in the private ownership of wild animals. Lions and tigers are paraded as emblems of power by social media influencers, industrialists, and the urban elite alike.

In July, one such pet lion escaped and mauled a woman and her children in Lahore, prompting authorities to confiscate 18 lions kept illegally as pets and raid dozens of breeding farms. Similar instances have unfolded in Karachi and Islamabad over the years: a lion casually strolling near Sharea Faisal; a leopard darting across walls, injuring residents; even a giraffe peering over a boundary wall in a residential area. For a price of around Rs1.4 million, one can have a white lion delivered to their doorstep within 48 hours — a grotesque convenience that underscores the absence of adequate ethical or regulatory restraint.

“Many private collectors and breeding farms keep animals solely for profit — sometimes raising lions or tigers to be sold or displayed as status symbols,” explained Shariff, adding that this commodification reflects a deeper moral failure. He explained that such facilities operate under the guise of conservation but function more as profit-making ventures.

In a society where possession is mistaken for prestige, we often hear a recurring defence: “zoos exist to educate the child in Lyari” — the one who might never see a lion in his lifetime otherwise. But what lesson does this child truly absorb when his first encounter with a wild creature comes framed by iron bars, with spectators tossing bottle caps to provoke a reaction out of it? That freedom is conditional? That captivity is natural? That violence is entertaining?

What’s telling is that this logic transcends class and literacy.

The very people who preach the virtues of “education” are often the same who, in an offensive display of extravangant wealth, keep lions in their basements and tigers at their weddings.

Empathy, a core building block that shapes one’s response to suffering, thus, doesn’t necessarily stem from schooling (or its lack thereof); it’s born out of a culture that recognises kinship between species. You can collect degrees and titles, but they’ll do little good when your moral compass is calibrated to established hierarchies.

Conventional education in Pakistan hasn’t been able to instill empathy towards animals; it has merely refined the language with which cruelty is excused. That, perhaps, is the deeper malaise. Whether in elite drawing rooms flaunting lion cubs or in public zoos where sentient beings decay in cells, our (mis)treatment of animals mirrors a lopsided social structure — one that exalts human dominance while reducing all other life to spectacle, possession, or profit.

An illusion of superiority

It is in this climate of warped hierarchy that the passing of Jane Goodall carries profound meaning. Last week on October 1, the world bid farewell to a remarkable woman who spent her life dismantling humanity’s illusion of superiority. In a poetic tribute scripted by fate itself, her death came in the same week we marked World Animal Day.

Goodall devoted her life to showing humanity its reflection through the eyes of chimpanzees. She once said, “Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.” It’s a reminder that our greatest tragedy lies in a mind racing ahead to invent and consume, while conscience limps behind.

Her immersion in chimpanzee society as a neighbour made her privy to bonds of compassion, reciprocity, and grief — qualities we often arrogantly compartmentalise as unique to humans. Her work challenged that assumption, showing that while animals may be bound by instinct, human beings, armed with reason, carry a parallel burden: the capacity for deliberate cruelty. To accept the imprisonment of any being, particularly one that lacks the voice to defend itself, is to expose reason’s darker edge — when divorced from compassion, it becomes an instrument of subjugation.

And then, nature humbles us with with truths we could never imagine on our own. In 2005, three lions in Ethiopia intervened in the abduction of a 12-year-old girl who had been held for a week by men attempting to force her into marriage. The lions reportedly stood guard over her for about half a day until her family and the authorities arrived, after which they returned to the bush.

Such stories lend flesh to the work of Marc Bekoff, one of the foremost researchers on animal emotions. In his study, titled Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures, he argues that animals experience a wide spectrum of emotions such as joy, fear, grief, love and embarrassment. His argument is not based on sentimental projection but on observable patterns of behaviour and biological mechanisms that underpin them.

If Bekoff’s work gives science its voice, then countless encounters in the wild give it a soul. From elephants who linger over their dead to crows that hold funerals, the natural world overflows with gestures that reflect our own tenderness and grief. These are not coincidences of instinct, but expressions of feeling; proof that human beings do not have monopoly over emotions.

Until rationale learns to walk hand in hand with empathy, the dream of a world founded on gentle coexistence (the truest measure of civilisation) will remain out of reach. And until we learn to see the beating hearts beneath fur, feather, and scale as kin rather than conquest, we remain the lesser species; clever, yes, but not yet wise. For real wisdom would humble us into realising that this is their world, and we are only living in it.

The author is a Social Development and Policy major who aims to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities and challenge the status quo through storytelling. She talks about environmental sustainability, and social justice.