It’s the kind of tale that turns even the most hardened nationalist soft.

His father arrived in Britain from Pakistan with nothing but a one-pound note in his pocket. But Sajid Javid became a prominent banker and politician, and now has risen to become Britain’s Home secretary, the first time a citizen with an ethnic minority background has assumed one of Britain’s four “great offices of state.”

Beyond an exemplar of the immigrant dream, Mr. Javid’s appointment to take charge of immigration and national security may also signal a shift in thought in migration politics overall.

Specifically, it is being viewed as a nod from the Conservatives that their restrictive policies may have gone too far, in some ways out of step with public attitudes – particularly in the wake of the Windrush controversy that has dominated British headlines for weeks. It shares some similarities with the political controversy surrounding the Dreamers, the estimated 1.8 million immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

Immigration has driven politics and divided publics for years, from Britain across Europe to the US. In the UK, it’s the issue that decided Brexit, as Britons sought more control over immigration flows from other European Union states. Well before the issue of EU membership was put to voters, Prime Minister Theresa May held Javid’s post and shaped what she called a “hostile environment” for illegal immigration.

For that reason, there is skepticism that the government line on immigration will radically change. And Javid himself advocates for a hard Brexit and border for Britain. But he has assumed office hinting that he will reshape the atmosphere on immigration into one that is more “compliant.” “I don’t like the phrase ‘hostile,’ ” Javid said Monday. “It doesn’t represent our values as a country to use that phrase. It is about a compliant environment, and it is right that we have a compliant environment.”

The word “hostile” is at the heart of the cabinet shakeup that led to Javid’s new post in the first place. Ms. May and former Home Secretary Amber Rudd found themselves in a row over the so-called “Windrush generation,” the Caribbean nationals who came to Britain after World War II to help rebuild the British economy. They were given leave to remain, but the government's documentation of their status was shoddy or went missing over time. As immigration policies hardened, particularly under May’s tenure as home secretary, some members of the Windrush generation and their descendants found themselves in legal limbo. [Editor's note: This paragraph was updated to further clarify the legal status of the Windrush generation.]

Ahead of the shakeup, Javid had criticized their plight in deeply personal terms in a Sunday Telegraph interview. His own father arrived in the '60s, finding work as a bus driver. His mother never studied, so he sometimes had to take off time from school to translate for her. He told the paper: “That could be my mum ... it could be my dad ... it could be my uncle ... it could be me.”

Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, an independent think tank that addresses integration and immigration, says Javid’s personal experience gives him legitimacy at the center of the debate. “He is definitely on the pro-immigration and pro-integration side of the debate, which is a center-ground position in what is quite a polarized view.”

He calls the appointment an opportunity to push the “reset” button on Britain’s immigration policies.

The second-generation immigrant, who became an MP after his banking career, has an inspiring backstory. But Matt Kilcoyne, head of communications at the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank, says his story can also communicate a more positive message about immigration.

“I'd like to think that Sajid’s family background, and his own career across the globe, help him to ... make the free-market case for immigration to convince the right in this country to back a more open and global policy on the issue,” he says.

It’s unclear how much room he’ll have to maneuver. Ms. Rudd didn’t stray from May’s positions in the Home office. She was forced to resign over the weekend, for having misled Parliament about whether her office set a target for deportations each year, which it did starting with May’s administration. Rudd and May both apologized for the unintended consequences to the Windrush generation.

But Rob Ford, who studies the politics of immigration at the University of Manchester, says that beyond bureaucratic mistakes, May’s policies have failed to reflect the nuances of British attitudes about immigration.

A recent YouGov poll shows that 63 percent of respondents think immigration into Britain in the past decades has been too high. But when respondents are asked about different kinds of immigration, in terms of origin or skills, their answers change. Over 70 percent of respondents said they want the same or even higher levels of skilled immigration, for example. A Sky Data poll last week found that 54 percent believe the suffering of Windrush migrants is “not a price worth paying.”

“There is a basic sense of fair treatment that runs through what the public wants to see,” Professor Ford says. Illegal immigration may be rejected for exploiting rules, but so too is harsh treatment of pensioners because, he says, “it violates basic principles of justice.”

“The mistake Theresa May has repeatedly made on migration policy is this assumption that any migrant will do when it comes to control, or enforcement or reduction of the numbers,” Ford says. “That simply doesn’t hold up.”

He draws a parallel to the political stalemate around the Dreamers. Polls show a majority of Americans agreeing with their right to remain in the country. But politicians talk of immigrants as a monolithic group deserving of a single, partisan response.

That’s where Javid may have a chance to navigate the complexities of public opinion. “Javid’s view would be that immigration is economically and culturally beneficial to Britain,” says Mr. Katwala, “but as a politician he knows he’s got to bring the public with him, and he’s got to take seriously the way people feel about high immigration, so he has to strike those balances.”

Patrick Semansky/AP/File

Packages pass through a scanner at an Amazon fulfillment center in Baltimore in this 2017 photo. The company said members of its Amazon Prime service will pay higher fees starting in June, and rising labor and energy prices are boosting the costs of freight shipping in general.

Behind a wall of stainless steel refrigerators, next to the fancy ranges, nearly 50 washers and dryers are displayed for sale at Warrendale Appliance in suburban Boston. Sales are brisk. And while prices on foreign-made washers have bumped up a bit because of a new tariff, management isn’t worried.

“It’s fifty bucks a washer,” says the owner, who did not want his name published. “It doesn’t affect business.”

But in downtown Boston, the problem for John Sadowski is that prices have been rising even more sharply for longer. Labor and other construction costs are up so much over the past three years that it's getting harder to make the numbers work on development projects. “At some point, something’s got to give,” says the commercial real estate consultant with Colliers International Group. 

From real estate to gasoline, Amazon to Whirlpool, prices are on the rise. For some industries, such as construction, they’ve been rising for several years, long enough to become worrisome. For others, price hikes are just beginning.

That means inflation – after more than a decade of hibernation – appears to be reemerging as a broad and notable force in the economy.

Economists don’t see inflation upending consumer confidence, in part because incomes are also generally rising. But it does mean subtle shifts, from drivers watching pump prices more carefully to families thinking about whether that extra meal out fits in the budget.  

It also means rising interest rates, boosting the cost of everything from credit-card debt to a home or car loan. A key reason: As inflation has shown signs of a pickup, financial markets are anticipating tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve.

All this can be viewed as a sign of an economy that’s healthy and actually normalizing after years in post-recession recovery mode. But it also signals an important transition – toward a phase of the economic cycle where the Federal Reserve faces difficult choices about how to contain inflationary pressures without choking off growth.

“It’s really been a long time coming,” says James Bohnaker, an economist at IHS Markit in Cambridge, Mass. “Over the past five years almost, people have really been anticipating inflation to start picking up sooner than it has.”

Attitude change at the Fed

Now, with newly enacted tax cuts and federal spending boosting an economy where local job markets are often already tight, Mr. Bohnaker says mind-sets at the Federal Reserve’s policy committee have changed.

“More members are focused on fighting inflation rather than being concerned [how to stimulate growth], which is a pretty momentous shift,” he says.

It’s not that inflation is running out-of-control. But to the degree that price hikes become a persistent trend, the Fed and bond investors will respond by pushing up interest rates – slowing economic growth and at some point heightening the risk of a new recession.

Already, many economists expect the Fed to boost short-term interest rates four times this year, totaling a full percentage point of increase.

Costlier summer travel

The most obvious example of rising prices is at the service station. A gallon of regular now costs an average $2.81 per gallon, nearly 50 cents a gallon higher than a year ago, and will rise up to another 10 cents this month, according to the AAA motor club based in Heathrow, Fla. It predicts this summer will be the most expensive driving season in four years.

The rise in fuel prices, if it sticks, will likely mean higher airfares, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told analysts and reporters last week. The world’s largest airline said higher jet-fuel prices caused a 45 percent decline in its first-quarter earnings.

SOURCE:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, selected items in consumer price index

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Freight rates have also jumped – and not just because of higher diesel prices. A shortage of truckers has boosted average pay for independent drivers 15 percent since 2013, according to March survey by the American Trucking Associations. Private fleet drivers have seen an 18 percent rise from $73,000 to $86,000 a year on average.

Higher shipping and fuel prices are beginning to worm their way through the economy, causing other price hikes. General Mills, maker of Cheerios and Häagen-Dazs ice cream, has said it’s raising prices on cereal and snacks. In February, Tyson Foods told analysts it would raise prices because the trucker shortage was costing the food company an extra $200 million a year.

Prices for online services are also on the rise. In the Boston region, a data-storage firm increased prices on individuals by as much as 20 percent, the Federal Reserve noted two weeks ago in its “beige book” report of business conditions around the country.

Amazon is boosting the price of its popular Prime service by $20, to $119 a year, starting in mid-June (and on May 11 for new members).

Prices up, but so are wages

Businesses are typically reluctant to raise prices because they fear losing customers. But when Netflix boosted prices last October by $1 a month for its popular $9.99 plan and $2 a month for its $11.99 premium plan, it added 2 million more subscribers than it had expected.

For now, in fact, the economic news remains largely positive. Jobs are available, and pay is rising.

“I do think that we are going to see incomes rising more quickly than inflation,” says Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “I am very doubtful that we’ll see inflation well above the Fed’s 2 percent goal on a consistent basis.”

That’s because he sees excess production capacity in the global economy, as well as a willingness at the Fed to raise interest rates as needed. Mr. Faucher expects the current expansion to continue through the middle of next year, becoming the longest in US history.

“After that it gets a little dicier,” as the stimulative effect of recent tax cuts fades, he says.

Various forces are pushing up prices. There are labor shortages, such as for truckers, as firms compete to lure them with better pay. Labor supply is also an issue for construction-related firms like Colliers (a firm that's involved in renovation work for the Monitor’s publisher, The First Church of Christ, Scientist). 

There are commodity shortages, such as for oil, because OPEC has reduced oil production to boost prices. Another driver is public policy, such as tariffs on trade. In the wake of trade restrictions on foreign washing machines, even domestic manufacturers like Whirlpool have announced price hikes.

Trump administration sanctions on foreign steel have also caused sometimes sharp surges in steel prices, according to the Fed’s latest beige book analysis. “Businesses generally anticipate further price increases in the months ahead, particularly for steel and building materials.”

Tumbling off their bus and into the glaring afternoon sun in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the US tourists assemble before Yasser Arafat’s marble tomb and hear two vastly different takes on the former Palestinian leader.

Standing to the left of the tomb, Husam Jubran, their Palestinian guide, describes who Mr. Arafat was for Palestinians: a charismatic freedom fighter who put their cause on the map and spent his final years under Israeli siege in a bunker beneath his government’s headquarters, some 100 yards from where the tourists are standing.

He also tells them most Palestinians still believe Arafat was secretly assassinated by Israel in 2004, not felled, as his doctors said, by a blood disorder. “They believe he died a martyr, killed by the Israelis, and hear stories that at the time Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked US President George W. Bush for the green light to kill Arafat,” Mr. Jubran says.

A few breaths later, still absorbing those jarring words, they turn their heads to the right to listen to Yuval Ben-Ami, their Israeli guide, who tells them, “Israelis have an image of Arafat as a terrorist and a corrupt person.”

He then walks them through the early 1990s when Arafat and his Israeli counterparts, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, prime minister and foreign minister at the time, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo peace process. Hope briefly glimmered that another future might be in reach. That dream shattered amid another round of bloodletting.

The tour group is on Day 2 of a nine-day dual-narrative journey through Israel and the West Bank. It’s a tour most visitors to this region do not experience, an opportunity to crisscross the political and social divides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Such a tour is all the more exceptional, and poignant, today. This spring marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel. For Israelis, who observe the day according to its date on the lunar Hebrew calendar, which this year fell on April 19, it is a time of celebration, hailed as the miraculous rebirth of the Jewish nation in their ancestral homeland in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

But for Palestinians, who will mark the day May 15 – when Israel officially declared independence in 1948 – it is the Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” mourned as the beginning of their exile from what they, too, consider their homeland. Some 750,000 Palestinians, almost 70 percent of the Palestinian population at the time, fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which broke out just after Israel’s Declaration of Independence was signed and forces from four Arab countries invaded.

That jagged divide in how both peoples remember 1948 continues to affect their perspective on the conflict, which has festered these past 70 years.

The dual-narrative tour takes the visitors through Israeli military checkpoints to visit Palestinian cities like Ramallah and Bethlehem; a refugee camp; and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Back in Israel, a kibbutz and archaeological sites in the desert and the Galilee are on the itinerary, as are holy sites in hotly contested Jerusalem.

Along the way are speakers of all faiths and political backgrounds, each with his or her own back story to share – from the imam of Jerusalem’s iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque, who offers them a fiery political perspective, to an 81-year-old who, as a young orphan girl, managed to survive Nazi concentration camps.

Interpreting the history, archaeology, and competing political claims and narratives are Jubran and Mr. Ben-Ami, both in their 40s, who have cemented a friendship so deep during the dozens of tours they have co-led that Jubran, a Muslim, officiated at the Jewish Ben-Ami’s wedding last year.

The guides' own stories

The two also share their personal stories. On a visit to Bethlehem, Jubran, who lives in a village nearby, recounts coming of age in the first intifada as a teenage political activist, one of tens of thousands of youths who joined mass demonstrations facing off against Israeli troops. He spent time in an Israeli prison, was wounded by an Israeli soldier’s bullet, and spent almost a year in a wheelchair. He later embraced nonviolence and sees guiding this type of tour as part of his work in building peace.

Ben-Ami tells of being a third-generation Israeli from Jerusalem. He grew up in a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city that he did not even realize was contested by the Palestinians. His grandfather’s entire family perished in the Holocaust. His father was Israel’s chief military spokesman for several years.

Both men talk about the importance of giving context to the complex region they each call home.

“I tell them that context does not justify things, but if you receive the context, you understand why this particular group acts the way it does. Even if you do not immediately identify with them, you can feel open to understanding them,” Ben-Ami says.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters/FILE

A woman stands near pictures of Jews killed in the Holocaust during a visit to the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem's Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem May 4, 2016.

Jubran started out doing tours for Christian and Muslim groups. But he wanted to go deeper into the Israeli and Palestinian narratives. “It really did not seem fair to me that tourists would come here and you would avoid certain topics,” he says.

The pair met when each started working for Mejdi Tours, founded by a Palestinian entrepreneur and activist, Aziz Abu Sarah, and Scott Cooper, an American Jewish entrepreneur with a background in conflict resolution, with the concept of providing both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives for tourists. Mejdi Tours provides these Israel-West Bank tours on behalf of National Geographic Expeditions.

The concept has since expanded and been applied to other parts of the world. The company now offers tours in 18 countries and regions, including Ireland, Bosnia and Croatia, and Vietnam.

Bus ride to Yad Vashem

At 8 a.m. on a recent spring morning, the tour bus sets off through Jerusalem’s morning traffic toward Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

The 20-odd tourists from all over the United States are hushed as Ben-Ami begins to tell them the story of his grandfather – how, in 1938, the teenager from what was then Czechoslovakia made the long journey alone to what was then British Mandatory Palestine. He entered illegally with his fellow Jewish refugees, jumping into the coastal waters of the Mediterranean and being plucked out by kibbutzniks – members of collective farms.

His grandfather’s parents and five siblings stayed behind. The letters from them eventually stopped arriving.

“Years later we would have these family dinners on Shabbat, and he would be so happy with all the children and grandchildren together. But I’d often find him alone in tears. And the tears became bigger as he grew older. He felt so guilty, wondering, ‘Why am I here and they were not saved?’ ” Ben-Ami tells the group.

“This place became his home,” says Ben-Ami, gesturing toward the modern state of Israel racing by the bus window. “For my family, this was a real proven land of refuge. Although the events recounted in the museum did not take place here, they are tied so closely to the country.

“This is a scar that is still fresh,” he continues. “It all happened 75 years ago, not very long ago in the scope of things. Some would argue we were not allowed to heal normally because we are in this situation of conflict, still in fear.”

After touring Yad Vashem, the group hears from Jubran about the complicated relationship Palestinians have with the Holocaust.

“Some deny the Holocaust even happened; others say it happened, but not as it is described. Both have some level of denial,” he tells them.

“But the denial does not come of hatred,” he argues, “but usually out of ignorance, and when confronted with the facts they will recognize it happened.”

He then breaks down the other responses. A significant number prefer not to talk about the Holocaust, concerned it will justify the creation of Israel, Jubran says. “People will say, ‘You had the Holocaust and we had the Nakba.’ I don’t think there is any parallelism in the stories, but that is where most Palestinians stand.”

Others fully recognize the Holocaust, but will say, “Why do we have to keep talking about it?” A final group, he says, encourages fellow Palestinians to learn about it to better understand the Israeli psyche and works to bring groups to Yad Vashem.

Dina Kraft

Israeli tour guide Yuval Ben-Ami and Palestinian tour guide Husan Jubran speak to a group about the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and its aftermath during a stop in Ein Karem, a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem that was once a Palestinian village.

In Ein Karem, stories of 1948

The bus now carries the group farther west, away from the center of Jerusalem and toward the neighborhood of Ein Karem, once a Palestinian village and now a Jewish area nestled in the green foothills of the city. Jubran tells the travelers that in Arabic its name means “Spring of the Vineyard.”

At the bottom of a winding road, under an archway cut from large pink stones, is the gurgling spring the village was named for. Christian tradition says Mary stopped to drink from its waters during a visit to the parents of John the Baptist, who was born here.

It is around this peaceful spring that Jubran and Ben-Ami speak of the upheaval that took place here in the wake of the 1948 war and the village’s place in the story of both Israelis and Palestinians.

In 1947, not three years after the end of the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, a partition rejected by the Arab League. Israel declared independence a few months later, the Arab armies attacked, and the Zionist forces counterattacked. Amid the fighting, Palestinians in some cases were expelled and in others fled their homes, assuming they would return once the Arab armies were victorious. Those who later tried to return were kept out by the then-nascent Israeli army.

Ein Karem is one of the Palestinian villages inside Israel that remain intact. Hundreds were destroyed, either in the fighting or after they were depopulated. Of the present-day towns and villages, some were left mostly intact, while others were rebuilt on or near their original locations.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Though Ein Karem survived, its population changed from Palestinian to Jewish, first immigrants from Morocco but today Israeli Jews of all backgrounds.

When Palestinians refer to the 1948 war of Israeli independence, Jubran says, “we use the term Nakba, a very harsh word in Arabic meaning the ultimate catastrophe.” He tells the tourists of the 750,000 Palestinians who ended up outside what became Israel and of villages that were “wiped off the map.”

“Most Palestinian cities became Jewish or Jewish majority,” he adds, Nazareth being the only exception – a Palestinian city that remained so.

Point, counterpoint

Ben-Ami then jumps in with the Israeli narrative he was raised on, that Jews developed the land they bought from absentee Arab landholders. He describes the early Zionist movement as borne out of desperation by European Jews who believed they would never be fully accepted or safe there and who began settling Jews in farming communities here 50 years before the Holocaust began.

“Here it is, the point, counterpoint, which is why discussion of the Nakba is one of the most sensitive in our journey,” he says.

Most sensitive of all within that history is how villages like this were emptied of their residents. Jubran suggests that an infamous massacre at a nearby Palestinian village, Deir Yassin, is likely what scared those in Ein Karem to take flight.

The two guides describe why the Palestinian refugee issue remains central to Palestinians today but how Israelis cannot even begin to broach it. “We [Israelis] say we are not talking about it; it raises the fear of being homeless again,” says Ben-Ami.

There is much for the group to absorb. And they’re still digesting talks from the previous day by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy, a former Israeli army spokesperson, a Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, an expert on Jerusalem biblical archaeology, and a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, each telling his or her own version of the story of these intertwined peoples.

“It’s very important to note that this is not a political tour,” says Ben-Ami. “It’s just a tour that dares address the politics.”

Some tourists say that the trip is fascinating and at times head-spinning.

“But what gives me hope is how well our two guides get along,” says a tour group member from New York.

Echoing that theme, Jubran says, “We don’t want people to leave in despair, but with hope. You don’t need to give up; there is always common ground where we can come together.”

Sara Schonhardt

Women from different communities in Guatemala came together last summer to share conservation strategies and to learn how to quantify the value they derive from the environment. By sharing their experiences, women are learning to adapt to a changing environment and make their needs heard.

The site of devastating landslides, fierce winds, and volcanic peaks, the hills in Guatemala's Sierra Madre can be inhospitable. But the women are just the opposite.

Last summer, dozens of women from across the country gathered to share strategies about water and forest conservation and improving crop yields, and they got a crash course in social auditing, a way for them to understand their rights and get involved in decisionmaking.

“We welcome our companions with happiness whenever they visit,” says Diega Rodriguez, one of the organizers of the Ut’z Che’ network of community forestry groups. “We have to keep working and we have to keep fighting.”

The relationships forged on those wind-whipped hills have become a kind of scaffolding for an increasingly connected network of community leaders, activists, and groups throughout the country that are working to empower women to fight for their land and their environment.

Increasingly forced to bear the brunt of more extreme weather and environmental degradation, these women are gaining the tools and the support to act on it.

The same is happening globally, as environmental justice increasingly intersects with women’s rights.

Women are urging those in power to address problems they feel most acutely, such as drought and deforestation. They’re also finding their own solutions, drawing on traditional knowledge about seeds or conservation, and leading efforts to put this knowledge to use.

As women become more empowered, they’re better able to take on leadership roles and know they have the right to do so, say advocates who support these efforts.

At the meeting in Guatemala, where much of the population depends on subsistence farming, the women spoke different languages and came from different ethnic groups, but all could share stories of how the soil was less fertile, the seasons increasingly unpredictable, and the rainfall more erratic.

“In Santa Eulalia there used to be an order of time: a month for the frost, a month for rain, a knowledge of where to farm so the frost won’t ruin the crop. Now there isn’t,” says Eulia de Leon Juarez, who helped found a women’s rights advocacy group in her town in Guatemala’s western highlands.

As in many places, problems here often revolve around water scarcity and soil degradation, conditions that increase the workload for women responsible for providing water, food, and fuel for their homes. When those resources are scarce, they must travel farther, sometimes walking for hours to reach the nearest water source.

Because women’s work is often connected to the land, women have long fought to protect their natural environments, often from extractive industries and agribusinesses that compete for access to resources. Now, some are linking this activism to the impacts they feel from a changing climate.

Building bridges

“What we’re seeing more and more now is the urgency to address these issues and really support these women so they can lead in these struggles,” says Maite Smet, a program coordinator with Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), a nonprofit that brings together women's rights and environmental justice movements.

The issue has also gained traction as the number of women-led households in rural areas has grown.

“This is due to migration – men are migrating to cities – but also to conflict,” says Solange Bandiaky-Badji, Africa program director for Rights and Resources Initiative, where she focuses on land tenure rights and gender. Women “are then assuming greater responsibilities for the management and governance of the resources in their communities.”

“It’s not that it’s new,” she adds. “But these factors have helped people see that women are really working around managing their forests and resources.”

Pressures from climate change have worsened poverty, food insecurity, human trafficking, and child marriage, activists argue. For a long time, says Ms. Bandiaky-Badji, people have focused on rural and indigenous women “as victims.”

“But what we’re seeing actually,” she says, “is how these women are organizing themselves to really overcome those challenges.”

They’re doing so by challenging political and social barriers but also finding their own way forward, particularly in places like Guatemala, where political instability can often worsen environmental problems.

“In many cases, as women become involved in environmental activism, they get in touch with others and so it builds their capacity to engage with local governments and even then, to figure out how to make their stories visible on the international stage,” says Eleanor Blomstrom, co-director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), a women’s advocacy group.

WEDO works to get women’s rights and gender justice included in climate change negotiations at the national and international levels. In 2015, it helped launch a program to train female climate-justice advocates to share their stories with international policymakers during climate negotiations. The organization has also created an app that tracks how often and in what way gender or women are mentioned in policies, research, and other action related to climate change.

“Women have always been leaders at all levels, it’s just not been recognized in the same way,” Ms. Blomstrom says. Part of that is a broader recognition that the effects of climate change are so varied and widespread, as well as stronger efforts to recognize women as human rights defenders.

“Even without scientists saying it, women are feeling it, so there are a lot of young feminists and activists who may be more engaged than young people were in the past or more empowered but definitely more vocal.”

Among the groups supporting those efforts is international women’s rights organization MADRE, which helps create networks where different communities around the world can share strategies for addressing climate-related problems. In late April it brought indigenous women from countries such as Nepal and Nicaragua to Arizona to hear how indigenous communities along the US-Mexico border were impacted by Trump administration policies on migration and climate change.

Women still face discrimination and resistance for taking on leadership roles, particularly in more unequal societies. Another challenge is making sure goals and plans to recognize women are put into action.

No longer invisible

Since the meeting in Guatemala in August, several women have come together to audit state-supported forestry programs that help small landowners earn money from reforestation and natural forest management. Women often face challenges participating in such programs because they lack land titles.

The group hopes to create a database of projects in a northern part of the highlands, so they can show how land tenure is distributed by gender and talk with officials about strengthening the roles that women play in environmental projects.

“We are invisible to a lot of people,” says Ms. Rodriguez.

But bringing women together to share their struggles helps improve their visibility. Since gatherings like the one last August started, topics have gone from building self-esteem to getting women more politically involved in their communities, says Dina Juc Suc, a former coordinator with Ut’z Che’, a network of dozens of community forestry organizations that helped organize the meeting.

Before the women talked about lack of education or violence they faced, says Ms. Juc Suc, who has been leading programs like these since 2010.

“Nowadays, women dare to talk about questioning a government official,” and share tips on how to adapt crops to changing weather and improve their livelihoods. “Now they are looking to create strategies,” she adds.

Sara Schonhardt reported from Guatemala on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project (IRP).

Mayor Richard Berry of Albuquerque, N.M., was driving around the city when he noticed a man holding a sign that read “will work for food.” The man’s desire to be useful resonated with the mayor and ultimately became the genesis for a homeless work program called There’s A Better Way.

“Our mission is to make homelessness rare, short-lived, and nonrecurring,” says Doug Chaplin, director of family and community services at There’s a Better Way. The program strives to help homeless individuals by connecting them to day jobs, social services, and a place to sleep. “The moral thing to do is help folks become housed to offer some dignity and hope,” Mr. Chaplin says.

Since its inception in 2015, the Albuquerque program has had a ripple effect across other US cities, with more than 20 programs popping up from Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu to Denver; Tucson, Ariz.; and San Diego, all of which have implemented similar programs to aid their homeless populations in getting off the streets, out of shelters, and on a path to self-sufficiency.

The search for solutions to end homelessness comes at a time when more than half a million people in the United States are homeless. In Albuquerque, where homelessness has been a visible problem, There’s a Better Way is a compassionate approach that brings work to the homeless, the opposite tack to a nationwide movement that seeks to criminalize panhandling.

“The homeless work programs matter because homeless people by definition often have an interrupted work history.... They need help, and they need employment to pay for housing, so these [work programs] are very important,” says Nan Roman, chief executive officer and president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Long-term housing and employment are key in ensuring an individual doesn’t end up back on the streets, experts say. And while giving homeless people short-term jobs such as trash collection or weeding won’t alone solve the problem, researchers say that as more cities put their weight behind the approach it could attract federal dollars, which would open the way for additional people to get stable jobs in service industries, as some already have.

In Albuquerque, a van picks up homeless workers, they are fed, and at the end of the day they are connected with housing and counseling services. The program has served 1,229 individuals who have worked a total of 48,000 different job shifts. Of those individuals, 59 have found permanent jobs, and 21 have been placed in stable housing.

Tucson and Denver have also made dents in their homeless populations through two work programs founded in late 2016. In the inaugural year of the Denver Day Works program, 39 percent of participants found permanent employment. In Tucson, 28 percent of the participants of the Tucson Homeless Work Program immediately found short-term jobs, and 14 percent have found long-term employment.

“I do think that the Denver Day Works program and other programs like it seem to get some good momentum,” says Marcus Ritosa, program manager of the Denver program, who regularly fields inquires about how to start similar initiatives. “It seems to be a step in a good direction, and it’s about actually engaging [with people] and recognizing their needs.”

For example, in Fort Worth, Texas, Kristy, a woman who had been homeless for three months, connected with the Clean Slate program. Five months after she started, Kristy moved into her own housing and found full-time employment with health benefits. Today, she actively seeks to help others make the same transition.

Since 2016, the Clean Slate Program has helped 42 people, and 15 have found permanent housing and employment.

However, Kirsten Ham, director of business at the program, believes that the process of helping the homeless could yield greater results if more employers in Fort Worth would be more willing and open to hiring homeless individuals.  

“Stigmas and stereotypes need to be broken down. People need to start looking for gainful ways to take actions in their own community instead of waiting for a federal or governmental response to solve it,” Ms. Ham says. Nonetheless, she adds, the program has awakened the city to the severity of the problem: “[I]t’s reminded people of individuals in our community that struggle with homelessness”

AP Photo

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, smile as they watch a magic performance during a banquet at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea, April 27.

Nuclear disarmament will be the big topic on the table if Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un finally meet in coming weeks as planned. And rightly so, as the United States and North Korea each have nuclear arms at the ready against each other. The two are locked in a cold-war-style threat of mutual destruction.

Yet first on the agenda should be another type of disarmament: Call off the vicious name-calling.

The cycle of personal insults between the two leaders is itself mutually destructive. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have helped create the very military tensions they now seek to lessen. They have belittled each other to an extreme, implying their behavior in warfare might also be extreme.

They must first agree to abide by the informal norms of civility that have long served as the guardrails of peace between people and nations.

In planning the talks, the US and North Korea may now realize that nuclear warfare would be futile. If so, each will be trying to figure out how to disarm on the Korean Peninsula with some level of trust that the other will do the same under an agreement.

As during any disarmament negotiation, building trust is the most difficult part. In the coming talks, that process can begin with a discussion on ways to replace the public shaming between Trump and Kim with private respect, decency, and a deep listening for motives. Such soft skills can yield hard results.

“There is real power in civility...,” write Lea Berman and Jeremy Bernard, former White House social secretaries, in a new book, “Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power of Civility at Work and in Life.” During their work with visiting heads of state under previous presidents, they saw how kindness and other skills can deflect or dissipate fear and anger.

“When you’ve mastered these skills, you can go forth like a superhero and be a force for good in the world,” they write.

“You don’t have to sail through life with the joie de vivre of a Disney forest creature, but you won’t experience positive outcomes if what you’re putting into the world is negative.”

From geopolitics to American politics, the task these days is to restore the social norms of civility that can help prevent personal attacks. Even the White House Correspondents’ Association, after the uproar at last weekend’s annual dinner over personal slights by comedian Michelle Wolf, is rethinking whether it should stand for higher norms of conduct in political discourse.

The world is safer today from nuclear weapons because most nations have abided by a nonproliferation treaty negotiated a half-century ago in a spirit of civility and mutual disarmament. A few nations, such as North Korea, have tried to break from that pact. Civility may bring them back in.