Eight hundred feet up, the helicopter banks hard to the left. The horizon disappears. Mark Cook, an avian biologist, peers out his side window at a small irregular patch of water below. It’s hardly distinguishable from innumerable other patches that lie in every direction, dark and shining amid a ragged expanse of brown marsh grass and green tree islands.

There’s one small difference: This patch is flecked with tiny specks of white, scattered like scraps of paper around a puddle.

“This year is pretty quiet,” Dr. Cook has been saying. “It’s not very good for wading birds.”

Now he looks more closely. The specks resolve into a variety of different birds, not all of them white: great egrets, snowy egrets, wood storks, white ibises, and pale pink roseate spoonbills, all standing in and around the shallow water. “We’ve got all sorts of birds,” he says. He opens his window and sticks his camera out, his spirits lifted, at least for now.  

For the birds of the Everglades, it’s not really been good for almost a century. First came the plume hunters of the 1800s and early 1900s, who shot birds by the thousands so that their feathers could adorn women’s hats in New York and London. Then came the speculators, developers, and visionaries who did more lasting damage, draining the marshes, logging the cypress swamps, digging canals, and building levees. They turned the Everglades into fields and housing tracts until half of it was gone. What’s more, says Paul Gray, a biologist with Audubon Florida, “The half of what’s there is all screwed up.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Birds look like white flecks from the air.

Today the state of Florida, the federal government, and many private organizations and individuals are working to bring the Everglades back – at least the half that’s still left. Everglades restoration became national policy in 2000 when Congress adopted the $7.8 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

Since then, lawsuits, political fighting, and dwindled funding have at times slowed progress. But in recent years restoration efforts have gained momentum. Some projects have been completed, and new ones are underway. Money is pouring in from both the state and federal governments, including $1.1 billion from the 2021 federal infrastructure bill. 

“The Everglades ball is rolling,” says Peter Frederick, a retired wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and an expert on Everglades restoration. 

But will it work? Everglades restoration is a long-term undertaking. It’s expected to cost $23.2 billion and take until 2050 to finish. People often say it’s the largest ecological restoration project ever. “A lot could stop it,” says Dr. Frederick. A lot could go wrong. “It’s never been attempted before at this scale,” he says.

The Everglades system is unique in the world, an inextricable mix of water and vegetation resting on a shallow bed of porous limestone. More than just Everglades National Park, the Everglades once encompassed the whole southern third of the Florida Peninsula. The headwaters extended as far north as Orlando and Disney World. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

An old airboat trail cuts through the Everglades. The full restoration of the Everglades is expected to cost $23.2 billion and take until 2050.

In those days, water that fell during Florida’s summer rains drained slowly south into Lake Okeechobee, a huge basin that in many places is hardly deeper than a suburban swimming pool. When the water was high, it lapped over the southern rim and flowed a hundred miles south in a broad sheet, through swamps and saw-grass marshes, wet prairies and sloughs, before finally discharging through mangrove swamps and coastal islands into the Gulf of Mexico. It was a rich and biologically diverse ecosystem governed by water. And the land was very flat. As Dr. Frederick likes to say, the Everglades has less topography than a pool table.

Today those Everglades are mostly gone. They’re no longer a single vast interconnected system of flowing water but a collection of divided and diminished parts – large shallow basins separated by levees and tied together by gates and canals, with some devoted to holding water, some to cleaning it, and others to conserving wildlife.

Lake Okeechobee is diked and polluted, and the swamps and saw-grass marshes that once received its overflowing waters are a checkerboard of sugar cane fields. The flow of water from north to south is much reduced, where it survives at all. For all its natural abundance, the Everglades today is an artificial landscape, a creature of engineering as much as topography and nature. 

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The main challenge of restoration is hydrological. It’s to re-create the old pre-drainage conditions by delivering more clean water to the Everglades. It’s to bring back the old cycle of rising water in summer followed by a long drying out through the winter. It’s to restore, at least in part, the slow flow south.

The easiest way to accomplish this would be simply to pull the plug: tear down the dikes and levees, fill the canals, and send the engineers home. But restoration is also political, and it has always involved more than the Everglades. Its aim is also to provide clean water to coastal cities and estuaries and protect them from flooding. It’s to preserve and irrigate an agricultural district the size of Rhode Island that sits in the middle. These places enjoy constituencies far more influential in Tallahassee, the state capital, than any assembly of wading birds.

“They all say the best engineer is no engineer at all,” says Dr. Frederick. “Let nature do the work. The problem is that we now want to do more things with that water than we used to.”

Dr. Cook enjoys a stork’s-eye view of the Everglades. His weekly flights take him over both the good and the bad, the degraded and the only partly degraded. In some places, the long narrow islands of willows and other small trees, shaped over centuries by slowly moving water, have disappeared; in others they survive but without the flow. Still other areas are thick with cattails, a sign of nutrient pollution. Passing over one of these, Dr. Cook says, “We can’t get it back to what it once was, for maybe 100 to 200 years. But we can improve it for wildlife.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Avian biologist Mark Cook counts birds by helicopter in the Everglades.

Birds are not necessarily the most important creatures here. But they are gaudy and easy to count, and biologists consider them reliable indicators of the Everglades’ overall health. They flourish best when conditions are closest to those of the past. A wet summer allows crayfish and small fish to thrive. When the dry season comes, water levels drop and the fish concentrate in pools. That’s when wading birds feast – and when they are most likely to nest. If the water is too low, or the fish are somehow lacking, the birds stay away. That’s how it was this year.

Sometimes there are surprises. In 2017, Hurricane Irma inundated the Everglades. The next spring, birds nested in numbers no one living had ever seen. To biologists, it seemed a vision of the old Everglades – and of what might still be.

“As an ecologist, you think, you get the water right and maybe they’ll come back,” Dr. Cook says.

He sees the challenge of restoration from all sides. He’s an observer, taking weekly monitoring flights to count birds at major nesting colonies and foraging spots. But he also takes part in experiments to find new strategies for restoration. Just east of the Everglades, for example, biologists have built four big basins to simulate Everglades conditions, complete with marsh grass, trees, fish, and even alligators. By manipulating the level and timing of water flowing into these basins, they try to understand better the hydrological conditions that work best for wildlife. In another place, they’ve removed the cattails from squares of degraded marsh to encourage the growth of saw grass and other Everglades vegetation. Dr. Cook points these out from above, bare patches in the shaggy marsh that seem to have been clipped by a careless barber. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A heron chick sits inside its nest in the Everglades.

“We’ve got a phenomenal response,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of native vegetation coming back. We’ve got seven times the amount of crayfish, prey fish, and a massive increase in wading birds.”

Maybe the trickiest part of Dr. Cook’s work is to advocate for the birds he studies. He works for the South Florida Water Management District, which controls the flow of water in much of the Everglades. Once a week, he and other biologists meet with operational managers to discuss where this water should go. There’s often not enough to go around, so the debate centers on the question of “pump here or pump there?” he says. There are always trade-offs. “Our goal is to be as courteous as possible and beg for water,” he says. “They help us out a lot.”

The problem is not just a limited supply, but also pollution. Water flowing south from Orlando, Disney World, and Lake Okeechobee can’t simply be diverted around the sugar cane fields into the marshes and swamps farther south. It carries a heavy load of agricultural nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorous, from central Florida.

These pollutants come not just from today’s agriculture, but from the dairy farms and citrus groves of the past. Much ends up in Lake Okeechobee, a place considered by many the watery but much abused heart of the Everglades. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“What happens is that photosynthesis is not allowed now. The sun can’t reach submerged vegetation. You’re going to choke out the liquid heart of Florida.” – Ramon Iglesias, a harbor master on Lake Okeechobee, on how pollution and varying water levels are impairing the lake

Ramon Iglesias, the son of a Cuban immigrant, is harbor master at the Roland & Mary Ann Martin Marina & Resort in Clewiston, near the southern end of Lake Okeechobee. His hat reads “Make Lake O. Great Again.” He keeps a quart jar of lake water and black bottom sediment on his desk, which he shakes for visitors to deliver his first lesson on the lake’s problems. “What happens is that photosynthesis is not allowed now,” he says, holding up a murky jar. “The sun can’t reach submerged vegetation. You’re going to choke out the liquid heart of Florida.”

Lake Okeechobee is famous for its fishing, especially for largemouth bass. But high water, pollutants, and sediment from the north have damaged the lake, killing aquatic vegetation, reducing marshes, and making it harder to find the bass. Mr. Iglesias leaves the jar on his desk and motors out into the lake. The water is just 4 or 5 feet deep, but in many places vegetation is sparse.

“See that patch of bulrushes?” he says, pointing to a stand of Kissimmee grass. “All that used to go way out here.” He gestures toward open water. “And remember, you lose it, it just sinks to the bottom, creating all sorts of problems.”

After much searching, Mr. Iglesias finds what he’s looking for: a patch of dark-green eel grass just below the surface. It’s an important but much beleaguered aquatic plant that traps sediments, filters nutrients, and provides habitat for insects and fish. He plunges a small galvanized pail down into the grass and, lifting it, pours clear water out into the bright sunlight. “Is that great, or what?” he says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Marina manager Ramon Iglesias holds eel grass that grows beneath the water of Lake Okeechobee and filters out sediment.

Mr. Iglesias is a restoration skeptic. He says too much work has focused not on improving the Everglades but on keeping polluted water out of coastal estuaries, where it produces blooms of toxic algae and annoys coastal residents. He worries that a long effort by the Army Corps of Engineers to strengthen the dike around Lake Okeechobee will allow even higher water levels. It would be better, he says, to hold more water in the Everglades headwaters. The back of his hat reads “Slow the Flow.” 

One recent project aims to do just that. Last July, the state finished 22 years of work to restore the course of the Kissimmee River, which flows into Lake Okeechobee from the north. What engineers had previously straightened they made crooked again. They reopened flood plains. But this was just a first step. Much of the land in the headwaters is privately owned, especially by ranchers. And lately some of them have been changing how they manage their land, and the water on it.

Jimmy Wohl’s family owns the 5,200-acre Rafter T Ranch near Sebring, next to Arbuckle Creek. Like most Florida ranches, it’s a mix of the wild and the tame: forest, open pine flatwoods, prairie, and improved pasture. When his father bought the ranch in 1962, he wanted to make it easier to graze cattle during the wet season. So he built a levee and pumping station next to the creek. These kept the waterway from flooding and allowed him to drain his grazing lands more quickly.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“My idea is I’m going to work with Mother Nature’s cycles.” – Jimmy Wohl, a rancher in central Florida who removed a levee and stopped using a pumping station to dry out his land

Mr. Wohl has reversed all that. He opened the levee so Arbuckle Creek can flood once again. He built a 120-acre retention pond that holds back water draining from the ranch and allows nutrient-rich sediments to settle. He’s dammed most of the ditches on the ranch. His aim is to keep water and nutrients on the land instead of sending them quickly downstream. “My idea is I’m going to work with Mother Nature’s cycles,” Mr. Wohl says. He says it works.

Supporters of Everglades restoration have found plenty of cause for hope lately. The Florida highway department finished removing old roadbed and raising a stretch of the Tamiami Trail, a highway across southern Florida that has long impeded the flow of water into Everglades National Park.

The state completed its restoration of the Kissimmee River. The Corps of Engineers finished a reservoir designed to curb polluted water flowing to the east coast. And in the far western edge of the Everglades, in the Picayune Strand State Forest, efforts to heal land that loggers and real estate developers drained decades ago are showing signs of progress. To undo the old damage, the state is plugging canals and using giant pumping stations to restore sheet flow across the land. 

“It was so dry back here before we did the restoration, not only didn’t we get invertebrates, we didn’t get any water,” says Mike Duevers, a retired ecologist who began working in the Picayune Strand in 1990s. “Now there’s water. There are invertebrates.” 

Probably the most highly anticipated project is a huge reservoir that will sit at the south end of the agricultural area. The reservoir will take water from Lake Okeechobee and send it into the southern Everglades. With a depth of 23 feet and an area of more than 16 square miles, it will sit like a giant soup bowl on what used to be sugar cane fields. The Corps of Engineers is getting ready to start construction next year. Meanwhile, the state has already started building a wetland next to it that will clean the water before it flows south. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

An aerial view shows the density of housing developments in West Palm Beach, Florida. A large percentage of the Everglades has been lost to housing and agricultural use over the decades.

William Mitsch, one of the country’s foremost wetland ecologists, thinks it’s a mistake. Dr. Mitsch has long advocated the use of constructed wetlands to clean water polluted by agriculture. But he says the reservoir project includes far too little wetland to do the filtering. “All of the nutrients are going to make it a pea soup lake,” he says. 

Others are skeptical of an overall approach that relies so much on massive construction projects and large-scale engineering. Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist, criticizes what he calls “the extraordinary hubris” of big restoration projects undertaken by the same agencies and institutions that destroyed much of the Everglades.

“They believe engineers will fix anything,” he says. “They show remarkable hostility to any idea of letting the Everglades ecosystem go back to its natural state.” 

Meanwhile, Reed Noss, an ecologist who has written extensively on Florida conservation issues, points out a fact that many people overlook: Climate change is eating away at the Everglades. It’s already causing ecological havoc in Florida Bay, at the bottom of the Everglades, where a rising sea and the diminished flow of fresh water from the north have led to an intrusion of salt water and a decline in sea grass and aquatic life. If current trends continue, Dr. Noss says, large areas of Everglades National Park may be submerged by the end of the century.

“The southern Everglades will be basically be gone,” he says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Researchers from the University of Florida – from right, coordinator Lindsey Garner, with field assistants Holly Coates and Michael Rickershauser – wade through mud to count birds and eggs during nesting season. They use a mirror on the end of a pole to view higher nests.

Few people know the Everglades as intimately as Lindsey Garner, a research coordinator with the University of Florida. Most weekday mornings in winter and spring, Ms. Garner may be found slogging through thigh-high mud while she and her small crew of young biologists count eggs and hatchlings on the tangled, remote tree islands where wading birds nest.

On a recent morning, they leave by airboat from a landing near Fort Lauderdale, when the sun is low and mist still hangs over the cattails and saw grass. They’re headed to a pair of remote bird colonies in an area called the Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area. 

It’s a long trip that takes them first along canals and waterways, then across the marsh itself. The boats weave among patches of open water and skitter like giant insects over wet mud. While half the crew heads off to a nearby colony, Ms. Garner and two assistants approach a tree island with a bird colony known as Sixth Bridge. She says this has not been a good year for wading birds, but when the airboat falls silent their cries fill the air.

Ms. Garner and her assistants follow a trail of pink and blue ribbons toward the middle of the island. Each ribbon marks a nest where they have found eggs or chicks on previous visits. Some nests hold clutches of small pale eggs. Others have newly hatched chicks – herons, ibises, roseate spoonbills.

Holly Coates, one of the assistants, peers into a nest and exclaims, “Spoonies!” A tiny chick with delicate pink skin lies helpless among the shards of a broken shell. “Very cute,” says Ms. Coates. “It probably hatched yesterday.”

Other chicks, just a few days older, are full of spunk. Their yellow bills gape, and their fierce black and yellow eyes shine. Their hairlike feathers, sticking out in all directions, give them a wild look. At one nest, a trio of gawky heron chicks hiss and lunge when Ms. Garner reaches out her hand. “They’re pretty feisty,” she says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Three eggs sit in a nest in the Everglades.

She keeps track of each nest in her notebook. One nest is empty, and she looks it up. “Three spoonies,” she says. “They’ve flown away. They’ve made it.”

Others haven’t. Nest 499 is also empty, and Ms. Garner glances at her notes. “That’s failed,” she says. At Nest 233, Michael Rickershauser, the other assistant, finds only a clump of decaying white fluff. “One dead,” he says. 

The going is tough. The mud sucks at their legs as they stumble forward, pushing through low willow trees. “It’s like chocolate pudding,” Ms. Garner says. The air grows heavy and warm. Adult birds squawk and flap overhead. 

Despite the difficulties, Ms. Garner and her crew approach their work with both scientific rigor and real affection. Ms. Garner describes herself as a visitor to a bird metropolis. “I get to walk through and see what’s going on,” she says. “They’re so busy, and so adorable.”

Finally they reach the middle. It’s taken them an hour to go a quarter of a mile. “Now we’ve got to get out of here as fast as we can,” Ms. Garner says.

Later, back at the landing, she seems hopeful. “Even though 50% of the Everglades is gone, if we can get the water right, it can still support a lot of wading birds,” she says. Then, as if explaining why restoring the Everglades is worth so much trouble, she adds, “When you’re out here, you see the patterns, the serenity. You get a lot of appreciation for what’s here.”

Mindaugas Kulbis/AP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (right) speaks with German Bundeswehr soldiers, part of the NATO-enhanced forward presence battalion in Pabrade, Lithuania, June 7, 2022. Mr. Scholz pledged a €100 billion infusion into the German military, potentially reshaping Europe's security landscape.

Roderich Kiesewetter says he could “smell” the decline in the German military. “You could feel it in the fingers,” says the former German battalion commander.

The German military’s “readiness” factor was at 90% when Mr. Kiesewetter launched his career nearly three decades ago. That deteriorated to somewhere between 20% and 60% by the time he retired from active service.

“That means if you need 150 aircraft, only 37 are ready to be deployed. Or you have a weapons system with 100 pieces that has only 20 working,” says Mr. Kiesewetter, who now serves in parliament as a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union. “It is not acceptable. But I’m very optimistic that [now] we’re on the right path.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz clarified that “right path” shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by pledging a €100 billion ($104 billion) infusion into the German military and promising to finally meet NATO members’ defense spending goal of 2% of gross domestic product. In sum, Germany would rearm after decades of intentionally putting its military on the back burner. Mr. Scholz called the change a zeitenwende, or historical turning point, for Germany. 

Most analysts contend German rearmament is crucial, not only to peace across Europe, but also throughout the globe. Europe’s largest economy also shepherding a strong military would help spread the work of preserving the Western democratic order across allies, they say. The challenge may lie less in changing European minds about a German military – as even former enemies now seem warm to the idea – than in convincing Germans themselves to make the changes needed, both strategic and philosophical, for the transition to stick.

“If Germany’s zeitenwende is successful, it could be the most consequential change in European security architecture and thinking in a few generations at least,” says Michal Baranowski, director of the Warsaw, Poland, office of the German Marshall Fund. “That will allow for the Americans to remain a European power but to refocus on Asia ... in our common challenge between the democratic West and the autocrats led by China and Russia. And then, I think we have a really decent chance to win this together.”

A reluctant power

How other European countries have viewed Germany’s position at the European Union’s center of gravity has generally varied with the issue at hand. The Greeks were disappointed with Germany’s handling of the eurozone crisis, for example, while Danes didn’t like its approach to migration.

On defense, however, European allies have been nearly universally frustrated with Germany. Berlin has been ploddingly reluctant to fund its military and beef up defense spending, ignoring what analysts have dubbed its responsibility to fund a military that matches German economic power.

That Europe-wide frustration is relatively recent, as neighbors have shuddered for decades over the memory of Hitler’s armies marching through the Continent. “We shouldn’t forget that for a long time, a very strong German army in the middle of Europe did not make people across Europe feel safer,” says Franziska Brantner, a Greens party member of parliament.

Indeed, Germany’s postwar reckoning following the Nazi era was about reeducation and transition out of fascism, and beset by guilt around the country’s role in the Holocaust and the deaths of more than 20 million Soviet people.

But Germany under Angela Merkel reduced European neighbors’ fear of German dominance, multiple polls have found, due to her ability to search for compromise, and her steady hand. That’s resulted in a positive image of Berlin.

Yet, still, Germans were reluctant to rearm. They bought into this idea that “everyone would converge on the same liberal democratic market, capitalist-based model of society,” says Rafael Loss, a global security expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It took a long time for anyone in Germany to realize that Russia and China and other countries didn’t really buy into this idea.”

Martin Meissner/AP

German soldiers walk beside tank howitzers at the Bundeswehr army base in Münster, Germany, prior to their transport to Lithuania, Feb. 14, 2022.

France got to that realization much faster. President Emmanuel Macron has been of the belief that NATO might fail, thus requiring Europe to guarantee its own security. Meanwhile, Eastern European allies have long wanted Germany to take a larger stake in securing the Continent. The Polish foreign minister famously declared in 2011, “I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.” Made in the context of Germany’s role in the eurozone crisis, the Polish official’s quote has nevertheless been applied to German reluctance to take leadership befitting the size, influence, and economic power of the country.

Now, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most Germans are firmly on board with the idea of the need for a strong military: Sixty-seven percent support the €100 billion infusion.

With the events in Ukraine, there’s a “shift that people understand,” says Mr. Kiesewetter, the battalion commander turned lawmaker. “You only can gain and keep freedom if you defend it credibly, and if you also offer those who lose or are beginning to lose, like Ukraine, support with weapons and military means.”

A credible power?

Yet will Germany simply be throwing money at a problem, rather than shifting its mentality?

Chancellor Scholz himself has stirred controversy by indicating that he didn’t want to make “mistakes” similar to those of Germany’s kaiser back in the 1910s, which led the country and Europe toward World War I. There was internal parliamentary discussion over whether Germany should send heavy weapons to Ukraine, and Mr. Scholz at one point said sending too much would make it difficult for Germany to meet its own NATO obligations. Later, he said the military spending would send “an unmistakable message to our allies: You can rely on Germany!”

It’s a confusing waffling, indeed, that Polish President Andrzej Duda has picked up on, accusing Germany of breaking its promise to replace tanks that Poland has sent to Ukraine. “The mood here [in Poland] is very critical” of Berlin, says Mr. Baranowski of the German Marshall Fund. “Germany’s just not a credible power, because it has been moving so slowly. The focus in Poland is so much about what the U.S. and Great Britain are doing.”

All that has led to a feeling of uncertainty over not only whether, but also how fast, Germany can get its military up to speed. A lack of security culture cannot be reversed overnight, say analysts. Procurement contracts will take time to negotiate, and domestic factories take time to ramp up. Spending €100 billion is a multiyear process.

Also unclear is whether Germans have really committed to change, or simply entered a “bunker-type mentality” in which they’re waiting for Russians to end the war and the status quo to return, says Mr. Loss.

“[Mr. Scholz’s policy change was] more of a technocratic fix to some of the problems that plague German foreign policy, but really hasn’t been accompanied by a shift in awareness for the need to establish some kind of intellectual capability that would make Germany more equipped to fulfill its leadership potential in a world where the political West is increasingly put under pressure by Russia, by China,” says Mr. Loss. “A lot of countries in Europe are really longing for Berlin to take charge here.”

In other words, €100 billion for some more tanks is simply ... more tanks, he says. It’s not automatically a coherent strategy.

A power at a crossroads

For now, the rest of Europe including France seems thrilled. A more powerful Europe would offer the Continent “the right political and geopolitical shape,” said Mr. Macron in a speech delivered in Berlin in May. “Germany has just made far-reaching decisions that I expressly welcome.”

“It’s right we should build up our defenses together [with Europe], and not just do it in a national way,” says Ms. Brantner, the German parliamentarian. “It’s an important value for partnership.”

Should Germany fail to deliver on its military turnaround, what Mr. Baranowski calls his nightmare scenario might ensue. “If both zeitenwende fails and the U.S. has to focus on Asia, and then we are basically in a situation that gives Russia a chance to rebuild its power and forces – but this time push beyond Ukraine.”

Guillaume Lefort combs his hands through stalks of pale green wheat, his crop stretching out behind his 19th-century farmhouse. Clouds hang ominously overhead with predictions of rain – a welcome relief from the unseasonably high temperatures that have resulted in drought conditions and troubled France’s farmers since April.

“The recent rain has helped, every little bit helps, but it’s not enough,” says Mr. Lefort, a grain farmer who owns 860 acres of land across three farms in the Combs-la-Ville area, just south of Paris. “The climate is my boss. Sometimes he’s good to us; sometimes he’s unfair. But each year it’s getting harder as the weather patterns become more erratic.”

Like wheat farmers across France and much of western Europe, Mr. Lefort is hesitant to predict the outcome of the upcoming harvest in July and August. His region has a large aquifer, so he thinks he’ll be OK this season, but in other parts of France the hot conditions have left soil too parched to replenish easily. Recent storms have done more damage than good, at times destroying wheat heads and leveling corn stalks.

While French consumers can expect to see higher prices for their beloved baguette as a result of what is expected to be reduced wheat production this season, the implications of the drought stretch farther. North Africa and the Middle East, the largest importers of Ukrainian and Russian wheat, are also the largest consumers of the French crop. And as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to block wheat exports from the Black Sea, countries in the Middle East/North Africa region must now rely heavily on European grains to meet demands.

But as drought conditions continue, France and the rest of Europe may not be able to fill the void, leaving fragile groups at risk of supply shortages and rising food prices at a time when climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have already created food insecurity.

“Even if prices go up, the French should remember that they won’t be lacking anything. There’s no need to rush to the store and empty the shelves,” says Joël Limouzin, a livestock and grain farmer who is vice president of the French farming union FNSEA. “But on the global market, prices are becoming exorbitant and we can expect shortages. Europe will try to manage the situation, but there will be major problems for people across the African continent.”

Colette Davidson

The 19th-century farmhouse behind Guillaume Lefort's farm in Combs-la-Ville, France. Mr. Lefort has tried new technologies and diversified his grain offering to protect him from the effects of climate change and France's current drought.

A bad time to buy grain

The troubles for French farmers began this spring, when temperatures in parts of the country skyrocketed to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Wheat is planted in October, and springtime is a critical period for the crop to reach its potential before the summer harvest. Excessive heat – including an expected surge of up to 100 degrees this week in France – has caused concerns about reduced output or that some grains simply won’t sprout.

Due to climate change, weather patterns have become increasingly unpredictable, with fewer weather rotations – be it cold, heat, or rain – as time goes on. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, French farmers rarely use irrigation methods, and instead rely on “crops that are historically successful and adapted to the local soil,” says Mr. Lefort. But that means they’re completely reliant on the weather for successful growth.

The French government announced at the end of April that water companies could spend an additional €100 million ($104 million) to help farmers create new reservoirs. The measure has been lauded by farmers, but it is still seen as a band-aid solution.

In the midst of the drought in France and western Europe is the Ukraine war. Ukraine is the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat, and Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports risks heightening a global food crisis. Meanwhile, India – the world’s second largest wheat exporter – has banned all wheat exports after a succession of scorching 120 F days has caused fears that it won’t be able to feed its population.

The combined effect has caused panic on the international grains market. In Chicago, the international benchmark, wheat prices spiked to $12.68 per half bushel in mid-May, a 60% jump this year.

S&P Global estimates that Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia will be the hardest hit economically due to their high levels of food and energy imports and their reliance on grains from Ukraine and Russia. Morocco imports 33% from France, 32% from Ukraine, and 17% from Russia. Egypt, meanwhile, is the world’s largest wheat importer, getting around 85% from Russia and Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian-Russian [export supply] is so important that even without the drought, France would not be able to replace that,” says Omar Bessaoud, a professor of agricultural economics at CIHEAM-Montpellier.

Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

A field of potatoes is irrigated after the authorities announced a drought risk for the summer, in Havrincourt, France, May 18, 2022.

Experts worry that the high prices of wheat could trigger sociopolitical instability, as they did with the bread riots in Morocco and Egypt in 1977. The Arab Spring in 2011 came at a time of steep increases in food prices.

Governments are expected to create food subsidies to cushion the blow, as Egypt has been doing for decades to help its poorest citizens. In August 2020, it reduced the size of each loaf by 20 grams (0.7 ounces) in an attempt to phase out subsidies, but it may have trouble taking more extreme measures in the current context.

“Bread is a staple food for countries like Morocco and Algeria; it’s life. The last time the government touched the price of bread, there were clashes,” says Professor Bessaoud. “If there are no negotiations with Ukraine and Russia from now until the fall, countries in North Africa are going to have huge problems to feed their populations.”

Searching for solutions

There are hopes that discussions between Russian and Turkish defense ministers last week might open up a grain export corridor, as experts warn of a global food crisis if the blockade at the Black Sea continues.

In the short term, countries that had already begun looking elsewhere for their wheat will be the most protected. A March study by the Morocco-based Policy Center for the New South found that Algeria, Morocco, and Nigeria were the most prepared to stave off the wheat crisis due to their diversification of wheat imports, some of which they learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, experts and farmers are calling for more transparency on the market to avoid an unnecessary spike in global grain prices.

“The Chicago wheat price has exploded and it’s purely based on speculation,” says Denis Perreau, national secretary of the farming union La Confédération Paysanne as well as a grain and sheep farmer. “It’s based on offer and demand, but it’s a virtual market. We don’t actually know anything until the harvest.”

In Combs-la-Ville, Mr. Lefort is focused on solutions, as the climate becomes harder to predict as years pass. He has tested out new technologies – like finding out water table levels using his cellphone – and diversified his offering. He now plants around 10 different grain varieties, including corn, beetroot for sugar, and sunflower.

“I’m an optimist by nature. I feel that it’s my role in life to feed people and find solutions,” says Mr. Lefort. “I try to take a long look to find ways to keep my farm sustainable, and become more resilient and resistant. But if we can get a big recharge of rain, that would be great.”

Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

“Gota Go Gama” demonstrators march in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 28, 2022, during a monthslong continuous protest demanding that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa step down. The protest has brought diverse ethnic and religious groups into unprecedented common cause.

For two months, Mohammed Shermila has camped outside the president’s office in the capital city of Colombo, withstanding the blazing-hot sun and the occasional torrential downpour to demand the resignation of Sri Lanka’s powerful leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

“We won’t go until he goes,” she says from her blue tent filled with Sri Lankan flags. A Muslim street vendor here, Ms. Shermila is one of hundreds of Sri Lankans who have hunkered down in the makeshift “Gota Go Gama” (GGG) village since April, as the island nation buckles under its worst economic crisis in recent history. Years of mismanagement have resulted in severe shortages of essentials like fuel and cooking gas, as well as daily power cuts and surging prices. 

In a country that’s long struggled with ethnic and religious conflict, GGG isn’t just a protest hub, but a rare glimpse into what a unified Sri Lanka could look like. Within the sprawling tent city, generations of mistrust between groups such as the Sinhalese Buddhists, Hindu Tamils, and Muslims appear to give way to fellowship, tolerance, and learning. Here, Sri Lankans are coming together with one goal:  send their elected president home.

Shamara Wettimuny, a University of Oxford history scholar, says it takes courage for minority groups to engage in the protest, given years of persecution by the state and majority Buddhist community. Nevertheless, she describes GGG as “the most united protest we have seen in recent times,” and says that while it doesn’t guarantee lasting peace, this period of cooperation could make way for  stronger democracy post-crisis.

“[Gota Go Gama] has received support from across the island, in creative and unique ways,” she says. “The effect of such experiences may not translate into solidarities overnight, but I am optimistic that in the long term, we will be in a better place than we are now.”

Although the protests have been peaceful, and government officials have not disrupted activities at GGG, a group believed to be government loyalists attacked protestors on May 9 and set fire to some tents. After that attack, then-Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s eldest brother, resigned, and the new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, called for an investigation while extending his support to the protestors.

Munza Mushtaq

Mohammed Shermila, a Muslim street vendor, has camped since April 2022 at the "Gota Go Gama" protest tent city in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She has witnessed attacks on Muslims since 2013, when hardline Buddhist groups launched an anti-halal campaign, but she sees change with the current protest: “The Rajapaksas [ruling family] came to power using racism, but today we have all united to send them away. "

Overcoming a history of division

President Rajapaksa said last week that despite the continuing protests, he has no intention of stepping down. 

The controversial leader is part of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political family, and several relatives beside his brother have resigned from their posts since April. Before being elected president in 2019, Mr. Rajapaksa was known for his instrumental role in defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant group that sought to end the persecution of Tamils by creating an independent state in Northeast Sri Lanka. But ethno-religious tensions didn’t end with the civil war in 2009. Critics say the president and his political allies have used incidents like the 2014 and 2018 anti-Muslim riots and 2019 Easter bombings to stoke old fears and agitate their base.

Back in Gota Go Gama, between anti-Rajapaksa chants and demonstrations, protesters from all walks of life are finding community. During Ramadan, people from various faiths served Muslims snacks and water to break their daily fast, and Catholic priests and Buddhist monks joined in Eid al-Fitr festivities. When Sri Lanka celebrated its national new year in April, Sinhalese and Tamil protestors took part in traditional activities together.

Raghu Balachandran, a Tamil from the eastern city of Trincomalee, is thrilled that GGG has become a symbol of unity. “For many decades the Sinhala leaders used racism ... to keep the Sinhala community separated from the Tamils and the Muslims,” he says. “Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his party came to power using the same strategy.” 

He believes the economic crisis has allowed Sinhala people from the country’s south to better understand the “decades of suffering” that the Tamil people and other minorities endured.

Ms. Shermila has witnessed attacks on her Muslim community since 2013, when hardline Buddhist groups launched an anti-halal campaign. The change she’s seeing at GGG is overwhelming, she says:  “The Rajapaksas came to power using racism, but today we have all united to send them away. No one is identified here by their religion or race, because everyone is human, and humanity is our race.”

Strength in unity

Many, including Pavithra Chinthaka, are unable to stay at GGG all day due to job and family commitments. He joins the protests every evening after work. “I come here daily with my national flag to support the youth who are protesting,” says Mr. Chinthaka, who is Buddhist. “They are our future, and we must support them.”

Munza Mushtaq

A banner saying, "Let's oust them and create a people-friendly government" outside the Gota Go Gama protest camp in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The camp has been growing since it started in April with calls for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down.

Like Ms. Shermila, he says he feels a shift happening in Gota Go Gama, where people no longer feel they need to identify themselves based on their religion.

The crucial difference between the GGG protest and hundreds of others at various scales over the past century, says Ms. Wettimuny, is that the scope of GGG accommodates myriad grievances. 

“On the one hand, the primary focus of GGG is to send President Rajapaksa ‘home,’” she writes via email. “On the other, the spirit of GGG has welcomed and supported a range of historic and recent protests.” Those include calls for accountability for the anti-Muslim riots and Easter bombings, as well as decent wages and housing for plantation laborers and the repeal of the country’s controversial anti-terrorism law.

The diversity of causes appears to strengthen rather than weaken GGG, says Ms. Wettimuny, because “these minority grievances are receiving more ‘majority’ attention and support.” She adds that GGG is “a site for learning.”

Moses Akash de Silva has been protesting at GGG almost daily since the first tent was pitched on Galle Face Green on April 9. Unlike other protests backed by a political party, he says, GGG was started by the people. “It is open to anyone, and it has become a common area for anyone who wants to voice out against the government and the system,” he says.

Mr. de Silva says that he, a Christian, was in tears when he witnessed Muslims breaking fast every day at the protest site during Ramadan: “It was a very beautiful moment for me, seeing this unity which the Rajapaksas once broke.”

Libby Federici loves her job at Haley House, a soup kitchen in Boston’s South End neighborhood. On a recent weekday morning she bustled between greeting guests, helping volunteers, preparing pots of fresh coffee, and answering endless questions. Butter? We have tons. Cups? I’ll grab some from the basement. 

The guests – some of whom face homelessness or live in low-income housing – bask in her warmth.

“Without this place there would be no me. These people are angels. They are my guardian angels,” says Linda Bell, a regular at Haley House’s free morning breakfast. On a typical day, the soup kitchen gives out anywhere between 50 and 100 meals. 

That feeling of home and connection is intentional at Haley House, a program that for five decades has approached social issues facing Boston’s South End holistically through its soup kitchen, affordable housing, urban gardens, and nutritional education programs. The organization welcomes people facing homelessness and formerly incarcerated individuals as a valuable part of the larger community. But instead of relying on volunteers or drive-by helpers to staff its soup kitchen, Haley House seeks out people – of all ages and backgrounds – interested in investing two years of their lives to support lasting solutions to societal problems. In exchange, they receive room and board, living “in community” above Haley House, running its kitchen, and caring for its guests. 

“It’s really important to know people as people,” says Ms. Federici, who also works as an outreach and development assistant for the organization in addition to serving on its board. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Haley House volunteers prepare breakfast for guests at the organization’s soup kitchen in Boston, April 22, 2022. Six days a week, guests are served hearty, made-from-scratch meals.

Boston’s South End and nearby neighborhood of Roxbury have long battled homelessness even as the area has gentrified. The city’s largest unhoused populations are found in these neighborhoods, and community meetings have increasingly sought to address the transient populations heightened by an opioid crisis and a global pandemic. Haley House is hardly the only effort attempting to meet the needs of unhoused people; the Pine Street Inn, for instance, supports nearly 2,000 men and women each day, and St. Francis House welcomes 6,300 visitors yearly and offers 102 affordable housing units. 

But Haley House, which operates in both the South End and Roxbury, considers a wide range of needs – from youth programs, to job training, to elder support – as it seeks to address some of the root problems of homelessness and food insecurity.  

“There is that deep-seated connection to the community that [Haley House workers are] able to develop over their time here,” says Sean Ahern, operations director of Lovin’ Spoonfuls, a nonprofit organization that has delivered food to Haley House since 2011. “They are a really committed group of individuals who are really passionate about food, but more importantly, about people.” 

How it began

In 1966, Kathe and John McKenna started inviting people sleeping on the streets in their neighborhood to live with them in their South End apartment – offering food, shelter, and some connection. Their small efforts grew as they found funding and eventually purchased property and opened Haley House as a soup kitchen a year later, living in the rooms above. Inspired in part by the Catholic Worker Movement, which espouses the belief that to serve poor people one needs to live among them, they quickly saw the value of developing long-term connections with those they sought to help. The approach eventually developed into their model of a staff that lives and works at Haley House.

“The purpose of the live-in community is to become friends with those coming to the soup kitchen to develop relationships with them,” says Ms. McKenna, who is now retired from Haley House operations. 

“The biggest offering that Haley House has to Boston is, it’s an example of how all these pieces are linked – food, training, jobs, housing,” she says. “We couldn’t solve that whole problem of housing homeless people. We couldn’t give jobs to everybody. But what we did was we created models.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

This day's meal at Haley House is chicken and rice, salad, mangoes, and apple crisp.

How it works

Live-in aspirants who pass the first round of the application process work at the soup kitchen for two weeks, and then spend a week contemplating their experience. This gives both Haley House executives and applicants more time to decide if they are a right fit. 

“You can do a lot of different kinds of work that are aligned with your values or [are] mission-centered. You can also find different ways to live with people who share your values,” says Ms. Federici, who moved to Boston from Washington, D.C., for graduate school, and joined Haley House in 2020. “It’s rare that you get to do both of those things at once.” 

Haley House workers take on full responsibility for the soup kitchen operations from setting the menu, to connecting with community partners, to getting to know the guests. New live-in members are paired with mentors who offer guidance. 

On a typical day, one member is designated to be “the vibe of the day” by acting as a greeter and resolving any conflicts. After breakfast is cleared away, members retreat upstairs where they each have their own bedroom or one they share with a roommate, depending on the number of people in the cohort. There is also a kitchen, a dining room, and gathering spaces for the cohort to mingle, relax, and unwind. Although the soup kitchen stops serving food at 9 a.m., people arrive at all times of day and night, asking for food packets and blankets. 

It may be a 24/7 commitment but Ms. Federici has found the arrangement to be the perfect way to connect with the city outside her “graduate school bubble.” She has relished the opportunity to forge deeper relationships throughout her two-year stay. 

Branching out

The soup kitchen has been a permanent fixture of Haley House since 1967, but the organization has grown as it has responded to and learned from its community. It now operates 110 units of affordable housing, 24 single rooms for formerly unhoused individuals, an urban farm that delivers free produce to more than 60 community elders, and classes that teach cooking skills and nutrition to more than 350 students a year. It also fills up to 200 bags for a food pantry each week. Since 2005, the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury has offered a jobs training program for citizens struggling to find work after incarceration. (The bakery is currently closed for renovation.)

All of it adds up to a collective effort to battle systemic problems associated with homelessness, incarceration, and food insecurity.  

Since Haley House is rooted in community and relationships, goodbyes can be difficult, especially for the live-in members. As Ms. Federici prepares to complete her commitment this spring, she reflects on the significance Haley House has had on her own life.

“It’s pretty hard not to leave this place in a different state of mind than when you arrived,” she says from her perch at the door greeting guests. “The people I’ve met here made me a better person. I feel really lucky and grateful.”

Reuters

Facebook image is seen against the European Union flag.

In an age of accelerated mass disinformation, both Europe and the United States are struggling to balance the public good and individual rights like free speech.

On Thursday, Europe took a step toward more censorship of the internet and social media. It published an updated Code of Practice on Disinformation that requires tech companies to disclose how they remove or block content they determine to be false or harmful. The new rules also call on the firms to form partnerships with fact-checking services and post “indicators of trustworthiness” on sites and posts. More than 30 companies – including tech giants Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Twitter, and TikTok – agreed to comply. Opting out means stiff fines.

In the U.S., meanwhile, the public is witnessing a rare display of transparency in the House hearings on last year’s Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol. The hearings are exposing the disinformation surrounding the 2020 presidential election. More than that, they show that the best defense against public lies is a free flow of information, not less.

“Public hearings serve a subtle function,” wrote Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor and former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, in The New York Times. “They permit the minds of the American people to acculturate to the facts and evidence.”

A decade ago, amid signs of the potential for social media to spread false content, Trevor Timm, now executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, outlined the contours of a debate that remains unsettled. As he saw it, there was a risk that the cure would be a greater threat to democracy than the problem. Truth does not prevail by censoring information, he argued in The Atlantic, “but through the overwhelming counterbalance of more speech.”

This truth-will-out approach doesn’t fly in Europe. Věra Jourová, the European Union’s vice president for values and transparency, said Thursday that the swirl of disinformation around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union made the case for tighter scrutiny of online content.

American politicians have not been immune to that view. Since the Jan. 6 attack, lawmakers have introduced a series of bills at the state and federal levels and held numerous hearings on regulating online content. But the hearings debunking the 2020 election myths may be showing that moral suasion is more powerful than punitive measures or restrictions on democratic rights. They are debunking the assumption that Americans are divided by immovable views.

An estimated 20 million Americans tuned in to network broadcasts of the first hearing last week. That figure does not include people who watched the event via other sources like newspaper websites. A poll published by Morning Consult this week found public approval for the investigation increased across every grouping by political affiliation after the first hearing.

“The greatest theorists of American government have again and again warned against the delusion that the Constitution is some self-balancing mechanism,” wrote David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, in The Atlantic this week. “People make that machine go: people who make good choices or bad ones, people who are active or who are passive when their country needs them. People like you.”

As two approaches to safeguarding democracy play out across the West, one shows what the individual exercise of political discernment and a civic conscience can do.