To the Israelis, the United Nations has betrayed them.

To the Palestinians, the United Nations is abandoning them.

Israeli officials allege that 12 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the primary U.N. body supporting Palestinian refugees, aided Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and that 10% of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza has ties to Hamas.

Palestinians decry the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, the U.N.’s top court, for refusing to call for a cease-fire in Gaza as it considers charges of “genocide” brought by South Africa against Israel. And they accuse the U.N. of being unable to protect civilians in Gaza from bombardment, even in its own facilities.

The two perspectives are vastly different, and yet they both point to a key variable in this Mideast war: a lack of trust in outside institutions meant to impartially uphold international law and maintain peace and security.

Israeli and Palestinian distrust of the U.N. and its constituent bodies dates back decades.

Israel has long seen U.N. forums, particularly the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and General Assembly, as displaying an anti-Israel bias. Palestinians see the nonimplementation of numerous resolutions supporting their rights and self-determination as proof of a double standard in the enforcement of international law.

And many say the U.N.’s struggles in this Israel-Hamas war – to protect lives and show empathy to both sides – have only served to further undermine Israeli and Palestinian faith in global institutions, reinforcing suspicions that the international system is compromised by bias and racism.

Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters

Judges at the International Court of Justice rule on emergency measures following accusations by South Africa that the Israeli military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide, at The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 26, 2024. Israel rejects the case as a “blood libel.”

This distrust is having far-reaching impacts on the U.N. agencies’ ability to provide services, distribute aid, and act as a neutral third party in a war that has become the most violent and polarizing chapter of the decades-old conflict.

“In the last four months, the U.N. has found itself in this impossible middle-ground position where it will alienate key member states no matter what it says,” says Melissa Labonte, associate professor of political science at Fordham University and an affiliate at its Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

“The U.N. itself was slow to acknowledge, much to its detriment, the magnitude and the resonance of the Hamas attack on Israel, deepening mistrust. At the same time, it was incredibly guarded in how it chose to proceed, which was the beginning of the trust deficit with the Palestinians.”

Empathy lacking?

Many Israelis say following the Oct. 7 attack, international institutions demonstrated a lack of empathy for the Israeli civilians killed, maimed, or abducted by Hamas that day, citing in particular a muted and delayed response by the U.N.

U.N. Women, which works for gender equality and women’s empowerment, and lists ending violence against women as one of its top focus areas, was silent for two months on Hamas’ reported systematic rape and mutilation of Israeli women and girls – despite witness testimonies emerging within days of Oct. 7.

By the time the organization put out a statement condemning Hamas, it had lost credibility that Israeli human rights advocates say will be hard to regain.

“I’m not willing to say I personally have lost all trust, but these organizations have a lot of work to do to earn back our trust in them,” says Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University.

Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

Protesters hold posters with pictures of Israeli women held hostage by Hamas in Gaza during a demonstration calling for their release, in Vienna, Feb. 13, 2024.

The outrage simmers in Israel. At rallies organized by relatives of Israelis held hostage in Gaza, protesters still chant, “Me too, unless you’re a Jew.”

Protests outside U.N. headquarters in New York and the U.N.’s offices in Jerusalem also criticize the world body for failing to secure the release of the hostages.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ speech to the Security Council Oct. 24 became another point of contention. While condemning Hamas’ “horrifying and unprecedented” violence, he posited that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” but rather after “56 years of suffocating occupation” by Israel.

Mr. Guterres “tried to justify, in a way, what happened on Oct. 7. Then he tried to apologize, but he didn’t really apologize,” says Danny Danon, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. and a senior Likud parliamentarian. “He lost the trust of the Israelis. I think that’s something he should try to fix, but I don’t know if he can.”

Safety concerns

Underlying the mistrust are issues of safety and security.

The U.N. flag, a globally recognized symbol of safety in war zones, has failed to stop Israeli bombs, missiles, and tank shells from hitting evacuation centers and schools, killing Palestinian civilians sheltering there.

Since the beginning of the war, among the more than 27,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s military offensive, more than 136 U.N. aid workers, all Palestinian nationals, have been killed – the highest in any conflict since the U.N.’s founding 78 years ago.

“How can the U.N. protect us when they cannot even protect themselves?” says Umm Samer, a mother in Rafah, which is increasingly under missile fire and facing the prospect of a major Israeli ground operation.

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Palestinian children who fled their homes amid war take part in an entertaining activity organized by local activists, at a school run by UNRWA in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2024.

For Israel, last month’s intelligence brief alleging UNRWA-Hamas links was further proof that aid organizations’ complacency has put Israeli national security at risk.

Israel’s regard for UNRWA sustained another blow this past week with the army’s allegation that tunnels under the organization’s Gaza headquarters, shown to reporters, included a major Hamas data-and-command center. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini denied knowledge of such a facility.

One Israeli security official says he believes international organizations are “obviously influenced by Hamas,” noting, “These are international bodies, but the employees are local Gazans.”

Unequal before international law?

Adding to the height of wartime emotions is what both Israelis and Palestinians see as double standards in how international law is being applied, inequities that reinforce perceptions of a lack of empathy.

Israelis see an outsize number of resolutions and statements condemning their army compared with other conflicts in the region, many even before the war began, cementing a feeling of being singled out that officials and citizens ascribe to “antisemitism.”

Palestinians see blatant racism embedded in the global order.

They point to the West’s invoking of international humanitarian law and sanctions on Russia for its war on Ukraine, and what they say is silence on Gaza as Israel pursues similar tactics: targeting health facilities and residential neighborhoods and cutting off water, electricity, and food supplies to civilians.

Dylan Martinez/Reuters

An Israeli soldier walks in what the military described as a Hamas command tunnel and computer data center running partly under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, Feb. 8, 2024.

Repeated U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a Gaza cease-fire have led many Palestinians to conclude that in the rules-based order that the U.N. claims to uphold, Ukrainian lives are worth saving, not Palestinian.

“It doesn’t matter if you are a Canadian or an American citizen, if you are a Palestinian, your life is worth less. This message has never been clearer than now,” says Ahmed, a Canadian Palestinian in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank, who withheld his family name for security reasons.

“How can the U.N. and the international community expect us to ever believe a word they say on human rights or international law,” he asks, “when we have been told that our own humanity, our own blood, is worthless?”

“Palestinians have lost trust in international law and institutions,” acknowledges Omar Awadallah, the Palestinian Authority’s assistant foreign minister for multilateral relations. “We feel there is selectivity and exceptionalism; what we saw in Gaza is that Palestinians are excluded from human rights.”

A symbol of this perceived unequal application of international law is South Africa’s case before the ICJ at the Hague alleging Israel’s conduct in Gaza was “genocidal in nature,” violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Israel rejected the case as a “blood libel,” saying the court “went above and beyond” just by agreeing to hear the case and not rejecting South Africa’s “antisemitic” claim outright.

Palestinians too have denounced the court, but for different reasons. They had pinned their hopes on the ICJ ordering an immediate cease-fire in Gaza to allow for evidence-gathering. In its Jan. 26 interim measure, the court declined to do so, but instructed Israel to take steps to prevent genocide and to report back to the court.

“Although I don’t trust the international community, I held a faint glimmer of hope that the court would make a ruling in favor of a cease-fire in Gaza,” says Mohammad Mihjez, an English professor in Gaza.

Taylor Luck

Omar Awadallah, the Palestinian Authority assistant foreign minister for multilateral relations, poses for a photo at his office in Ramallah, West Bank, Jan. 22, 2024.

Professor Mihjez, and many Palestinians, see the court’s actions as proof that the U.N. and the ICJ are influenced by powers such as the United States, allowing American allies like Israel to conduct wars with impunity.

“Mighty nations dominate the international community. Those with the power have the right to do whatever they want without being punished,” says Professor Mihjez. “We [Palestinians] are abandoned.”

Impact on the ground

The gaps in trust are impacting U.N. organizations’ abilities to provide services on the ground.

Israel’s allegations regarding UNRWA led the U.S. and several other Western states to suspend their funding of the organization. UNRWA says it is set to run out of funds and cease operations by the end of February, threatening the humanitarian lifeline to 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Despite maintaining daily coordination with the U.N., the Israeli government has sanctioned officials deemed biased. In December, it revoked the visa of the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, saying she had “lost the trust and confidence of Israeli authorities” by repeatedly criticizing Israel’s actions while remaining silent on Hamas. The U.N. responded that Ms. Hastings had “the secretary-general’s full confidence.”

In mid-January, the Israeli government barred Israeli doctors and nurses involved in the care of Oct. 7 victims and released hostages from speaking with an inquiry commission dispatched by the U.N. Human Rights Council to explore potential war crimes committed in the Israel-Hamas war.

Among Gazans, frustrations are boiling up over aid organizations’ inability to bring in adequate food and fuel to keep their families alive.

Desperately hungry and angry crowds have blocked U.N. aid trucks on their way to northern Gaza and taken aid for themselves. Last month, upon discovering U.N. cars were carrying fuel for hospitals and not badly needed food, frustrated Gazans threw rocks.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2024.

Such actions are “indicative of distrust,” says Andrea De Domenico, local director of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which is coordinating the Gaza aid response.

“Heavy restrictions imposed on humanitarian organizations amid constant bombardment have prevented us from delivering assistance in a meaningful way and at scale,” he says. “This has, unfortunately but quite understandably, created distrust among people in need, further challenging the efficacy of relief operations.”

Restoring credibility

The U.N. and its institutions have recently taken steps to restore their credibility among Israelis and Palestinians.

Secretary-General Guterres appointed an independent panel of veteran European diplomats on Feb. 5 to investigate UNRWA and “assess whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches.”

In late January, a delegation led by Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, arrived in Israel, met with witnesses, and toured sites of the Hamas attacks. Her aim was “to give voice to survivors” and “to identify avenues for support, including justice and accountability, and to gather, analyze, and verify information” of potential war crimes – a move welcomed by the Israeli government.

The U.N. has used its voice to warn against an Israeli ground offensive into Rafah, which Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths warned would lead to a “slaughter.” And the ICJ received a petition from South Africa urging it to issue constraints on the planned military operation, which it argued breaches the court’s interim decision.

While the moves are unlikely to soothe outraged and wounded publics, for Israeli and Palestinian diplomats they offer a potential avenue to continue engagement with U.N. bodies – despite reservations.

Mr. Danon, the former Israeli diplomat, says while the war has been a lesson that Israel should rely on itself, there nevertheless remains a need to “convince Israelis that we should be there, we should speak up at the U.N., we cannot ignore the U.N.”

Palestinian diplomats urge their public not to abandon international law.

“A single court case or a U.N. resolution will not solve the Palestinian cause,” notes Mr. Awadallah, the Palestinian assistant foreign minister. “It is slow, but in the end, accountability will lead to justice,” and that justice will serve as “a track to statehood.”

Ghada Abdulfattah contributed to this report from the Gaza Strip.

Virginia Mayo/AP

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov joins a meeting via video link (right screen) during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in defense ministers session at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 15, 2024.

When Donald Trump recently suggested he would encourage Russia to attack financially “delinquent” U.S. allies in Europe if he returned to the White House, President Joe Biden reacted strongly. “It’s un-American!” he fumed.

But is it really?

That’s the question haunting Washington’s European partners who are joining U.S. representatives at a trio of security meetings in Brussels and Munich this week.

The reason: They’re aware that the U.S. creation and leadership of NATO since World War II represents just one distinctly American vision of engagement with the world. During other stretches of its history, America has turned inward, resisting involvement in meeting challenges or addressing crises overseas.

With echoes of the “America first” mantra of Mr. Trump, it has retreated into what the late Henry Kissinger once called “sulking isolationism.”

The prospect of that happening again is worrying European allies for two reasons.

The first is that Europeans recall almost viscerally America’s most dramatic recent retreat into isolationism. It began in the years after World War I, leading Washington largely to stand aside as Adolf Hitler’s Germany rearmed, then threatened, and finally invaded its neighbors.

The second is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, provoking the largest armed conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

Virginia Mayo/AP

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a media conference prior to a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 14, 2024.

Mr. Biden’s response to Mr. Trump’s remarks, in which he reaffirmed America’s “sacred commitment” to the trans-Atlantic defense alliance, will have reassured Europeans attending the security discussions with U.S. counterparts this week.

But their concerns inevitably colored the first two of those meetings on Wednesday.

When NATO’s defense ministers convened in Brussels, its secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, was at pains to tell reporters the alliance would “continue to ensure that there is no room for miscalculation in Moscow about our readiness and resolve to protect all allies.”

A second Brussels meeting involved the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the partnership of more than 50 nations that the United States assembled after Mr. Putin’s invasion to help arm Kyiv. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, clearly aware of allies’ doubts and concerns, avoided mention of opposition back home to Washington’s latest funding package. He insisted the U.S. remained committed to supporting Kyiv, because that was both right and a matter of “core national security” interest.

On Friday, the annual Munich Security Conference will get underway, bringing together political and defense figures from Europe, the U.S., and beyond.

When these gatherings took place a year ago, there was a palpable sense of confidence and common purpose: to help Ukraine defeat the invasion and, it was hoped, ultimately push Mr. Putin’s forces back into Russia. At last year’s Munich conference, China’s foreign minister met a stern rebuff when he urged Europeans to distance themselves from what he portrayed as an American agenda to arm Ukraine and prolong the war.

The sense of shared U.S.-European commitment does survive. But after the failure of Ukraine’s offensive to drive Mr. Putin’s troops significantly backward, a rearming Russia could soon be in a position to make advances of its own.

Ukraine is still waiting for promised tanks, air defense batteries, and fighter planes. It’s running short of artillery shells.

And with Mr. Trump urging supporters to vote no, a U.S. funding package for Ukraine has been languishing in Congress for months. This week, with some Republicans defying the former president, the Senate approved it. But it still needs to get through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

The irony, given Mr. Trump’s portrayal of NATO’s European members as freeloaders, is that the Europeans are now playing an increasingly critical role.

Even before the invasion, member states were taking strides to meet a 2006 target of spending a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product on defense – in part, no doubt, because of then-President Trump’s implicit threat to pull back from the U.S. commitment to NATO.

Yet the greater increase in defense spending has been more recent. Its catalyst: President Putin.

His war in Ukraine has made defense a vital priority for European states, especially those like Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland that escaped Moscow’s orbit with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Johanna Geron/Reuters

Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson and Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen attend a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in the NATO defense ministers' session at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 15, 2024.

Sweden and Finland – Russian neighbors that long relied on neutrality as a strategy for coexistence with Moscow – have reacted to the invasion by choosing to join NATO.

Europe as a whole seems convinced that if Mr. Putin does prevail militarily in Ukraine, it’s only a matter of time before he would threaten – and possibly use – force against other states.

Early this month, the 27-nation European Union approved its own $54 billion support package for Ukraine. While the EU is an economic bloc, the war has led it to venture into defense issues – especially in efforts to ramp up the manufacture of arms and ammunition.

The likely short-term effect of Mr. Trump’s NATO remarks will be to reinforce calls within Europe to accelerate such efforts, and more generally to equip Europe to constrain Russia even if the Americans conclude that their own national interests don’t require Ukraine to prevail.

Still, the concern over a major retreat from U.S. involvement in Europe – on the order of what happened after World War I – goes beyond the difficulty European countries will have in assembling a credible defense against Mr. Putin on their own.

It’s the loss of NATO’s main function since its founding 75 years ago: to act as a deterrent by signaling that an attack on any member state would be an attack on all, including the U.S.

President Biden reiterated that core provision this week. “If Putin attacks,” he said, “the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

But he also included a qualifier that will have been less comforting:

“For as long as I’m president ...”

A rule change for basketball players at Dartmouth College could be a harbinger of things to come in college sports. 

Last week, an official with the National Labor Relations Board, which governs private sector businesses, ruled that members of the men’s team are employees, opening the door for the first union for NCAA athletes. 

The decision comes amid a number of ongoing legal challenges to the NCAA and a system that limits the compensation that students – who often help bring schools millions, sometimes billions of dollars – can receive. In the New Hampshire case, Dartmouth plans to appeal the decision. And any effect of athletes unionizing would likely be felt first in the all-private Ivy League conference. But not unlike the 2021 name, image, and likeness change that allowed collegiate players to profit from branding, the new ruling raises questions about the staying power of amateur status.

“The decision reflects what was a good argument and good reasoning offered by the players,” says Michael McCann, law professor and director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire. “We’ll see what happens from here, but of course this is big news.”

Professor McCann says Dartmouth players were smart to use labor law to make their case. They presented examples of other students at the school, those who are paid to work in dining halls, for example, who have unionized.

“I think it’s about equality. Why is it that some college students can be employees and unionize, but not others?” Mr. McCann says. Members of the team feel as though they spend more than 40 hours a week committed to playing sports and that their time is controlled, he adds, citing conditions that are associated with employment. 

In a September opinion column in the student paper The Dartmouth, players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil described their hope of helping to transform college sports “into a less exploitative business.” 

Ben McKeown/AP

Dartmouth's Romeo Myrthil (20) stands next to Duke's Caleb Foster (1) during an NCAA game in Durham, North Carolina, Nov. 6, 2023. Mr. Myrthil and teammate Cade Haskins are working to unionize their basketball team.

They argued that some of their teammates work part-time jobs to help pay bills, including medical expenses related to sports-related injuries. Even though players get some financial aid (though not athletic scholarships, which are not offered in the Ivy League), they wrote that they want hourly pay, like that of other unionized students and employees on campus.

“We are excited to see how this decision will impact college sports nationwide,” the pair said in a statement released after the Feb. 5 ruling from a regional National Labor Relations Board official. They added that they are forming an Ivy League Players Association for basketball athletes across the eight-school conference. 

In a statement to the Monitor, Dartmouth spokesperson Diana Lawrence said the college is “extremely proud” of its varsity athletics program. But, she adds, “it’s important to understand that unlike other institutions where athletics generates millions of dollars in net revenue, the costs of Dartmouth’s athletics program far exceed any revenue from the program – costs that Dartmouth bears as part of our participation in the Ivy League.” 

Given that, and that athletes are not compensated nor do they receive sports scholarships, Ms. Lawrence says, “we believe firmly that unionization is not appropriate in this instance and will be seeking a review of the decision.”

Dartmouth has until March 5 – the day the players plan to vote on whether to unionize – to appeal. In 2014, a similar case involved football players at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In that instance, Northwestern prevailed in part because it is the only private school in the Big Ten, says Michael LeRoy, the LER Alumni professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

In the Ivy League conference, there are no public universities, he notes. The schools are all governed by the federal National Labor Relations Act – which means the potential for more unions and conferencewide bargaining. “There’s no jurisdiction problem anymore, so that makes this a blockbuster,” Professor LeRoy says.

Other legal experts have noted that student-athletes as employees could mean high costs for colleges and universities in terms of benefits they are required to offer under labor laws, for example. 

The Monitor contacted the other seven members of the Ivy League conference. Only Cornell University’s department of athletics responded, declining to comment. It will likely be years before a final resolution is reached in the Dartmouth dispute. 

On the opposite coast, the University of Southern California, the NCAA, and the Pac-12 Conference are also facing a National Labor Relations Board complaint relating to whether “student-athletes,” as the NCAA calls them, should instead be “employees.” 

It’s one of many battles the NCAA is managing, including multiple antitrust lawsuits in states from California to West Virginia. The cases deal with everything from player pay to transfer eligibility. Some coaches – and the NCAA – have said name, image, and likeness deals need strict guidelines, even asking Congress to intervene with regulation. Multimillion-dollar NIL contracts for student-athletes have shifted attitudes about students being considered amateurs.

Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, submitted a proposal to several hundred member schools in December calling for top-tier Division I schools to set up trust funds to pay at least half of their student players at least $30,000 annually and set up NIL licensing deals. The proposal, which wouldn’t consider players employees or allow them to unionize, is expected to be considered over the next year. 

For his part, Mr. LeRoy – who filed an amicus brief in Johnson v. NCAA, a case looking at whether college athletes are employees – sees an uncertain future for the status quo.

“The money has gotten so big, and the competition for the premium TV contracts has gotten so cutthroat, that it has exposed the hypocrisy of their amateurism model,” he says. “They have built a house, a foundation, that is cracking.”

There’s a site in Cornwall, in southern England, called Woodland Valley Farm. Here, farmer Chris Jones allows beavers to roam in an enclosed five-acre plot. Their natural dams, he says, have helped control repeated flooding of the downstream village. 

Centuries after beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain, efforts are now underway by environmentalists to reintroduce the creature. As the rodents’ return becomes increasingly widespread – not only in this corner of England, but in many parts of Britain, Europe, and North America – the debate is shifting from whether to bring them back to a question of how to manage them once they start popping up in waterways.

“Sometimes they can really be a nuisance, they can [mess] everything up, they can flood fields, even houses,” says Christof Angst, consultant and beaver management coordinator at Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment. “But if you look at it on the whole, the positive impact of this species is so huge, that we must deal with the conflicts.”

This idea of beaver dams calming the onslaught of floods is widely documented, but some scientists caution that the effects can vary substantially. The most prevalent problems associated with beavers have to do with the flooding they can cause, rather than mitigate. 

A beaver project in Cornwall 

Woodland Valley Farm is accessed through a gate rimmed by trees. It is immediately clear that this is no ordinary patch of forest; rather, it is a kind of wooded wetland. 

There are myriad bubbling brooks darting between patches of standing water. The cause of this transformation: Dams constructed of branches, logs, and other materials. Behind the highest dam lies a huge pond, a reservoir kept in place by this feat of natural engineering. 

Jason Thomson

Chris Jones, owner of Woodland Valley Farm, holds a stick he uses to check on silt levels beneath the water in this beaver-created wetland, Nov. 23, 2023. Beaver dams make water flow more slowly, allowing more material to separate and sink to the bottom, reducing pollutants and improving water quality.

It is this ability of an ecosystem adapted by beavers to hold water that first inspired Mr. Jones to welcome them into his world. He was convinced that if the flow of water could be slowed, then the severity of the recurring floods in the nearby village of Ladock could be drastically reduced.

To describe the ecosystem’s fragile balance, Mr. Jones uses the analogy of a battery that uses water pressure to stay charged. “Before the beavers came ... it would charge up but discharge immediately,’’ he says. “But the beavers came back, and [now] it charge[s] up just as fast, but it discharges much more slowly.”

Some of the benefits experienced when this keystone species gets to work on a landscape include a boost to biodiversity, drought resilience, and improvement of water quality by sifting out pollutants.  

But the consequences of bringing beavers back are not all positive. Since they were hunted to extinction in Britain, and to near-extinction in Europe and North America, the landscape has changed from one dominated by nature to one harnessed by humans. As beavers begin to spread, they inevitably come into contact with the agriculture and infrastructure that now predominates.

In addition to flooding caused by the dams, critics point to the high costs of beaver-felled lumber and beaver reintroduction programs.

To avoid clashes, organizers have fenced in projects like Woodland Valley Farm. The beavers are not permitted to wander freely beyond the fences (although they have escaped a couple of times, requiring Mr. Jones and others to chase and return them).

Even in England, however, this is not always the case. Back in 2014, on the River Otter in Devon, a wild beaver population was discovered. They were captured and given a health check, and then, after a local campaign to let them go again, they were released under a five-year trial. At the trial’s end, the English government allowed the beavers to remain, citing environmental benefits. 

Jason Thomson

A beaver dam within the enclosure at the Cornwall Beaver Project at Woodland Valley Farm, Cornwall, England, Nov. 23, 2023.

“We’ve got to be pragmatic,” says Peter Burgess, director of nature recovery at Devon Wildlife Trust, who oversaw the River Otter trial. “There are places where they are going to come into conflict with people and with rural businesses, and in those situations there’s a whole range of tools to be able to ensure that that conflict’s managed really carefully.”  

Mr. Burgess and his colleagues put together a beaver management strategy framework, which advises communication and listening, in an effort to dispel misunderstandings and assuage concerns. When beavers do cause issues, available options include modifying the dams, reducing water levels, or relocating the animals. 

National protection 

In Scotland, the beaver was protected in 2019, and any interventions – which can include lethal control – now require a license. That permission has been granted, sometimes controversially. In 2021, for instance, 87 beavers living near the River Tay were permitted to be legally killed. 

In England, however, there currently is no national strategy, so although beavers became a protected species in late 2022, any problems that may arise from beaver activity are dealt with on an ad hoc basis. 

“What happens when they end up in places where they’re going to cause problems?” asks Richard Bramley, a farmer from the York area and chair of the environment forum of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales. “Who’s going to pick up the cost, who’s going to do the repairs, who’s going to cover crop loss? There’s no plan.”

The risk of beaver-induced flooding is particularly acute in large areas of flat land.  

In some places – parts of the Tay valley in Scotland, for example – this has already created problems for farmers, drowning their crops and causing damage to river banks. In other places, such as low-lying areas of the Netherlands, where people themselves are at risk of flooding, citizens worry that beavers could pose a threat if they begin to dig through the dikes that have been erected to hold the rivers back.

Creating zones of coexistence 

One answer may be to proactively determine where beavers are likely to live or cause problems. In Switzerland, a system of this very kind is almost up and running. The aim is to identify potential conflicts before they arise and create a traffic-light system designating where beavers can roam free (green zones), where that’s debatable (amber zones), and where they should be removed (red zones).

In areas where the animals remain but also run into conflict with human activity, some people advocate for paid compensation, such as for farmers’ spoiled crops. Others say it’s better to reward landowners for setting areas aside for the beavers, creating buffer zones alongside waterways.

“What we want to steer people towards ... is coexistence with wildlife and nature,” says Eva Bishop, head of communications and education at the Beaver Trust, a nonprofit that seeks to restore beavers to Britain. “We need to incentivize people to give space for nature to function.” 

The Indigenous peoples who live around the Napo and Jatunyacu rivers in the Ecuadorian Amazon have served as stewards of one of the planet’s most diverse ecosystems for thousands of years. So it was with dismay that they watched both legal and illegal gold mines spring up, polluting waterways and destroying critical habitat. 

Taking the protection of their land into their own hands, a group of Indigenous women in Serena formed Yuturi Warmi to guard against illegal mining operations. In the Kichwa language, Yuturi Warmi refers to a type of ant (Paraponera clavata) that will attack when an enemy enters its territory.

The group, which formed in 2020, joined with other Ecuadorian and international organizations to urge the government to enforce laws against illegal extraction and to restore habitat.

But officials have not acted, according to Yuturi Warmi. Since then, the group has worked to ensure that no illegal mining takes place in its community. It patrols the riverbank, conducts canoe inspections, and maintains constant surveillance.

So far, it has kept intruders out of Serena. 

The situation is far different upstream, in Yutzupino, where illegal extraction has destroyed the basin of the Jatunyacu River, a tributary of the Amazon River.

Adri Salido

A man mines gold illegally on the river bank, near Serena. The precarious financial situation in which many people live has driven them to extract gold illegally to bring in money to help their families.

Adri Salido

A man holds a mobile phone with a photo of the Yutzupino River as it once was, juxtaposed with how it looks today. Mining companies have destroyed the ecosystem of the Yutzupino, which is one of the tributaries of the Amazon River.

Adri Salido

Ms. Cerda talks to another member of Yuturi Warmi via walkie-talkie as part of the group’s surveillance.

Adri Salido

Traditional accessories made by Yuturi Warmi help finance the fight against illegal mining.

Adri Salido

Members of Yuturi Warmi enjoy a relaxed moment together. They meet daily to discuss issues that affect the community. The women also maintain their ancestral culture through workshops in which grandmothers, mothers, and daughters meet.

REUTERS

People in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, light candles in front of the Central Electoral Board to protest the suspension of elections due to an electronic glitch only four hours after voting began during the 2020 elections.

Located at the heart of the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic is a major point for drug transit by organized crime. Its democracy is less than three decades old. And lately it has felt the spillover effects of violent chaos in Haiti, its island neighbor. Yet despite such head winds, the country of 11 million was the only one in the Americas last year to make significant progress against corruption, according to Transparency International.

Its rise on that watchdog’s corruption index stands out because efforts against corruption in Latin America have lately stalled or declined. The region is looking for fresh inspiration on how to create honest governance. It may now find it in the Dominican Republic.

Much of the credit for the country’s progress is given to the election of a new president in 2020, Luis Abinader, a popular anti-corruption crusader and former executive in the tourism industry. He has appointed prosecutors without political links, improved the judiciary, and set up auditing of public spending. So far, the number of convictions of former officials for graft has been modest. Much still needs to be done to reform the national police, who are often associated with drug syndicates.

All of that helps explain why the president says he finds his work incomplete and seeks a second term in May 19 elections. He’s projected to win. Also, he has lately appealed to the source of his political rise – a grassroots protest movement of youth and others in 2017-2019, known as the Green March, which called for an end to impunity and corruption.

In a speech to young people last October, Mr. Abinader acknowledged how much citizens now feel empowered to bring transparency and accountability to government. “When you work with ethics and honesty, resources yield more and the possibilities of solving problems expand,” he said.

“Wherever you see something that is going to affect the national interest, that is being done against transparency and honesty, you shout, you protest.” He added that ethical thinking is a quality that accompanies every human being and helps create an environment of trust.

The nonprofit group Citizen Participation, which is the local arm of Transparency International, describes the work of volunteers against corruption as “spiritual sublimation,” or building a just society “without asking for anything in return.”

For those in Latin America looking for advice in fighting graft, the Dominican Republic may be getting it right.