Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, shown in Washington July 11, 2019, spoke Wednesday about the Fed’s decision to cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in a decade.

Inflation – the rip-roaring variety that skyrocketed prices in the 1970s and shrunk pay raises to irrelevance – has gone missing for a long time in the United States.

Even in boom times, like now, price rises have been tame. And no one is quite sure why.

Against this backdrop, the Federal Reserve today cut interest rates for the first time since the Great Recession a decade ago. It’s a sign that the central bank is far more worried about the economy slipping back into recession than high inflation rearing its head again. 

On one level, the Fed’s quarter-point rate reduction makes sense: Why not help the economy a little bit with lower rates when trade tensions threaten to get out of control? On another level, however, it flouts decades of conventional economic thinking about consumers and their expectations about inflation.

“It’s really, I think, a sea change in how people view inflation expectations,” says Tim Duy, a Fed watcher and economist at the University of Oregon in Eugene. “It’s really a different policy environment.”

Like much of economics, the dynamics of inflation depend in part on people’s outlook – or expectations. If consumers anticipate lots of inflation ahead, they go out and buy things before the price goes up. That pushes up demand, which raises prices, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s what happened during the 1970s.

Since then, inflation has become far tamer and those inflation expectations have dampened. That’s the sea change. Consumer inflation expectations seem permanently lowered – or anchored, to use the economists’ term – so that even a noticeable rise in inflation is viewed as temporary. And central bankers are beginning to act accordingly.

“It gives them some leeway to be able to ease” interest rates even if the economy hasn’t begun to contract, says Laurence Ball, an economist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. And if they ease too much and inflation jumps to 3% instead of its 2% target, “that doesn’t really seem like a grave threat to the country.”

The bigger threat is a downturn, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in his statement at today’s press conference. “Inflation’s return to 2% may be further delayed and … continued below-target inflation could lead to a worrisome and difficult to reverse downward slide in longer-term expectations.”

There is some precedent for preemptive rate cuts. During the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the Fed lowered rates in case the downturn spread to the U.S. (It didn’t.) In September 2007, the Fed stepped in with a rate cut in case the economy went into a tailspin. (It did, big time.)

If now the Fed has thrown off the boogeyman of 1970s-style inflation, it still faces the key question of why inflation hasn’t been stronger during the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

When the economy is booming and businesses are hiring, demand soars for goods and services. Prices are supposed to rise in response. That’s always implied in the past a trade-off for the Fed: It can have low unemployment and high inflation or high unemployment and low inflation.

But in this boom, that relationship has broken down. The unemployment rate is near 50-year lows but inflation has also stayed low. The annual change in so-called core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food categories, has been lower than the Fed’s 2% annual target for long periods of time. By one measure, core inflation in June was 1.6%.

Can the Fed thus ignore inflation and goose the economy by more rate cuts, as President Donald Trump is pushing for? It depends, in part, on whether that trade-off is permanently broken.

There are many theories for why inflation has been so quiescent during the boom. It could be globalization, which allows Americans to import lower-priced goods when demand rises. It could be that technology is making some electronic goods cheaper. According to Mr. Ball, the Johns Hopkins economist, the problem lies with the way the Fed measures inflation.

Measured his way – which not only removes food and energy but takes into account other goods and services that have big price movements in a given month – inflation is actually right around the Fed’s target.

Future rate cuts could also be influenced by how much pressure the Fed is feeling from the markets and the administration. After the Fed briefing, in which Mr. Powell suggested the cut was not the start of a long series of cuts, the stock market dropped sharply. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 330 points.

The market pressure probably plays a small role in persuading the Fed to cut rates, says Sarah Bloom Raskin, a visiting fellow at Duke University School of Law and former governor of the Federal Reserve Board. As for the president, “they’re not directly responding to his bullying them but they are finding a rationale that is essentially Trump’s doing, which is the volatility in the trade war. ... All Trump needs to do, going forward, is to keep uncertainty high on trade tensions and he’s going to have the Fed right where he wants it.”

The Fed’s future direction would be clearer if economists could reach a consensus on why inflation is so tame right now. But consensus can also lead to complacency.

“I worry about that all the time,” says Mr. Duy of the University of Oregon. “As soon as we get our story straight on this stuff, boom, the story is going to change.”

Wilfredo Lee/AP/File

Children line up to enter a tent at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla., Feb.19, 2019.

Over a 13-year career as a pediatrician in Texas, Dr. Marsha Griffin has visited every government facility that could hold newly arrived migrant children in the Rio Grande Valley.

She visited U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities during the 2013 and 2014 surge in unaccompanied minors arriving from Central America, when the agency retrofitted a warehouse in McAllen, Texas, into its largest detention center for unauthorized immigrants. Over the past 12 months, she has been visiting the facilities again – including a new temporary CBP facility in Donna, Texas, amid another surge in unaccompanied minors and families from Central America.

Dr. Griffin sat down with the Monitor in early July to discuss what she has been seeing and how she thinks the government could be taking better care of the migrant children in its custody. The CBP and the Trump administration have been heavily criticized for the treatment of migrants along the southern border, with doctors, lawyers, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general reporting that children have been held for weeks in overcrowded facilities without adequate food, water, and sanitation. Six children have died in federal custody since September.

The CBP “leverages our limited resources to provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children,” an agency official said in a statement.

“Our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations,” the official added. “CBP works closely with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer unaccompanied children to their custody as soon as placement is identified, and as quickly and expeditiously as possible to ensure proper care.”

Testifying before the House Oversight Committee, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said the agency has been coping with “an unprecedented crisis at the border.” More than 530,000 migrants have been apprehended at the southern border since January, during which time he says the department has delivered more than 6 million meals, conducted more than 400,000 medical interviews, and conducted medical transport and held hospital watch for migrants for over 250,000 hours. More than 200 medical professionals are now embedded in facilities on the border, he said, a tenfold increase from January.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

Dr. Marsha Griffin sits in her office at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Griffin, a pediatrician, has been visiting migrant children in government custody for decades and says conditions have been getting increasingly worse as the flow of families and unaccompanied minors has increased.

But what concerns Dr. Griffin is the quality of the meals and what is not being detected in the medical interviews, among other things. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What has been your general impression of how the government has been taking care of detained migrant children?

There’s a lot of different agencies that take care of them. I went into the Border Patrol facility in Donna in May, and then I was in two weeks ago again with officials from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Texas Pediatric Society, because we feel that as the leading pediatric organized medical association we need to know how our government is treating children. We came down, and we’ve been down here almost every year for the last four or five years, going in to see what’s going on. And it has gotten increasingly worse.

The Donna temporary influx facility – we saw it before it opened. They were hoping it would be for unaccompanied children; it’s now for families. We went in there two weeks ago. We also went into the Ursula facility [in McAllen], which is all in the news. That one is overcrowded, and it’s where the cages are. Because they had so many coming in 2013 and 2014 they needed a pop-off valve. So Ursula was built in 2014, and it has the big cages in it. And it’s the one that everyone is up in arms about because of the sanitary conditions.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ones are completely separate.

What are the common medical issues you’ve been seeing?

Sixty-two percent of them are upper respiratory infection. Another 20% are vomiting and diarrhea. And then you’ll have 1 to 2% that are influenza ... or you have someone going into premature labor, or you’ve got some child that actually has an upper respiratory but also has a heart condition, and that heart condition was never recognized.

So the EMTs at the Border Patrol facility may have said, ‘This child has an upper respiratory infection,’ but when we see them and we actually examine them, we have to get them to the hospital and we find they actually are in congenital heart failure. It’s not an upper respiratory problem, or it’s an upper respiratory problem on top of something else. That’s not every day, but I think it contributes to why we had six kids die here. Because they’re screening, but they’re not screening the way we would screen, by actually examining them.

You mentioned earlier that HHS facilities are different from CBP facilities. How so?

HHS facilities are more child-friendly. ... They have licensed people in there, they get lots of training. They are not perfect, and there has been lots of news about how bad some of them are, but the vast majority of them are good.

But it used to be [the children] would be out within three to four weeks. Three to four weeks is OK, a kid can do that, but when it keeps dragging on is when it’s problematic. Because for the kids, it’s still detention to them. They can’t really leave, there’s locks on the doors, if they try to get out they’re going to be in trouble. But their medical care, although not perfect, is far superior to what’s at CBP.

What has happened is you’ve got a law enforcement organization, Customs and Border Protection, who have told us they don’t want to take care of kids. They want to be bringing in the bad guys. They don’t want to be babysitting, and we’ve charged them with setting up a facility that’s not going to traumatize kids. But the only thing they know how to do is set up jails. They’re law enforcement. They haven’t gone out and studied what’s a space for a child. They haven’t been trained in child development. They don’t know what’s going to traumatize them.

They don’t have that training to know how to design a building. Even though when CBP designed Ursula in 2014 they said they were designing it for unaccompanied children, what they did is put in cages. So, come on. Kids don’t go in cages.

Do you think all migrant children should be kept in HHS custody then?

Yes. You could send all the families to ORR [the Office of Refugee Resettlement], and you could have CBP have an office in there. They could design it so if the kids weren’t there long, it would be more friendly for a child, and be less traumatic, and you could have one tent where the Border Patrol came and the Border Patrol did all their processing there. ...

It seems easy, just give HHS most of that money. Give it to them and let them figure it out, and let Border Patrol go catch all the drug guys.

What is your estimation of CBP officers?

Lots of people want to make enemies of the Border Patrol. They want to demonize them just like [President Donald] Trump demonizes the immigrants. They are not demons.

They hire some of our best, best nieces and nephews in the Valley, because it’s a great job, great benefits. There are some great people in there. What they’re being asked to do goes against many of their morality and what they would consider right.

You said earlier that “it has gotten increasingly worse.” What do you mean by that?

First it’s the overcrowding. But the rhetoric around it in the last two years, the rhetoric about them being criminals, has made the atmosphere and the way that people talk about their time in the Border Patrol facilities more egregious than it was before.

When families come out, then what they talk about – about people kicking them, or about them abusing them – that has gotten worse. In the past migrants may have complained that it was cold, that they didn’t get good food and they kept the lights on all the time, but it wasn’t this constant, ‘Oh, and they abused us.’ You’d hear some, but not like this.

Maybe people are just frustrated because there’s so many. But this kind of behavior – we should be prepared for this. We don’t have to become animals.

What does that mean? That “we should be prepared for this”?

I think we can keep our core morality and our basic values in how to treat human beings when we’re faced with a humanitarian crisis. If we had just 10 arriving every day forever and ever and we treated them well, and then we suddenly got, for whatever reason, a hundred every day, we don’t have to start abusing them. You treat them like a human being, with dignity.

Sometimes I’ll fall down and cry. It’s like, this is not OK. It’s not what we would have our grandkids or kids be exposed to. And once you get to know them, once you see them and play with them, then it becomes a real atrocity. As long as it’s over there and you’re just seeing it in the news, it doesn’t hit you as much as if they’re running through here and you’ve got them in your arms. And then it’s, “Don’t you dare touch this kid.”

Lighthouse Point, the southernmost tip of the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, is loved by the local community for its vivid blue waters, pink sandy beaches, rocky shorelines, sea turtles, and lemon sharks.

The area contains diverse terrestrial and marine ecologies, including more than 200 bird species and four endemic plant species. The near shore reefs are home to the endangered staghorn coral.

“You don’t see Lighthouse Point,” says Sam Duncombe, president of the environmental group reEarth, “you feel it.”

But the pristine landscape is now set to become a cruise ship destination. Disney Cruise Line has received government approval to buy 751 acres of land on Eleuthera for development as a cruise port and entertainment facility. Environmentalists are alarmed, but their repeated warnings have been ignored, the same fate suffered by local proponents of a greener business alternative in the area.

The controversy over the Disney deal, approved before the completion of an environmental impact assessment, is a casebook study of how small island states struggle to strike the right balance between economic development and environmental preservation, especially when those environments are a magnet for tourists in the first place. It also illustrates the challenge that locals, including those with deep ecological and economic knowledge, face when trying to make their arguments heard by the government over those of giant corporations.

“Lighthouse Point is one of the last remaining gems that should be left in perpetuity the way it is for the Bahamian people,” says Shaun Ingraham, head of the One Eleuthera Foundation, which along with Lighthouse Point Partners had envisioned a national park, ecolodge, and educational facilities to create small-scale sustainable development that benefits the community without destroying the environment. “A lot of the great swaths of land and green spaces are being bought up for development and overdevelopment.”

An economic benefit ...

The Caribbean cruise ship industry is booming and the Bahamas are flourishing as a tourism destination, welcoming a record 6.6 million tourists in 2018, the majority of them (4.9 million) cruise passengers. Eleuthera received more than 400,000 arrivals. The Caribbean Council trade organization notes the amount spent by the average cruise visitor falls in the range of $116 to $158 per day.

Mallory Raphael/BREEF

Children snorkel at Lighthouse Point during a July summer sea camp organized by the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation.

“The reality is that hundreds of thousands of visitors are gaining their first impressions of the Caribbean from one-day stops on board cruise ships,” the council wrote in a recent report. “The challenge for the region as a whole is now to develop programs ... that actively try to convert cruise visitors to taking a future vacation on land.”

Presenting his annual budget for 2019, Bahamian Minister of Tourism Dionisio D’Aguilar attributed the spike in arrivals to success capturing new markets in China and Latin America, an improved American economy, and a greater breadth of areas visited. While he was clearly pleased with the record in cruise ship arrivals, he was even happier about the smaller but also record-breaking figures for stopover visitors, noting they spend significantly more during their three- to four-night stays.

“We love cruise passengers,” the minister said. “But we love stopover passengers even more since our studies reveal that they spend 20 times more than a cruise passenger.”

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The Disney plan for Lighthouse Point is forecast to be an economic boost for the Bahamas. Disney aims to have the site – its second destination in the country – up and running by 2023. A minimum of 120 Bahamians will be employed directly during the construction phase and 150 permanent jobs will result from operations. A potential 20,000 visitors – more than double the island’s population – could disembark at Lighthouse Point each week.

The Bahamas government would lease seabed to Disney for $1,000 per acre per year during the first 10 years. A study by Oxford Economics, which was paid for and cited by Disney in its letter of intent, projects a $805 million increase in Bahamian gross domestic product and a $357 million boost to Bahamian government revenues over 25 years.

...but at an environmental cost

But some locals worry that the Disney project has not been properly vetted. Etoile Pinder, an Eleuthera native and economist, already knew things were heading in the wrong direction when the prime minister visited the island to discuss Disney’s development plans. She was surprised to find the event resembled a pro-Disney rally rather than a genuine town hall discussion about what is best for the community. The “pep rally” mentality was evident in the pro-Disney T-shirts worn by a moderator and others in attendance. Those who raised concerns were booed and ignored, according to her and other witness accounts.

And Ms. Pinder also raises concerns about the economic benefits for Eleutherans. While some job creation is better than none, she points out that of the nearly 100 Bahamians employed at Disney’s private island Castaway Cay, most hold low-level jobs, and only a couple have managerial roles. Eleuthera itself already has a cruise ship port that has done little to improve conditions for depressed communities suffering from high unemployment and low education. Lastly, while private cruise ship ports help passengers avoid the hassle of clearing customs in the capital of Nassau, this also means even less money is spent locally.

“The economic model is based on people spending money on their ships,” Ms. Pinder says, adding that cruise ships bring all the food they need, prepare it on their properties, and don’t pay value-added taxes on it. “This is not a case of them coming to a port like Barcelona, normal tourism with shopping and spending. Here the tourists play in the water, enjoy the beaches, and then get back on the ship.”

Casuarina McKinney-Lambert, executive director of the nonprofit Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation and a native of Eleuthera, believes that ecotourism is the way forward since it is the fastest growing sector. She stresses that cruise ship visitors make up 75% of annual tourist arrivals in the Bahamas, but contribute only 10% of tourism revenue. For her, the environmental costs at Lighthouse Point are far too high relative to the economic benefit.

Ms. McKinney-Lambert is concerned about the environmental toll that building a pier and regular docking will have on the reefs, on protected species of sharks and turtles, and on other wildlife. She is also unconvinced about the so-called economic benefits for a community of less than 10,000 residents, which will be left to process the garbage and sewage of those who come ashore in massive numbers for short hours. Air and water pollution are other areas of concern – the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates that one ship at sea emits the same sulfur oxide pollution per day as 13 million cars.

“We know that the cruise tourism numbers are increasing, the number of ships that are being built is increasing, and the Bahamas is incredibly appealing as a destination,” Ms. McKinney-Lambert says. “We need to take ownership of our own country and say, ‘Well, what do we want? What is in the best interests of our country?’ And then welcome cruise ships in the way that we Bahamians see fit rather than just depending on what they would like to do.”

Nicolas Messyasz/Sipa Press/AP

Georges Mothron, mayor of Argenteuil, France, launched a program last September to train city employees to recognize behaviors that could be deemed discriminatory or indicate that someone has radicalized. His program has become an inspiration for other cities.

The Esplanade Salvador Allende, a sprawling concrete slab at the center of a half-dozen social housing blocks, is normally a place people pass through to go to work, home, or the nearby community center. But today, the square here in Argenteuil is acting as a pop-up meet-and-greet for residents, with activities and entertainment organized by City Hall.

Two teenage girls color a giant picture spread out on a card table while a young boy paints an assortment of candles. One mother and her tween daughter are caught up in a heated match of dominoes. Off to the side, an elderly couple sits quietly, taking in the scene.

“I don’t usually hang out here, but it’s nice to come and talk with people,” says one resident who asked to remain anonymous, adjusting her lavender headscarf. “But even without this event, there’s a good ambiance here. There’s a big mix of cultures and religions in the neighborhood. But we don’t have any clashes because of it.”

The esplanade epitomizes Argenteuil’s demographic – diverse and cosmopolitan, where everyone seems to be able to live peacefully together without conflict.

Argenteuil may be a model of what the French call mixité – or social diversity – but like any other city, it is not immune to discrimination or, in recent years, violent extremism. That’s why the city’s mayor, Georges Mothron, launched a comprehensive program last September to train city employees to recognize behaviors – in both themselves and the public they serve – that could be deemed discriminatory or indicate that someone has radicalized. By training those who serve the public, the program works to fend off discriminatory and violent extremist acts now and in the future.

Colette Davidson

Residents gather at the Esplanade Salvador Allende in Argenteuil, France, during a pop-up event organized by Argenteuil's City Hall to encourage cultural awareness and foster exchange among neighbors.

And while Mr. Mothron didn’t set out to implement his program across the country, the preventive plan provides inspiration to other cities in France. By employing methods that focus on personal introspection and identifying behavior, it teaches awareness of self and others rather than placing blame. It comes at a time when anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and violent extremist acts continue to trouble the country.

“Discrimination is a very important part of the [radicalization] equation,” says Farhad Khosrokhavar, an author and sociologist at Paris’ School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences who studies radicalization. “It develops a kind of a vicious circle of mostly young Muslim men who feel rejected by society and feel that they can’t have a normal path toward integration, so they choose deviant behavior. They’re stigmatized, so this in turn strengthens their discrimination of others. … And once someone has been radicalized, it’s very difficult to turn back.”

Discouraging discrimination 

Set on the northwestern edge of Paris, Argenteuil is the largest town in the Val-d’Oise department. With a population of 110,000, it counts two mosques, one synagogue, and several churches. More than 26% of the population lives below the poverty line, and immigrants – mostly from Morocco and Algeria – represent 26% of the population.

While overall crime rates in Val-d’Oise went down in 2018, the number of violent acts has increased, particularly among youth. In March 2016, an arsenal of weapons was found in an apartment in Argenteuil in a thwarted terror attack.

Since the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, discrimination has remained a concern for the country. While anti-Muslim acts in France decreased by 18% between 2017 and 2018, anti-Semitic violence rose by more than 70%, according to a 2018 study. A separate study found that 1 in 4 French people have been discriminated against on the job over the past five years.

“Since the Bataclan attacks, people often lump all types of people into the same box, confusing Muslims with violent extremists, for example,” says Christine-Louise Sadowski, director of public security and the anti-discrimination program for Argenteuil. “It’s our job to get all city employees to the same level in order to offer quality service.”

The trainings are twofold. One half involves learning how to recognize radicalization in others and how to report suspicious behavior. The second component breaks down religious and cultural barriers, explores common stereotypes, and reveals how discrimination can hinder normal functioning of public services.

The key piece of Argenteuil’s plan, says Ms. Sadowski, was recruiting a single expert to lead the trainings: Chems Akrouf, a terrorism expert and former employee of France’s Defense Ministry. Since the program launched, Mr. Akrouf has trained more than 2,000 city employees and acts as the primary contact person for the public.

“In France we have a phone number you can use to report suspicious behavior, but it goes directly to the police,” says Mr. Akrouf. “Some people don’t want to expose another person or they’re worried it will fall back on them, so they don’t report things at all. With me, they know they can call me and we can discuss it privately before taking things further.”

Changing attitudes 

Argenteuil’s prevention plan comes as France is in the midst of implementing measures to tackle radicalization. But with some 20,000 people labeled as “Fiche S” – those who pose a threat to state security – France has struggled to find an effective method for preventing or punishing violent extremist behavior.

In 2017, citing inconclusive results, the government announced it was shuttering the country’s only deradicalization center after just one year. In February 2018, it took a U-turn and launched a national plan comprising 60 measures to tackle radicalization online, in schools, businesses, and across government ministries. Since its debut, the program has made nearly 15,000 requests for harmful internet content to be removed, and distributed 20,000 information kits to public schools.

But some say that the national awareness campaign doesn’t hit hard enough at the problem.

“Look at what’s behind it – nothing,” says Mr. Khosrokhavar. “Words are beautiful but look at what is being done effectively. It doesn’t do anything against radicalization in and of itself. Radicalized people have to be identified and have to be dealt with through legal repression.”

The success of Argenteuil’s plan has relied largely on word of mouth and the buy-in of city workers. 

Employees from youth centers and sports clubs to day cares and City Hall have joined the program. And while they don’t have statistics yet on how well it’s working, Ms. Sadowski says that the lack of pushback is indicative of its success.

“[Radicalization] is a very delicate topic, but we haven’t had any type of rejection from city employees or the public,” says Ms. Sadowski. “We’ve also had several towns contact us who are interested in implementing the program as well.”

The city is also distributing a questionnaire to the public about how the program is functioning, says Ms. Sadowski, so that the “program is not top-down, it’s on-the-ground.” In addition, they’ve held three community debates – on fake news, religious diversity, and citizenry, to communicate more directly with the public.

Thierry Grelet, who works in public events management for Argenteuil, says the trainings have pushed him to begin thinking of how he approaches others, professionally and personally.

“We’re regularly assailed by the media, the internet, with images of certain groups doing something wrong. It has an impact on our work,” says Mr. Grelet. “Sometimes we create ideas about people that aren’t the right ones. … These trainings have helped me avoid making judgments too quickly about people.”

Photo by Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor

Donkeys rest under a tree during a drought emergency in 2017 in Melkaselah Village, Somali Region, Ethiopia.

As world records go, this one has roots: Ethiopia claims it planted 353 million trees in just one day on July 29. Tens of thousands of people, from civil servants to students to farmers, took shovel to dirt and set saplings to earth in just 12 hours.

The one-day feat amounts to more than three plantings per person in Africa’s second-most populous country. And it beat the previous record, which was set in India two years ago when 66 million trees were planted in a single day.

One reason for this latest mass planting of trees is that Ethiopia, where 80% of people work in agriculture, is severely deforested, a result of high demand for fuel wood and land for grazing. Without enough trees and other vegetation, rainwater is not retained. Soil is easily washed away.

In addition, droughts are made worse. In a 1984 drought, Ethiopia was hit with famine and became the focus of a global rescue campaign that included the money-raising hit single “We Are the World.” Even today more than 8 million people remain food insecure.

Ethiopia also wants to do its part to reverse global warming. In 2011, along with dozens of other countries, it signed on to the Bonn Challenge, a global effort to reforest barren land. Yet its previous mass plantings have not gone well. The government did not engage local people well enough for them to keep tending the young trees. The efforts at forest restoration were too top-down.

A new leader since last year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has brought a different approach. He not only plans to have 4 billion trees planted this year – or 40 saplings per person – officials will also track the progress of the trees. Local people are more involved.

Just as important, Mr. Abiy has elevated the appreciation of trees and tree planting as a metaphor for peace and cooperation in a country that strains to hold together some 80 ethnic groups.

He refers to his reforestation campaign as “Green Legacy,” or a gift to future generations. After the assassination of five government officials in early July, he planted olive seedlings at the National Palace in their memory. In his peacemaking diplomacy in Africa, he often employs the image of an olive branch or plants a tree with visiting foreign leaders.

He is also frequently shown tending to young trees in an obvious appeal for people to tend to each other in his divided and poor country.

“We will manage to reach the stage of development which we have always aspired to reach, by loving each other and casting away the spirit of hatred and revenge,” he said in a speech last year.

“Let’s differentiate between individuals and the people. Let’s remove the thorns from the roses. We should not cut all trees because of one twisted tree. Let’s understand that the only way to win is to follow the path of forgiveness.”

All this tree imagery is not lost on Ethiopians. One of their great poets, Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, wrote a poem that was later used for the anthem of the 54-nation African Union. The words include this line: “All sons and daughters of Africa ... Let us make Africa the tree of life.”

It was not hard for Mr. Abiy to find enough tree planters last Monday.