Sitting around a foldout table in a dimly lit union hall, Susan DeRose deftly folds sample ballots into thirds, building a sloping pile in front of Amber Stern and Ann Szlivko, who try to keep pace as they put the ballots into clear plastic baggies along with pamphlets for Democratic candidates. 

As volunteers with Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley for All, a local voter outreach group advocating progressive policies, the women say they’ve been jolted by this week’s leak of a Supreme Court draft ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade and American women’s legal right to an abortion. 

“I’ll be on the streets, I’ll march – I’ll do whatever I have to do,” says Ms. DeRose, as Ms. Stern and Ms. Szlivko nod in agreement.

“It’s going to give us a midterm boost,” adds volunteer coordinator Kathy Harrington. “Women are going to come out like crazy. Now reproductive rights are actually on the ballot.”

The highly unusual leak of the draft ruling on a Mississippi abortion law has increased concerns about the politicization of the highest tribunal in the land, and brought the nation’s bitter divide over abortion access to the forefront just as states have begun holding primaries for this fall’s midterm elections. Published Monday night by Politico, the draft was confirmed as authentic by the Supreme Court, though it is not finalized. It holds that the 1973 Roe decision marked an unconstitutional overreach of judicial power that sought to settle national differences but instead inflamed them.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” writes Justice Samuel Alito in the draft majority opinion. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Susan DeRose, a retired high school math teacher, folds sample ballots following a meeting of the local Democratic group Lehigh Valley for All in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, May 3, 2022. She became active in local politics following Donald Trump's victory in 2016, but Ms. DeRose says that the leaked Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has inspired her anew.

If the ruling holds, it could potentially give Democrats a boost heading into the midterm elections this fall, or at least scramble what had otherwise been shaping up as a sizable Republican wave. Already, Democratic activists like Ms. DeRose – a grandmother and retired teacher – are making plans to put the issue front and center, urging voters to elect candidates who will codify a woman’s right to abortion access into U.S. law. 

Yet the public’s views of abortion have also hardened along partisan lines in recent years, making the issue less likely to shift many voters’ decisions at the polls. And while it could energize more left-leaning voters to turn out, Democrats are still facing a slew of other challenges that may ultimately galvanize more voters on the Republican side – including inflation, crime, and record numbers of migrants trying to cross the border.

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted after the leaked ruling finds that just 28% of voters believe Roe should be overturned. But there was only a slight change in the percentage of voters for whom abortion will be the driving issue in the midterms. Some 35% now say it is more important to vote for someone who agrees with their stance on abortion access even if they disagree on other issues, up from 32% in December. 

Nevertheless, the leaked draft is reverberating across the country, from local activist meetings in Pennsylvania to the hazy warm air on Tybee Island, Georgia, where vacationers were grappling with its import.

The view from D.C.

Outside the Supreme Court, protesters’ chants echo across the vast lawn and plaza. 

“For women in this country to be equal, we need access to abortion!” shouts one protester into a temperamental mic, as one speaker after another – many of whom share their own experiences of having had an abortion – urges attendees to defend what they describe as a fundamental right in danger of being stripped away. 

“What are you going to do?” shouts another. “Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote,” chants the crowd. 

Meanwhile, a smaller group of counterprotesters keeps up chants like, “Babies never choose to die.” 

Republicans have strategized for decades to get more conservative justices onto the bench. They succeeded in landing three during President Donald Trump’s tenure – including Amy Coney Barrett, whose accelerated confirmation process weeks before the 2020 election struck many Democrats as hypocritical after Republicans refused to hold hearings for Obama nominee Merrick Garland in the spring of 2016. Now, they’re on the cusp of overturning Roe, as well as a related decision in 1992, Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

Yet in their initial statements, many Republican members of Congress have focused more on the leak than on the substance of the draft ruling, denouncing it as an unethical breach of trust that undermined the independence of the judiciary, and urging Chief Justice John Roberts to find and prosecute the leaker.

One lawmaker who did focus on the draft ruling, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah – who formerly clerked for Justice Alito – praised it for putting the issue of abortion back in the hands of legislators.  

“The very thing it will be allowing is for the democratic process to unfold – for people to make laws as they deem fit in their respective states,” Senator Lee said on the Senate floor, urging those who disagree with him to take it up with their state legislatures.

On the Democratic side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already moved to bring a bill before the Senate that would codify a woman’s right to abortion access. But Democrats don’t have the votes to overcome a GOP filibuster. Nor do they have the votes to scrap the filibuster and push the bill forward with a simple 51-50 majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. 

“If the court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose,” said President Joe Biden in a statement. “And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.”

Statehouses as next battleground

In Pennsylvania, Republicans hold the majority in the state legislature by a margin of 12 seats. And whoever wins the gubernatorial race this fall will have the ability to sign or veto any abortion-related legislation.  

“This shows that every single race matters,” says Democratic state Sen. Steve Samuelson, after addressing the Lehigh Valley for All members. “Every race matters.”

At campaign stops across Philadelphia and its suburbs Wednesday, two gubernatorial candidates on opposite sides of the aisle acknowledge the newly added importance of the race. 

“I’ve stated very clearly, over and over again, that I am pro-life,” GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain tells the Monitor following a campaign stop at a gas station. “I will sign legislation to protect the most vulnerable among us: the unborn. I have said that I support exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, but those are the only exceptions.”

A few hours later and a few miles south, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who’s running unopposed for the Democratic nomination, speaks with equal determination. 

“There is a stark contrast in this race between me and my nine Republican opponents,” says Mr. Shapiro. “Each and every one of them would sign a bill restricting women’s freedoms here in Pennsylvania. I will veto those bills.” 

Down in Savannah, Georgia, the state whose close runoff elections in January 2021 tipped control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats, independent voter Alyse Sklover says she’s “terrified” of Roe being overturned, in part because of what it would mean for the at-risk teenage girls she worked with at a Florida nonprofit.

“I think certain rights need to be protected federally,” says Ms. Sklover, who is concerned that women might seek illegal abortions if states like Georgia ban the practice.

Further inland, in Candler County, local salesperson Ashley Ridley says he believes abortion should be banned – but is torn as to whether there should be exceptions in certain cases, such as rape and incest. 

“I have a 4-year-old daughter, so that’s what I think about,” he says. Ultimately, “when we’re talking about abortion, we’re talking about ending lives.” A Republican, he says the issue could affect his vote in the GOP gubernatorial primary later this month. Current GOP Gov. Brian Kemp has not said whether he supports a total ban, though in 2019 he signed a law banning abortions after six weeks that will take effect if Roe is overturned. His primary opponent, former GOP Sen. David Perdue, has said he supports a total ban.

For many voters, the issue is complicated

While positions on abortion are often portrayed in black-and-white terms, for many voters the subject can bring out complicated, sometimes contradictory viewpoints. 

As retiree Tom Hubele and his wife dined this week in Savannah on their first major trip in 17 years, they could hear “my body, my choice” chants from a crowd of nearly 100 protesters marching through the city. A self-described rural conservative from the Midwest, Mr. Hubele believes abortion should remain legal. If Roe is overturned, he says, “that could very well influence who I vote for,” in order to ensure a legislative solution that would keep the practice available to women.

Life and death have been on his mind lately, says Mr. Hubele, who recently lost a good friend in a car accident. The abortion debate “is about life,” he says – but he views the issue as a matter of individual accountability. “We make choices in life, we make decisions, and those ... decisions have consequences. At the end, we have to answer for our decisions.” 

Not far away, Ara Carter is perusing surf shop wares as he strolls a beach walk on Tybee Island, Georgia. The middle-aged African American military veteran says he’s been pondering the issue since the news broke during his vacation. His perspective doesn’t fit neatly into either camp.

He says he twice impregnated a girlfriend when he was only 14, and his teenage girlfriend had an abortion both times. A few years later, another girlfriend had an abortion. The two later married and had a child.

Those experiences later steered him to oppose abortion – a view reinforced, he says, by his sister’s struggles to come to terms with an abortion she had as a young woman. Still, he’s not sure it should be outlawed. “I don’t think a bunch of gray-haired guys on a bench somewhere have any right to tell a woman what to do with her own body.” 

Either way, he says, the issue is not likely to change whom he votes for in the November elections. 

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Thousands of farmers arrive at the gates of Argentina's presidential Casa Rosada to protest government measures affecting agricultural production, in Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo, April 23, 2022.

When Juan Martín Salas Oyarzun met recently with fellow farmers in the agriculturally rich Pampas region west of the Argentine capital, the thinking for the coming planting season was unanimous.

A little more wheat acreage, a little less soybean planting – and most of all, more sunflowers.

A similar shift toward sunflowers is occurring across Argentina, one of the world’s great food producers, as farmers adjust to the consequences of Russia’s devastating war in another global breadbasket, Ukraine.

Yet whether Argentine farmers will help alleviate a global food crisis made worse by the war is in doubt, with some analysts saying agricultural production has already been constrained by government policies.

“I’m sorry to speak of it this way, but we see this war’s impact on sunflower production as an enormous opportunity, if you consider that Ukraine and Russia together make up 80% of sunflower exports,” says Mr. Salas, whose 3,000-acre farm is blessed with some of the world’s richest soils.

“Argentina was once a much bigger producer of sunflowers” – its seed when crushed provides a cooking oil that is a staple in many parts of the world – “and we can do it again,” he says.

“And the truth is it will be both a pragmatic business decision to replace lost production elsewhere,” Mr. Salas adds, “and recognition that as farmers, producing food is our vocation. We do it with pleasure, yes, but also with a sense of responsibility to feed the world.”

Indeed, Argentine farmers are no strangers to sending their production across oceans. At the turn of the 20th century, Argentina became one of the world’s wealthiest countries – and Buenos Aires a great cosmopolitan capital – by exporting wheat and beef to Europe.

Diego Giudice/AP/File

Dried sunflowers stand ready for harvest on a farm near Ines Indart, in Argentina's Buenos Aires province, March 10, 2009. Argentina was the world’s top producer of sunflowers as recently as the 1990s, and a top exporter of food oils, and is well positioned to replace production lost because of the war in Ukraine. But a shortage of seeds and government measures targeting agricultural production and exports likely will limit the country’s response.

Impact of uncertainty

But whether a country that came to be known as “the world’s granary” will step up and produce more food hangs in the balance, agricultural experts say, for reasons ranging from skyrocketing fertilizer prices to government protectionist measures aimed at securing domestic food supplies and limiting food-price inflation.

“Argentina’s farmers are capable of producing more and want to produce more, but right now I’d say the right word to describe the situation is uncertainty,” says Guido D’Angelo, an analyst at the Rosario Board of Trade.

“Fertilizer prices are way up as global supplies have fallen, questions remain about how long and how much the war will affect exports from Ukraine and Russia, and in addition to that are the domestic government measures on [agricultural] exports,” says Mr. D’Angelo, whose home base of Rosario is the world’s second-largest port for agricultural exports after New Orleans.

“Farmers are aware of the world’s food insecurity,” he adds, “but all the uncertainty affects their planting decisions.”

Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world was confronting mounting food insecurity, in part as a result of the pandemic. But now the United Nations warns that millions more people around the world will face hunger and even in some cases famine as a result of a war between two of the world’s largest food exporters.

Last week the U.S. government announced that for the first time in nearly a decade, it would use an emergency food funding authority to provide additional hundreds of millions of dollars to fight what the U.S. Agency for International Development describes as “historic levels of global food insecurity ... exacerbated by the impact Russia’s war on Ukraine is having on global food supplies.”

Protectionist measures

In Argentina, many farmers say they are ready and willing to help make up for lost food supplies.

But they also say that while they are thinking breadbaskets, the government of President Alberto Fernández is focused on its empty coffers.

Indeed, in recent weeks the cash-strapped and heavily indebted Argentine government has been zeroing in on the country’s dynamic agricultural sector to boost revenues by raising export taxes on some food products. The export taxes and in some cases limits on exports of some products – for example beef – are also seen as a way to dampen inflation, which is running at about a 60% annual rate.

The leftist government, whose political base is among urban middle- and working-class voters, says it’s acting to dampen domestic prices that are hurting average Argentine families.

Argentina is not alone in turning to protectionist measures, as dozens of countries move to limit food exports in response to global food shortages.

The World Trade Organization warned last week that export restrictions are already compounding global food shortages and rising prices.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO’s director-general, told journalists in Washington she is strongly discouraging member states from imposing export restrictions and is pressing food producers to instead share surpluses with the world.

Still, she said she remains “very concerned about the pending food crisis.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Argentine farmer Darío Magi, among thousands protesting government measures affecting agricultural production, drives his tractor in Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 23, 2022. “We know the world needs food,” he says, “but at some point if we’re being strangled we can no longer produce.”

Farmer protests

The volatility in global food markets and the government measures taken in response are reverberating across Argentina’s agricultural communities – as was evident in the farmers’ protest that last month sent a parade of tractors and slogan-shouting rural Argentines to the gates of the presidential Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo.

“Our role as farmers is to produce food, but if the government is taking 60 of every 100 pesos I earn, I reach a point where I can no longer produce and live,” said Darío Magi, a beef, pig, and chicken farmer from Saladillo in the province of Buenos Aires.

“We know the world needs food,” he added from atop his antique tractor within view of Casa Rosada, “but at some point if we’re being strangled we can no longer produce.”

For some Argentine agricultural experts, the rise in global food insecurity and tightening food supplies risks turning the country away from its roots as a great granary to the world.

“Argentina is a big food-exporting country, but right now it’s acting like a food importer,” says Augustín Tejada, an analyst at Buenos Aires’ Bolsa de Cereales, or Grains Exchange, citing taxes and limits on exports.

A recent study by the exchange concluded that without the government restrictions, Argentina’s food production would rise by as much as 40%.

Mr. Tejada says Argentina “stands before an important opportunity to consolidate its reputation as a stable and trustworthy food producer.” Seizing the moment, he adds, “would serve the country’s interests in the long run even as we fulfilled a historical calling to meet world food demand.”

Instead, he says the exchange is predicting that Argentine farmers this year will cut wheat production – a staple that because of the war is already lacking in some of the world’s poorest food-importing countries.

Missed “calling”

And then there are the sunflowers.

As recently as the 1990s Argentina was the world’s top producer of sunflowers, with up to 10 million acres planted with the sunny yellow blooms and seed-crushing capacity that made the country a top oils exporter.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine rapidly took the crowns for top producers. But Argentina is now well positioned to replace production that will be lost because of the war, experts say.

Guillermo Pozzi, executive director of the Argentina Sunflower Association, says, however, that two factors – one practical, one political – are going to limit the country’s response.

First, a lack of sunflower seeds for planting will almost certainly curtail big dreams of more than doubling the acreage planted with the crop, Mr. Pozzi says. “Our seed producers weren’t expecting this sudden interest in planting sunflowers,” he notes, “so their production was stable and additional seeds won’t be easy to come by.”

But the agronomist with expertise in sunflower-seed breeding says it’s the government measures targeting agricultural production that more than anything risk dampening the Argentine farmer’s “calling” to plant and produce more.

“Like the American Middle West and Ukraine’s [East European] plain, Argentina’s Pampas has been blessed with the best soils in the world, and it makes me angry to think that we are not taking advantage of this gift as we could,” Mr. Pozzi says.

“We are a country of 45 million people and we produce food for 400 million,” he says. “But at a time of food shortages and rising numbers of hungry people, I think we have a duty to do more to share the fruits of this great gift with the world.”

Bonifacio Ilagan was only 22 when the security forces raided the house where he’d been hiding after joining a large student activist movement resisting the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Authorities brought him to Camp Crame, a detention facility that today serves as the headquarters of the national police. There he was tortured in an attempt to extract information on the whereabouts of his colleagues in the movement, but Mr. Ilagan says he never gave up names.

“I refused to be the reason someone will be killed,” he says.

Now in his 70s, Mr. Ilagan isn’t the only one who suffered under martial law. During those nine years that historians call the darkest period in Philippine history, more than 3,000 people were killed, and around 34,000 people were tortured and 70,000 imprisoned, according to human rights organizations. Many people disappeared, including Mr. Ilagan’s sister. But their stories seem to have little effect on the Filipino electorate, which is poised to pick Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. – the son and namesake of the late dictator – as the country’s next president on Monday. Latest opinion polls also show Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of the controversial President Rodrigo Duterte, leading in the race for vice president, a position Filipinos elect separately.

This is a pivotal election packed with familiar names, and experts say the rise of the Marcos-Duterte ticket signals how disinformation and economic stagnation have made the Philippines vulnerable to democratic backsliding.

“The Marcos family brand, including that of Marcos Jr. at present, is a product of a painstaking process of mythmaking,” says political scientist Cleve V. Arguelles, from De La Salle University in Manila. “Public support for them relies on the well-curated image of who Marcos Jr. is and what the Marcos family stands for. We see how heavily invested they are in propaganda – then and now.”

Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

Philippine presidential candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. delivers a speech during a campaign rally in Lipa, Batangas province, Philippines, April 20, 2022.

Family rebound

Political observers and historians attribute Bongbong’s popularity to the family’s decadeslong effort to regain power. 

Over their 21-year rule, the Marcoses are believed to have embezzled $5-10 billion, while national debt ballooned to $26 billion. After being ousted by the 1986 People Power Revolution, the family fled to Honolulu in an airplane full of cash, diamonds, and art. The patriarch died in exile in September 1989, and two years later, his family was allowed back into the Philippines. 

Their return to the political arena was immediate, with Imelda Marcos – who was still facing multiple corruption charges – making her first bid for the presidency in 1992. She lost, but in the years following, most of the Marcos children – Imee, Bongbong, and Irene – found success in local races and consolidated political power in Ilocos Norte, the family’s bailiwick.

By the 2010s, the Marcos family was making a national comeback, alarming pro-democracy activists. When Bongbong decided to run for vice president in 2016, Mr. Ilagan and fellow martial law survivors formed the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law, to remind the public about the human rights violations committed by the last Marcos president. Bongbong lost that race to Vice President Leni Robredo, now his main opponent in the 2022 presidential election, but his popularity continued to grow. Today, he’s accrued millions of followers on Facebook and Tiktok, and maintains a sizable lead in recent polls.

Disinformation 

Fatima Gaw, a researcher at the University of the Philippines who’s been studying pro-Marcos messaging on YouTube since 2017, says the Marcoses have successfully harnessed social media to both “rehabilitate the family’s image” and “dismantle the legacy of the People Power Revolution.” Common tactics she’s observed include outright denial, with pro-Marcos vloggers and anonymous accounts asserting martial law or the associated human rights violations never actually happened. Other videos cherry-pick information or make exaggerated claims about the elder Mr. Marcos’ accomplishments. 

One popular conspiracy theory alleges the descendants of a fictitious pre-colonial dynasty entrusted the elder Mr. Marcos with large amounts of gold, explaining the family’s suspiciously amassed wealth. Posts shared broadly by pro-Marcos Facebook groups claimed that money would be redistributed to the Filipino people upon Bongbong’s election, which the candidate later clarified was not true.

Experts agree that Bongbong is benefiting from what Mr. Arguelles describes as “a systematic and well-oiled disinformation campaign,” though the exact mechanics of that campaign are unclear. A recent study of disinformation leading up to the 2022 elections shows Ms. Robredo is the top target of negative social media posts, but Bongbong has denied the use of troll farms or historical revisionism.

Discontent

Still, the Marcos comeback cannot be blamed on disinformation alone. Their rehabilitation is also tied to the People Power Revolution’s unfulfilled promise of shared prosperity. 

No president has successfully tackled corruption or wealth inequality in the Philippines. Millions still live below the poverty line, and a 2019 survey found 64% of Filipino households experience food insecurity. As in many places, the pandemic has exacerbated these problems, making people even more open to a strongman leader.

“It’s not hard to imagine why Filipinos are willing to … risk the future of the country again with the Marcos family,” says Mr. Arguelles. “I see this development as a scramble for the familiar, even feudal order, because many of the modernist-reformist promises of the post-Marcos governments did not materialize.”

In fact, many of Bongbong’s supporters – particularly younger voters who don’t remember martial law or people whose families benefited under the Marcos regime – now describe the 1970s as a sort of golden age, when crime and traffic were down and the world respected the Philippines. 

“In a state of social stagnation, Marcos Jr.’s authoritarian nostalgia and fantasy become even more attractive,” Mr. Arguelles adds.

But it’s not attractive to everyone. Mr. Ilagan sees echoes of his own student activism in the so-called Pink Movement that’s coalesced behind Ms. Robredo, who has gained some ground in the final weeks of the race. Whether or not they succeed in thwarting another Marcos presidency, Mr. Ilagan is banking on these youth to continue the fight against authoritarianism.

“I am heartened by the fact that there are many young people who continue our struggle,” he says. 

Sajad Ahmad and other villagers were huddled in an underground bunker in the mountain village of Gundishat when they heard a loud thud. The group was hiding from heavy mortar shelling the Indian and Pakistani armies were exchanging along the Line of Control (LoC), a 450-mile de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

When Mr. Ahmad emerged, he found houses reduced to rubble. His older neighbor, Mohammad Sidiq, was killed. That was in October 2019.

Two years later, on a breezy April evening, Mr. Ahmad points out a newly built cement house in the same spot where that mortar shell landed. There are several others like it under construction throughout Gundishat, and in other villages scattered along the LoC. These new houses signal hope as the border region experiences a rare period of peace. 

The villages situated along the LoC have long been caught in the crossfire of two nuclear-armed rivals. Although India and Pakistan agreed on a cease-fire nearly two decades ago, peace did not last long. From 2007 onward, cease-fire violations have been frequent on both sides, with small border communities bearing the brunt of the violence. In 2020 alone, India reported 5,100 violations by Pakistan and 36 deaths along the LoC, marking a 17-year high. But since military leaders recommitted to the cease-fire in February 2021, peace has held. In the absence of gunfire and mortar shelling, villagers say they’re starting to rebuild their lives and feel hopeful about the future. 

Although history suggests the peace is fragile, experts say there’s reason to hope, especially after Pakistan’s recent shift in leadership.

“It appears to me this truce is likely to hold for a long time, and this will pave the way for some positive developments between the two countries,” says Zafar Choudhary, a Kashmiri peace-building expert who’s participated in back channel dialogues.

Return to normalcy

In recent years, incidents of violence along the LoC increased as the relations between India and Pakistan turned hostile. There were over 3,200 cease-fire violations in 2019 — the year Delhi revoked Kashmir’s special autonomous status and brought the territory under the government’s direct control, a move that Islamabad condemned. Most casualties were civilians.

Gundishat resident Mohammad Maqbool shows a scarred hand and recalls how the splinters of a mortar shell hit him when he tried to flee during the October 2019 incident. “It was a warlike situation,” he says. “We can only hope there is no more shelling. I can’t explain what a relief last year has been.”

There have been a few cease-fire violations over the past 14 months, but nothing close to the scale of violence the LoC witnessed in the preceding years. Overall, the return of peace has meant a return to normalcy for villages located along the border. Reports show tourism is picking back up in remote villages, and farmers who’ve faced frequent displacement are finally returning to their fields. 

In the nearby village of Dragad, Kalam Din sits in a small green pasture where his goats and cattle graze. Formerly a porter for the Indian Army, Mr. Din became a farmer after he was hit in the chest by a bullet during a sudden spate of gunfire in June 1996. Mr. Din’s family depends on his earnings, but during the years of violence, he could not raise livestock. “For the last one and a half years, I have been able to work in the fields,” he says. “I know this is not enough, but it is better than before.”

As the guns and heavy artillery have fallen silent on both sides of the border, residents hope India and Pakistan will soon allow cross-LoC travel, tourism, and trade to resume, specifically the famous Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service. Suspended in 2019, the route was initially launched as a confidence-building measure and connected the respective capitals of India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Haziq Qadri

Resham Jan (left) and her husband, Abdul Rahman, pose with a picture of their son who was killed in cross-border shelling in Teetwal village, India.

Family respite

A couple miles from Dragad lies Teetwal, a village separated from Pakistan by the narrow Kishanganga River.

Elder resident Abdul Rahman has seen the two armies at war with each other his entire life, and one of his sons, Naseer, was killed by Pakistani snipers in 1995.

Whenever the two armies would engage in firing, their family would try to flee for safer places. “But all the villages here are a target of these armies,” he says. “It is like living in a bowl and the mortar shells fall in. Where can we run to?”

Mr. Rahman’s wife, Resham Jan, says life on the border has been especially unkind to children. “Every time there is a thud or a bang, children here run into houses,” she says. “They mistake every loud noise for a mortar shell.” 

The last year and a half has offered relief, says Mr. Rahman, but he hopes for more. Many of his relatives and friends live just over the river, in the village of Chilyana in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, but for years, it’s been impossible to meet.

A small suspension bridge once connected Teetwal with the Chilyana village, one of five LoC crossing points that India and Pakistan opened in 2005 to allow separated Kashmiri families to reconnect. But it’s been closed off since 2018 due to increased tensions on the border.

“If this peace lasts, maybe the bridge will be reopened,” Mr. Rahman says as he sits on a green pasture, overlooking the bridge. On one end, the flags of Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir flutter in the wind, while the Indian flag waves on the other. As the villages around it come back to life, the barricaded bridge remains quiet. 

Path to progress

Experts agree that the lack of shelling alone won’t be enough to build lasting peace – but it is a step in the right direction. Sustaining the cease-fire and making larger moves toward peace, such as opening the Chilyana-Teetwal bridge or resuming Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, will take political will from both countries.

Manoj Joshi, a former member of India’s national security task force, says the ongoing truce could benefit the India-Pakistan relationship, but it’s still very delicate. He notes how, in the past, cease-fire violations were often used as an excuse by Pakistan to send militants across the border, leading to more violence. 

“Infiltration [across the LoC] is down to historical lows,” he says. “It all depends on Pakistan. If they intend to cut infiltration and slowly end it, [the cease-fire] could last a long time.”

There are signs that Pakistan’s current administration is invested in maintaining peace. The newly appointed prime minister’s recent offer to hold talks with India and its army chief’s call to resolve disputes with India through dialogue signal their intent to resume diplomatic ties, says defense expert and editor of Force Magazine, Pravin Sawhney. Reports also suggest India and Pakistan could soon reinstate high commissioners in each other’s capitals, three years after Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with India for changing Kashmir’s autonomous status.

“Now whether India accepts that, only that will determine how it will go forward,” says Mr. Sawhney. 

Back in Gundishat, villagers say many of those who had migrated to other parts of Kashmir because of the shelling have now returned home. When asked what the yearlong calm along the LoC feels like, 60-year-old Khalid Mohammad breaks into a grin. “Tell me,” he says, “what does this smile mean?”

The morning calm broke as an urgent cry for help rang from Clément Plagne’s space-suited crewmates. It was Day 3 on this simulated excursion to the red planet, and things were getting dicey.

“I’m getting no air from the suit,” one crewmate radioed. “If this weren’t Earth I’d be dead right now.”

“We need to head back to the Hab immediately,” another instructed.

Inside the “Hab,” a hermetically sealed habitat, Mr. Plagne and two other crew members anxiously waited for the rest of the crew to return from walking on the “Martian” surface. The situation was solved eventually, but they lost time exploring the surrounding terrain.

As an appointed journalist for Crew 223, part of Mr. Plagne’s job during this two-week simulation was to document these roller coaster interludes. The problems encountered at The Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station (MRDS) in the southern Utah desert are valuable data points for disaster prevention and response plans for real-life astronauts.

“If you’re putting yourself in a situation that was supposed to be on Mars and your ventilation breaks in four, five seconds, that’s an emergency,” he recalls of that day in 2020. 

Mr. Plagne, an aerospace engineering student at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space in Toulouse, France, says his astronaut dream dates back to his childhood, inspired by the 1995 film “Apollo 13.”

He is among more than 1,000 space-passionate volunteers who have been selected, trained, and sent to the MDRS analog sites over the past two decades. They are part of larger worldwide efforts in which “astronauts” isolate themselves in a Mars-like environment for weeks in order to study the technological, operational, and behavioral requirements for a human mission to Mars. 

The aim is at once simple and grand: to forward human understanding, which could ultimately help us reach other planets – and perhaps have spinoff benefits for solving problems like climate change here on Earth.

“We aren’t leaving Earth to leave Earth problems behind,” says MDRS director Shannon Rupert. “Going to Mars enables us to fix Earth’s problems and makes us look toward the future, not only on Mars, but here – what do we want Earth to look like when we’re on Mars?”

Courtesy of The Mars Society/MDRS

Clément Plagne (center, in white T-shirt) and his Crew 240 teammates enjoy pizza they made. The basil for the pizza was harvested from the Greenhab they planted on the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. Mr. Plagne led five other participants with backgrounds in engineering, food safety, biology, and botany for a three-week simulation.

Around the world, 22 analog bases run by science organizations simulate operations on future Mars and lunar missions. Participants study the habitats’ safety and ability to sustain life, as well as crew psychology – for anywhere from a few weeks to up to a year.

In Utah, for example, teams of six to seven crew members share the group-living habitats, rely on solar-powered energy, eat prepackaged frozen food, grow crops and vegetables, run extravehicular activity missions to study rocks and collect data, and track water usage. 

The tests of a Martian lifestyle 

Dr. Rupert, who first joined the MDRS analog program in the early 2000s and became its program director in 2009, pinpoints the shift in public interest on the mission to Mars to the 2015 film “The Martian” starring Matt Damon. “All of a sudden space became exciting ... where before you had to really earn the respect of a smaller community,” she says. 

For Israeli data scientist Alon Tenzer, a passion for space drove him to join the AMADEE-20, Austrian Space Forum’s four-week analog mission in partnership with the Israel Space Agency at the test site in the Negev desert in October 2021. First selected as an analog astronaut in 2019, he traveled from Singapore to Europe on five separate occasions that required time away from his family and work to participate in monthslong intensive physical training, self-directed learning, and dress rehearsals before heading to the Mars-like mission.

“Putting on a suit is an activity in itself,” Mr. Tenzer recalls of the four hours it took to learn how to get dressed in their protective gear.

While living in the Mars-like environment, he found the simulated communication delays between Earth and “Mars” challenging, where “there’s no live calls or video chat [with family members],” says Mr. Tenzer. “At that time, my twins were 6 months old. I wasn’t able to see them and the changes that happened to them or just talk to them, and it’s hard,” he says. 

Courtesy of The Mars Society/MDRS

Crew 240 members gather for a group photo in early 2022 at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah. The site is among nearly two dozen globally where volunteers test technology and living habits for a possible human mission to Mars.

Long-duration missions can set further challenges, says Christiane Heinicke, a physicist and engineer who leads the Moon and Mars Base Analog project at University of Bremen in Germany. Her 12-month isolation experience about six years ago as part of a crew at the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) informs her work on the analog base.

While finding “sweet spots” living in a group setting during the first two quarters of the NASA-sponsored experiment, she ​​observed signs of a “third-quarter syndrome” in her group during the final months of their mission as living in an isolated environment took its toll. 

“There’s this classic example of someone making chewing noises when they’re eating food. If you hear it once, you’re like, ‘It’s annoying, but I don’t care,’” says Dr. Heinicke. “But if you’re on a long-duration mission and you hear this every mealtime every single day for weeks or months, at some point, it just drives you nuts.” 

But those kinds of stressors can also be the catalyst to find solutions. 

“In our case, at an event, we had communication issues and we said, ‘OK we need to sort this out. We need to find a solution.’ And that was what helped us carry on to the third quarter,” she adds.

Tackling environmental challenges

With limited water and energy supply, Dr. Heinicke says her crew created a competition to see who could take the shortest showers. One crew member got it down to 23 seconds. 

“One of the takeaways [of these missions] is that while you’re simulating life on Mars, you’re also realizing how much comfort ... we have in daily life on Earth and how lucky we have to have all the resources,” says Mr. Plagne, who notices himself being “more mindful” about saving water and conserving energy after his missions. 

Annie Meier, chemical engineer and principal investigator at NASA Kennedy Space Center who studies waste conversion and resource utilization, thinks analog mission experiments in trash management and food packaging can inform the logistics of future space missions. 

Courtesy of The Mars Society/MDRS

Julie Levita, Crew 240’s health safety officer, works on agriculture experiments at the Mars Desert Research Station in early 2022.

During her four-month analog mission at HI-SEAS, Dr. Meier and her crew had tried to separate their trash out for recycling, something the International Space Station currently does not do. They also analyzed what kind of packaging is really necessary to preserve food.

“For long-duration missions, you can have bulk packaging and don’t need all this individually wrapped to keep it shelf stable. That can significantly reduce the amount of plastic and radiation shielding that you have on this food,” she adds. 

“Every person is a dreamer”

Coming back from the Mars analog mission, Dr. Heinicke ​​has been working on sustainable habitat technologies that won’t interfere with the Martian ecosystem, such as airlocks, one of the main sources of potential contamination. “We have to make sure that the airlock is not this wide-open gate where microbes can lead into the Martian environment,” she says. 

This past January, Mr. Plagne returned to the Utah site for a three-week simulation, this time as a commander. Crew 240 included five other participants with backgrounds in engineering, food safety, biology, and botany – all dedicated to the idea of helping future astronauts safely reach Mars and achieve self-reliance. He’s also scheduled for an internship at the European Space Agency. He says he still keeps in touch with his Crew 223 team two years after the mission. 

“I like to think every person is a dreamer. Our dream is to work so that, someday, humanity will flourish somewhere else, away from its cradle,” Mr. Plagne wrote in Crew 223 mission’s journal on March 10, 2020. 

No one anticipated the day after Mr. Plagne wrote those words that the World Health Organization would declare a global pandemic, ushering in unprecedented uncertainty and changes. But if there is anything these “Martians” learned living in isolation on Earth, it was the power of dreams, hope, collaboration, and persistence to carry them through the unknown.

Editor's note: Since participants at the Mars analog sites are often scientists with advanced degrees and training, this article has been updated to remove references to the phrase citizen science. 

Reuters

Workers use their helmets to pour water to cool themselves off near a construction site on a hot summer day on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, April 30.

There are two ways to measure the heat wave that has settled over South Asia in recent weeks. One is by the mercury. Temperatures were 8 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across India in April, following the hottest March on record. New Delhi has reached 114 degrees. In Pakistan’s Balochistan province, thermometers have topped 120 degrees.

The extreme weather has ignited urban garbage dumps, shuttered schools, and scorched crops. It also fits projections by the United Nations panel of climate scientists that regions like South Asia and the Horn of Africa face increasingly dire conditions in this century.

The other way to measure the heat wave is by the abundance of ideas emerging to deal with it. India and Pakistan are becoming hubs for new thinking about urban design, agricultural practices, and public policy in the world’s hottest regions. Private innovators from five regional countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan – are partnering with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology to promote climate entrepreneurship.

“We are doing some things right, but it’s time to up our game – because we have to live with the heat,” Chandni Singh, senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, told the BBC. “There is so much innovation internationally that we can learn from.”

South Asia’s response to the heat wave reflects two trends in the global debate about climate change.

One is that the threat is driving an era of innovation. The World Bank estimates that the world needs $90 trillion in green investments by 2030. Those funds, it concluded, could potentially generate four times their value in additional economic activity.

The other is that the private sector is stepping up to help achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. As the Boston Consulting Group noted in a March report, that provides an opportunity for governments and investors to think differently by “looking at companies as providers of solutions rather than only sources of emissions, focusing on new sources of revenue over rising costs, and seeking transformative models rather than incremental improvements.”

In India, that thinking is reflected in strategies the government is developing with local officials, civil society organizations, and international groups to adapt to severe heat events in 23 states and 130 cities. The plans are modeled after an early warning system adopted by the city of Ahmedabad that has successfully reduced annual heat-induced fatalities since 2013. They also include a range of heat-reducing strategies gaining favor globally, like better-ventilated building designs, heat-reflecting roofs, and new materials for cooler roads.

India’s neighbors are developing similar approaches. A study published in the journal Atmosphere this week showed that rising temperatures are compelling the region’s governments to find the right mix of ideas: technology sharing, urban green spaces, changes in architecture and infrastructure, labor reforms, early warning systems, water-saving community-based agriculture, and investment in innovation.

From Pakistan to Sri Lanka, the study found, adapting to changing weather patterns requires enabling communities to adopt an ever-widening range of tools to keep their cities livable. That starts with seeing beyond the predicament of climate change to the potential for adopting new ideas.