Amid cratering poll numbers, ongoing mass protests in the streets, and a recent military escalation on multiple fronts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought the comfort of a friendly chat on Israel’s Channel 14, considered a safe space for the long-serving premier’s messaging.

Yet even on the slavishly adoring TV outlet, the gravity of Mr. Netanyahu’s – and Israel’s – current reality broke through.

“Listen, the feeling after three months [back in power] is not great. Not great,” Yinon Magal, host of the channel’s “The Patriots” panel show and a well-known Netanyahu supporter, began last Thursday. “There was euphoria that we won an amazing victory after five elections [in less than four years], that we beat them, that we did it. … But it seems that something here isn’t working out.

“Economically, there isn’t any good news. If anything, the situation isn’t very bright. Security, we see [what’s happening],” the host continued. “There’s a sour feeling in general.”

Just over 100 days at the helm of the most far-right governing coalition in Israel’s history, Mr. Netanyahu, a famed political survivor, is under pressure from all sides, with questions mounting about whether he can keep his country united and secure, his extremist partners at bay, and his government intact.

The government’s sole signature issue – a controversial plan to overhaul the judicial system – faces an uncertain future amid intense domestic and international opposition. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated for 15 straight weeks against the move, which critics contend would hand the government unchecked power.

Mr. Netanyahu was forced late last month to declare a “time out” in advancing the legislation, and talks are now underway with the opposition seeking what he has termed “wide consensus” on reform.

President Joe Biden has made his feelings clear, urging Mr. Netanyahu to “walk away” from the issue, adding that he would not be invited to the White House “in the near term,” and that Israel as a whole “cannot continue down this road,” a stunning reproach from the country’s most important ally.

Oded Balilty/AP

Tens of thousands of Israelis join a weekly Saturday-night protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, April 15, 2023.

Economic experts and financial markets appear to agree. The shekel has depreciated in value, foreign investment (particularly in the vaunted tech sector) has slowed, and late last week Moody’s, the credit rating agency, downgraded its outlook for the country from positive to stable, citing the “deterioration of governance.”

Adding to the sense of drift, tensions and violence particularly between Israelis and Palestinians have escalated in recent weeks, as the Jewish Passover festival and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan converged.

Clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque was a contributing factor in rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria over the course of a handful of days earlier this month. Attacks against Israelis have continued unabated, with 19 people killed since the start of the year (and the start of the government’s term). Deaths on the Palestinian side have spiked too, with at least 90 killed since the start of the year, most during Israeli military operations in the West Bank yet including many civilians, according to the B’tselem human rights group.

Likud’s plummeting support

As Mr. Magal, the right-wing television host, hinted, the public mood has turned on Mr. Netanyahu.

Recent poll numbers from multiple surveys have shown voters abandoning his Likud party, which is losing anywhere from a quarter to more than a third of its support. Over two-thirds of the public give the current government a “bad” performance grade, and if elections were held today it would decisively lose its parliamentary majority to a wide coalition of opposition parties.

Most alarming for Mr. Netanyahu, his “suitability” ratings as prime minister have declined precipitously to 34%, and he is now trailing at least one centrist challenger, Benny Gantz, the former army chief and defense minister. According to political analysts, Mr. Netanyahu hasn’t been this unpopular for over 15 years.

“The numbers are abysmal for the government as a whole,” says Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster and fellow at the Century Foundation think tank. “But the drain is mostly from Likud. … There’s no question potential voters are leaving the party and taking ‘one step to the left,’ which is to Gantz’s party.”

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, April 10, 2023. In recent surveys his “suitability” rating as prime minister has declined precipitously, to 34%.

One such voter is Eliran, a married father of three from central Israel. Eliran, who requested that his last name not be used, voted Likud over the course of five elections dating back to 2019, including late last year. For Eliran and his five siblings – all self-identified right-wingers, all now former Likud supporters – their anger with the government is due primarily to the judicial overhaul push.

“They only spoke about ‘reform’ to the judiciary [before the last election] in general terms, we never saw the details of what they eventually proposed,” he says. “I’m all for reform … but you can’t bring the Supreme Court to its knees, concentrate all power in the government, and turn the prime minister into a king.”

Eliran and his family in fact joined the anti-government street protests, spurred on as well by the polarizing rhetoric of Mr. Netanyahu’s ministers tarring protesters as “traitors” and by the more recent firing of the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, after he called on Mr. Netanyahu to halt the reform push.

“It’s not the same Bibi,” Eliran says, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “I don’t feel that he’s in control, he’s just sitting on the [prime minister’s] chair …. and the extremists [in government] are pulling the wheel.”

“The sense here is that everything is being lost, and that things are getting worse … with no end or bottom in sight to this crisis,” he adds.

He was “with certainty” not voting Likud again, with Mr. Gantz the most probable alternative.

Damage control

Mr. Netanyahu has belatedly taken note of his dire position and attempted to repair some of the damage.

In addition to the enforced “pause” in the judicial overhaul, he reportedly exiled his firebrand son (and senior adviser) Yair from both the country and social media, and reversed the firing of Mr. Gallant. Israel’s response to the rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza was measured, say defense analysts, a bid to avoid escalation. And despite rightwing pressure, Mr. Netanyahu last week ordered a halt to Jewish visits to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound during the final 10 days of Ramadan.

Ariel Schalit/AP

Israelis protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system in Tel Aviv, Saturday, April 15, 2023.

Far-right government officials have begun grumbling about these and other measures, which they see as a “capitulation” to terrorism and an abdication of their election promises.

“I’m trying very hard to be loyal and not attack the government I’m a member of, but it just can’t go on like this,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told supporters. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote too that he was “often … frustrated by certain decisions” and constantly weighed whether to resign his post. 

Both Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir, along with two dozen other coalition officials and thousands of ultra-nationalists, marched to an illegal West Bank settlement outpost last week in a show of defiance – not least toward their own government’s policies.

Mr. Netanyahu has taken to blaming the previous government for the “crooked inheritance” it bequeathed on the security front, and the protest movement for weakening national unity. Yet the public’s patience is wearing thin, to say nothing of his more extreme coalition partners demanding that greater force be deployed.

Collective plight

Political analysts are clear that no matter their mutual displeasure, Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition partners will almost certainly stick together for now and avoid a snap election, precisely because of their declining poll numbers.

“I don’t see any signs they want to disperse this government, since they won’t have many options in the future and most of them won’t return to power,” says Tal Schneider, chief political correspondent for the Times of Israel.

Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s tepid efforts so far at repairing the damage of recent months, the prospect of further turmoil and chaos will almost certainly remain, she adds.

“It all still looks like a circus. He doesn’t control his coalition members or ministers or police or military reservists or protesters in the streets,” Ms. Schneider says. “They stuck themselves with this judicial reform, and they can’t seem to get out of it.”

Dar Yasin/AP/File

Kashmir Press Club building is pictured through a closed gate after it was sealed by authorities in Srinagar, India, on Jan. 18, 2022. Fahad Shah, editor of popular local news site The Kashmir Walla, was arrested the following month.

Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah appeared before a packed Jammu courtroom on April 13 via video conference, looking frail and frustrated. Editor of The Kashmir Walla and longtime contributor for The Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Shah has spent more than a year in jail, detained on various terrorism charges. The primary case stems from an article published on his site 11 years ago. Police say the opinion piece provoked terrorism in Kashmir, a heavily militarized Himalayan region that India has systematically stripped of its freedom in recent years.

On screen, Mr. Shah stood next to scholar Aala Fazili, author of the offending article. Both are booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), often referred to as India’s terrorism law, and have been waiting months for their day in court. 

Proceedings lasted about 20 minutes, and Mr. Shah did not get a chance to speak. Instead, he pleaded not guilty in a statement prepared from Kot Bhalwal jail. The trial picks back up May 22, when witnesses will be called to testify.

The start of Mr. Shah’s trial draws attention to India’s far-reaching anti-terror law. Indeed, Mr. Shah is one of several journalists waiting for justice under the stringent UAPA, which critics say uses national security fears to sidestep justice and silence government critics. Kunal Majumder, India representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, says the number of incarcerated journalists in India is at a 30-year high, and the majority are being tried or investigated under UAPA.

“This clearly indicates a pattern,” he says. “In some instances, like with Mr. Shah, multiple investigations under UAPA have been opened against journalists, making it immensely difficult for them to get bail.”

Journalist Geeta Seshu from Free Speech Collective has seen UAPA used liberally against journalists since 2018.

“They operate without a shred of evidence, provide little or no chance of bail, and finally, after long years of struggle, result in poor conviction rates,” she says. “Each instance erodes press freedom, case by case.”

An escalating trend

In 2010, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) booked journalist Shahina KK under UAPA after she interviewed two witnesses in the bomb blast that took place in Bangalore in 2008. Her report highlighted lapses in the police investigation. 

“Shahina KK was one of the first journalists in the country who was accused of violating UAPA in relation to her reporting,” says Mr. Majumder. “She is still trying to clear her name after 12 years.”

Media watchers say this trend has ramped up in recent years. In 2018, photojournalist Kamran Yousuf was arrested under UAPA. He was acquitted by the terrorism court last year. Rupesh Kumar Singh of Jharkhand was arrested twice under UAPA for alleged Maoist links – first in June 2019, then again in July 2022 under the same charges. 

In 2020, journalist Siddique Kappan from Kerala was arrested while on his way to report on the gang rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh. The police arrested and charged him under UAPA before he could report the story. That same year, at least three other journalists were charged under the UAPA. 

In October 2021, photojournalist Manan Ahmad Dar was arrested under terrorism charges, though he recently got bail, with the court calling the charges against him “mere assumptions.” It can take years to get bail under the UAPA, an act which criminal lawyer Areeb Uddin Ahmed argues does not follow normal tenets of India’s justice system. He says provisions in the UAPA make it notoriously difficult for courts to grant bail. 

“As a principle of law, bail is a rule not an exception. Whereas in this act, bail is a rare exception,” he says. “The sole objective is to restrict their personal liberty.”

Mr. Shah has posted bail twice for UAPA-related charges, only to be immediately re-arrested under the same law. From February to May last year, he was arrested a total of five times.

Due process or tool of control?

Supporters of the anti-terror law reject accusations of abuse, saying Mr. Shah’s case follows due process.

“When you misuse your cover as a journalist to work against the state, militate against the state, to create discontent against the state, obviously the state is going to react,” says Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser with the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.

"It is absurd to suggest that journalists as a class are being targeted,” he adds. “Journalists in India are not above the law. Journalists are not some entitled lot who will say that the law does not apply to them.”

But to Free Speech Collective’s Ms. Seshu, the connection between the UAPA usage and government intimidation is clear.

“In the recent past, anti-terror laws have been used against journalists who cover conflict, which is one of the most difficult of journalistic tasks,” she says. “Terror cases against them seek to de-legitimize their work … and act as a warning to all journalists to stay in line.”

This kind of legal persecution “takes a toll,” she adds, not just on the accused but their entire professional network. 

The Kashmir Walla staff have certainly felt Mr. Shah’s absence. The team has juggled court appearances and daily reporting duties, all while worrying for their safety. Some journalists have left the industry altogether. Others have been more careful about where and what they report. 

“The message it sent to journalists was to self-censor,” says one local journalist who wished to remain anonymous for their protection. “Fahad’s case, unfortunately, ensured that the message was well received. No one reports critical stories anymore.”

There has been one heartening development since Mr. Shah’s trial kicked off – on Thursday night, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir released its judgment quashing the use of India’s Public Safety Act (PSA) to detain the editor. Local police invoked the PSA on March 15, 2022, claiming Mr. Shah was filled with hatred against the union of India, but the court found these claims baseless. The court observed that police “used both the expressions ‘Public Order’ and ‘Security of the State’ with a wavering mind and uncertainty,” adding that the order “cannot sustain the test of law.”

Soutik Banerjee, an advocate assisting Mr. Shah’s legal team, describes the ruling as a positive development, writing in a statement that it “exemplifies that there has been arbitrary and malafide use of extraordinary laws against Fahad. … Only time will tell if UAPA charges will also apply.”

Editor’s Note: Fahad Shah is a regular Monitor contributor. We, along with other news outlets, are advocating for his release. You can find our joint statement here.

Julio Cortez/AP

Davida Brook, Justin Nelson, and Stephen Shackelford (left to right), attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, exit the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, after the defamation lawsuit against Fox News was settled, April 18, 2023.

Fox Corp. agreed Tuesday to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit over false claims aired by Fox News about voting machines used in the 2020 election. The deal was announced on what would have been the first day of a high-profile trial in a Delaware court that was widely seen as a test of First Amendment protections for news organizations. 

Pretrial revelations about how Fox fed misinformation to its viewers about the 2020 vote to maintain its ratings had already embarrassed the country’s most powerful conservative media outlet. And Dominion’s attorneys have claimed victory for its defense of the truth. But the settlement – among the largest ever paid by a media company – doesn’t appear to compel Fox to admit wrongdoing or issue public apologies.

Still, it is not the end of the matter for Fox, which will have to contend with additional related lawsuits and damage to its reputation over the weeks and months to come.

Why did Fox agree to the settlement? 

Media defamation lawsuits rarely go to trial. Plaintiffs face a high bar to prove intent or recklessness by a news organization, and judges often dismiss suits for this reason. But many experts believed Dominion had a strong case against Fox, bolstered by pretrial rulings by Superior Court Judge Eric Davis that weakened Fox’s defense that it was simply reporting newsworthy allegations. Those allegations were the unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies, amplified by Fox hosts, that Dominion’s machines had rigged the 2020 election by flipping votes to Joe Biden. Judge Davis wrote that “evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”

Dominion had been demanding $1.6 billion in damages, and up until the last minute, Fox seemed to be preparing for a public defense of its reporting. Jury selection was finished on Tuesday morning, after which attorneys were due to make their opening statements. Behind closed doors, the two sides were instead finalizing a settlement.

Julio Cortez/AP

Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems speak about the settlement with Fox News outside the courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, April 18, 2023.

That Fox chose to pay Dominion such a large sum points to its legal vulnerability, says George Freeman, director of the Media Law Resource Center and a former in-house counsel for The New York Times. “They obviously had calculated what the odds were on what a jury would have done,” he says.

A trial would also have meant more negative coverage of Fox, on top of the depositions and internal communications already released, and would have forced many of its hosts and executives to testify under oath.

Mr. Freeman says that while Fox hasn’t apologized for its actions, money speaks louder than words. “$787 million is a pretty implicit admission of something.”

In a statement, Fox acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” It also said the settlement reflected its “continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

What further legal action could follow? 

Fox still faces a $2.7 billion defamation suit from Smartmatic, another voting-machine company that was the target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories in 2020. That case was filed in New York, and a judge has denied Fox’s motions to dismiss it. Smartmatic quickly seized on the Dominion settlement to vow to continue its legal fight so that Fox could be held “accountable for undermining democracy.” 

In addition, Fox shareholders have sued the company for failing in its fiduciary duties in its coverage of 2020 election falsehoods. And a former producer for host Tucker Carlson has sued Fox for allegedly coercing her into giving false testimony to attorneys for Dominion; Fox has said the producer was fired for sharing privileged information.

Dominion has separately sued MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump supporter who spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, including on frequent Fox appearances. In his deposition, Fox Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch said that Mr. Lindell was booked on shows because he was a major advertiser.

Dominion is also suing two other right-wing news outlets, One America News Network and Newsmax, for their election coverage. The Dominion court filings show that Fox executives fretted about losing their audience to those other outlets in the wake of the 2020 election, if they didn’t promote Mr. Trump’s rigged-election narrative.  

What does the settlement mean for Fox News and its political coverage? 

The lawsuit has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Fox News and its executives, including Mr. Murdoch, its patriarch, who built a media empire in Australia and the United Kingdom before Fox News launched in 1996. He has a history of settling lawsuits out of court, including substantial payments to litigants in the U.K. whose phones were hacked by Murdoch-owned newspapers, a scandal that forced him to close a popular Sunday newspaper in 2011.

Some analysts say such payouts to litigants are the cost of doing business for media tycoons like Mr. Murdoch and are unlikely to change how he runs his news outlets. Fox News is a profitable division of Fox Corp., delivering high ratings that support ad revenues and cable fees.

While Fox is certain to tread carefully in any future election-related coverage that involves Dominion and other companies, hosts like Mr. Carlson continue to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as does Mr. Trump as he seeks the GOP nomination in 2024.

“It’s still possible to spread conspiracies about an election,” says Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University who studies conservative media.

What may prove more lasting is the damage that the Dominion suit has done to Fox’s reputation as a news organization, she adds. Its election-night calls and straight news reporting had been respected in Washington because there was supposed to be an internal firewall from Fox’s opinion shows and their political agendas. But the revelation that Fox executives sidelined news reporters who challenged Mr. Trump’s lies has exposed the firewall as a fiction. 

In one such instance, cited by Judge Davis in a pretrial ruling, after a Fox reporter fact-checked a Trump tweet about Dominion, Mr. Carlson messaged fellow host Sean Hannity, saying, “Please get her fired. ... It’s measurably hurting the company.”

“Fox has played a very important role in conservative media because it’s so visible and it was treated as a legitimate news organization,” says Ms. Hemmer. Now, Fox “has no one left to impress. The only pressures are coming from the right.” 

War has turned a pristine, white-sand beach near the Ukrainian Black Sea resort town of Odesa into a crime scene.

The victims? Dolphins. The alleged crime? Ecocide, commonly understood as intentional mass damage to the environment and wildlife. And Ukraine is determined to hold Russia accountable for it.

Last year saw a sharp rise in the number of unexplained dolphin deaths and strandings, says Ivan Rusev, a marine biologist with a passion for Black Sea dolphins. Behind him, on the wall around the beach hut that he uses as an office, sits macabre evidence of the slaughter – six skulls that once belonged to bottlenosed dolphins and porpoises.

The Ukrainian authorities blame Russian military activity in the Black Sea for the unusual death rate among marine mammals. Russia has launched missile strikes on Ukrainian air defense batteries on the edge of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, and laid mines in coastal waters (as has the Ukrainian navy).

Russian naval vessels belonging to the Black Sea fleet, operating from the Crimean port of Sevastopol, also make constant use of acoustic sonar signals, which biologists say interfere with dolphins’ natural sonar that they use as an echolocation tool.

The combination of military sonar and bombardments mean that “it is as if the dolphins were left without eyes or ears,” says Dr. Rusev, the director of research at the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park, south of Odesa. “They have no chance to orient themselves. They become very thin. Their immune systems becomes weak. They may die for another reason, like an infection. But the first problem is the bombardment.”

“Dolphins blow themselves up on sea mines. Russian military ships use sonars that have had a huge impact on dolphin life,” adds Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine’s environment minister, in a video interview from Kyiv.

Also contributing to the dolphins’ fate is pollution, says Mikhail Son, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Biology in Odesa. Satellite images show a large number of oil slicks in protected areas. “About 30% to 40% of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve is newly polluted” by war-related items such as missiles, a sunken Russian ship, fuel leaks, shells, and other toxic materials, he says.

Dominique Soguel

Ivan Rusev and Iryna Vykhrystiuk walk in the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park in Odesa, March 2, 2023. The pair say Russia’s war on Ukraine has disturbed nesting patterns for many birds in the park and led to a rise in Black Sea dolphin deaths and strandings.

Who is to blame?

It is not easy, Mr. Strilets acknowledges, to arrive at accurate estimates of how many dolphins have perished in the Black Sea since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But Dr. Rusev, who has spent years studying the creatures and their habitat, offers a telling statistic.

Before the war, he says, in a normal year, he would find about three dead dolphins stranded along a 28-mile stretch of beach. Since the Russian invasion, he has found 38 dolphin corpses in just the four-mile sliver of dune-fringed coastline that the Ukrainian military allows him to monitor.

At the special ecological crime office in Odesa, prosecutor Volodymyr Frantsevych says that the Ukrainian authorities have officially registered 117 dolphin deaths along the stretch of Black Sea coastline that their troops control, and that these deaths comprise the core of the ecocide case he is building against the Russian military.

They represent only a small fraction of the number of deaths experts believe to have occurred: The large majority of dolphins that die sink to the sea floor undetected. But the numbers are not the point, argues Kyiv-based zoologist Pavel Gol’din.

“If they really died due to military action by the Russian army, it doesn’t matter how many there were,” says Dr. Gol’din. “If I say 1,000 died, this is a terrible crime. If I say 100, that’s also a terrible crime. The number itself is not evidence of a cause or evidence of a crime.”

But, he adds, “if there is mass death of cetaceans, this can disrupt the whole ecosystem. The dolphins are invaluable.”

Dr. Gol’din performed autopsies on some of the dolphins stranded in Ukraine, and sent inner ear and cranial samples to laboratories at Italian and German universities for analysis. The results of their examinations, expected by year’s end, should help clarify the causes of the deaths.

Courtesy of Ivan Rusev

A Black Sea dolphin washed ashore at the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park after the start of the Russian war in Ukraine.

For now, Dr. Gol’din stresses, multiple hypotheses are on the table. But he finds some recent live strandings intriguing. Typically, when a dolphin or a porpoise is stranded alive this means it is ill and likely to die within hours, he says. But this year, two of 16 dolphins stranded alive on Ukrainian beaches recovered and returned to the sea. “This is highly unusual,” Dr. Gol’din says. “This may be indirect evidence of [temporary] blast injury.”

Odesa prosecutor Mr. Frantsevych invoked Article 441 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which defines ecocide as a crime, last July and says he is gathering evidence against specific Russian naval vessels and even their crews.

“We have information from Ukrainian naval intelligence units about the routes of the Russian Black Sea fleet during the period that those dolphins were found,” says Mr. Frantsevych. “We also have information about the sailors on those ships during their rotations. At the national level we have procedures to hold them to account … in absentia.”

More than just dolphins

Ukraine wants Russia to pay for the war’s environmental toll and is building up a dossier of evidence to that end. The dead dolphins are the most emotive symbols of the environmental damage the war has done to Ukrainian nature, but the list of environmental crimes of which the Ukrainian government is accusing Russia is a long one, including multiple forms of air, water, and soil pollution.

“We have recorded more than 2,000 cases of environmental damage” worth more than $50 billion, says Mr. Strilets, the environment minister. And that is just a start.

Courtesy of Igor Ischchuk

An aerial view shows the estuaries of the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park on the Black Sea in the Odesa region. An unusually high number of dolphins have turned up dead on the shores of the park since Russia unleashed war on Ukraine.

More than a third of Ukraine’s forests – almost 3 million hectares – have been either damaged or destroyed by the war, Mr. Strilets adds. The charred pine forests of Sviatohirsk, the scene of heavy artillery exchanges between Russian and Ukrainian forces that set trees ablaze, stand out as one of the most jarring examples. The conflict has sparked fires, limited the availability of firefighters, left large stretches of forest mined, and spurred logging to meet fuel needs.

Russian attacks on oil and chemical facilities, unleashing toxic fumes, are also blamed for contributing to a major increase in air pollution – 50 million metric tons of emissions in 2022, up from 2 million from industrial and other activities in 2021.

“In Ukraine, before the war, the environment was never a big topic,” says Evheniia Zasiadko of Ecoaction, an environmental nongovernmental organization helping the Environment Ministry track environmental damage. “Now the priority has totally changed. When you start monitoring the consequences, you understand that even if the war were to stop in a few months, you would feel the consequences for a very long time.”

The government has built a dedicated app allowing its digitally savvy citizens to crowd-source instances of environmental damage, and the Environment Ministry has put a price tag on each alleged offense.

“We believe that Russia should pay for every crime committed in Ukraine,” says Mr. Strilets. “We lost our biodiversity, we lost our natural resources. No amount of time, no amount of money will restore this.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

Sargassum, the invasive, sewage-scented seaweed piling up on beaches across the Caribbean, isn’t something most people look upon kindly.

But for Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez, his first encounter was “love at first sight.” “Everyone said, ‘It smells horrible!’ and I remember thinking, ‘There’s something more here,’” says Mr. Vazquez, the founder of Sargablock, a small company in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula that transforms the algae into construction blocks.

A record amount of sargassum is turning crystal blue Caribbean coast waters brown and smelling of rotten eggs as it decomposes in tourist spots from Mexico to Caribbean islands and now along the beaches of Florida’s east coast.

Researchers blame pollution, overdevelopment, and global warming for the seemingly never-ending seaweed invasion that’s also present in the Atlantic.

In 2015, as part of his gardening business, Mr. Vazquez launched a beach cleanup service to remove the leafy seaweed. But, as its arrival intensified, he started considering how to turn it into something useful, and in 2018 conceived a way to use sargassum in building blocks. Today he not only sells those blocks to construction projects, but also builds affordable housing in his community.

“When I look at Sargablock, it’s like looking in a mirror,” he says, comparing his company to conquering his personal struggles, including addiction, and briefly, homelessness: “When you have problems with drugs or alcohol, you’re viewed as a problem for society. No one wants anything to do with you. They look away.” 

“When sargassum started arriving, it created a similar reaction. Everyone was complaining,” he says, seated in the shade of his small nursery on the highway that connects tourist destinations Cancún and Tulum. He gestures to a stack of the reddish building blocks – the sargassum transformed. “I wanted to mold something good out of something everyone saw as bad.”

Whitney Eulich

Sargassum piles up on a stretch of beach in Tulum, Mexico, in early March. The invasive seaweed surprised many this year with its unseasonably early arrival.

His seaweed concoction is sturdy 

It’s hard to escape sargassum in Mexico’s Yucatán. In early March, beachgoers navigated thigh-high mounds of algae waiting for removal in Tulum, while travelers arriving in Cancún discussed excursions to cenotes, natural swimming holes, instead of the ocean. Radio programs buzzed about the record arrival of seaweed washing ashore: “Don’t forget, you can still enjoy the beach breeze, even if you can’t get in the water,” one radio announcer encouraged.

The state government of Quintana Roo collected 19,000 tons of sargassum from beaches in 2020; 44,000 tons in 2021; and 54,000 tons last year. Researchers say the amount could nearly double this year, and it arrived months ahead of what is typically the start of  sargassum “season” in May.

“It’s a problem that won’t be resolved easily,” says Edgar González, a national environment, energy, and resilience officer at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Mexico. “Climate conditions can’t be controlled in the short-term.”

Mr. Vazquez mixes 40% sargassum with other organic materials, like clay, that he then puts it into a cement-block-forming machine. The blocks bake in the sun for several days before they’re ready to use. He says he used 3,000 tons of sargassum in  2021, 2,000 tons last year. By early April 2023, he’d already used 700 tons.

The UNDP selected Mr. Vazquez’s work transforming sargassum for their Accelerator Lab, which identifies and broadcasts creative solutions to environmental and sustainability challenges globally. The idea is that some of the most timely and creative responses come from locals living the repercussions of environmental dilemmas firsthand.

“None of the multiple feasible solutions [to sargassum] depend on a single person,” says Jorge Munguia, head of solution mapping at UNDP Mexico’s Acceleration Lab. But, “we have benefited from [Omar’s] imagination and his ability to approach and carry out all the work he has done.”

Whitney Eulich

Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez names his Sargablock homes after his mother, Angelita, who never had a home of her own.

A joint study by universities in England and Ghana found that blocks made with organic material like sargassum can last for 120 years. The ecology and environment offices of Quintana Roo concluded the blocks are safe for use in construction. 

Mr. Vazquez grew up surrounded by nature – and the hardships of poverty. It shaped him into someone who takes action, he says. He remembers singing for spare change on the street as a child, before his single mother moved the family to the U.S. as unauthorized immigrants. They picked grapes in California, and Mr. Vazquez dropped out of high school to double down on what he considers his profession: gardening.

“There’s this idea of the American dream. But, for me, personally,” he says, “I was always asking God to let me come back to Mexico.”

It took almost 30 years to do so. “Coming back, it took a lot of time to adapt – the salaries are different. Sometimes people are skeptical” of Mexicans returning from the U.S. he says. He worked odd jobs, like selling timeshares to tourists passing through the Cancún airport. Eventually he invested his savings – $55 at the time – in a nursery.

Sharing his “Mexican dream”  

As his nursery grew, he was making a name for himself creating a small but promising solution to the sargassum challenge. He gained attention through appearances on Shark Tank Mexico and a locally organized Ted Talk. Although he was living the “Mexican dream,” something was missing. He reflected on when he was happiest in his life and it came down to two things: Memories of spending time in his grandparent’s simple adobe-block home in Jalisco, and being with his mother, who had sacrificed so much for him before passing away in 2004.

“We never had a house of our own, we didn’t have much food or clothes. I didn’t have a father,” he says. When he built what he expected to be his nursery’s new office with Sargablock, he designed it as a replica of his grandparents’ home and named it after his mother, Angelita.

Whitney Eulich

Elizabeth Del Carmen Bonolla Lopéz is seen in front of the house that was donated to her by Sargablocks creator Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez, in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.

“The first thing that came to my mind and heart was to donate houses to women like my mother, who are doing everything in their power to make it work,” he says.

Enter Casas Angelitas. Using Sargablock, Mr. Vazquez has built and donated 14 homes to families in need, many single moms, but also elderly couples and parents supporting kids with disabilities.

On a recent afternoon Elizabeth Del Carmen Bonolla Lopéz sits on the front porch of her home snuggling Chaquiste, a chihuahua named after the mosquitos found around piles of sargassum. Two years ago, during the pandemic, she was hit by a car while riding the bicycle from which she made her living, selling corn and fried pork rinds. 

A local women’s organization posted a call for help on social media, hoping to raise enough money to pay for some of Ms. Del Carmen’s medical bills and purchase her a new bike. Mr. Vazquez saw the post and offered to build her a new home. By December 2021 she’d moved out of her flimsy palm frond shelter into the two-bedroom Sargablock home.

“I’m grateful. It is a blessing to know Omar,” she says. “I think for him this is a way to fill the emptiness of growing up without a home, without a father. He understands hardship.”

She admits feeling hesitant at first about his offer: Was it going to have a strange odor, like decomposing sargassum on the beach? It doesn’t.

“Now when I see sargassum piling up,” Ms. Del Carmen says, “I think, ‘That’s no pest. It’s my roof.’”

AP

A sign indicates the availability of a home to rent in Philadelphia last year.

Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a broad moratorium on evictions of renters. The move was meant to help stem the spread of the virus, and it was supposed to be temporary. Now it has also sparked a debate on new ways to deal with evictions in general.

“All of a sudden, the reality of how precarious so many tenants are across the United States … really hit home for people,” said Colleen Carroll, an organizer for Eviction Representation for All in Portland, Oregon, in a recent local radio interview. “And in the two years where COVID and COVID protections kind of cracked open possibilities, lots more jurisdictions have either created pilot programs or passed real full civil-rights counsel measures.”

An average of 3.6 million eviction cases are filed each year in the United States, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. They come with a disproportionate effect on Black and Hispanic women. They also disrupt communities, schools, health services, and local businesses. And they clog courts and cost tenants and landlords billions of dollars annually.

During the pandemic, 43 states imposed their own moratoriums on evictions. In addition, taxpayer money for rental assistance swelled. The federal government deployed $46 billion to help tenants facing financial hardship – including another $521 million in reallocated funds from the Treasury Department last week. Those measures cut evictions by more than 50% nationwide.

That relief was short-lived. As the eviction bans and other time-limited interventions have expired, eviction filings have gradually climbed back up. In January, the Biden administration set out the Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights for fair and safe housing. Proposals to set rent controls and build more affordable housing are moving through some state legislatures.

The most significant changes are those that balance protections for tenants and landlords without decreasing incentives for new investments in rental properties. More landlords are embracing a mission-driven approach to providing tenants with resources to avoid eviction.

In many cities, like Portland, Oregon, broad coalitions are uniting to provide legal representation to tenants to promote mediated alternatives to eviction courts. The benefit of community-level solutions is measurable. A new University of Texas study based on national eviction data from 2001 to 2016 found that “an addition of ten community nonprofits per 100,000 city residents is associated with ten percent reduction in eviction filing rates.”

Eviction has multiple drivers. But as the costly, short-term pandemic remedies for housing insecurity ebb, new measures that promote trust over adversity provide a scaffolding of compassion for communities.