Beyond the Kikiaola Harbor on the western side of Kauai, the beach that surrounds this lush Hawaiian island becomes ragged and, in some places, nearly disappears.  

It does the same on Wailua Beach toward the east, with enough erosion that condominium owners have petitioned to bring in sandbags to protect their property from the approaching ocean. The state highway department is scrambling to protect the Kuhio Highway, the main artery around the northeastern side of this 600-square-mile island.

A bit farther north, Aliomanu Road shows how easily the ocean can smash exposed asphalt. 

Policymakers, residents, and advocacy groups have debated what to do about that roadway, which has at times partially crumbled into the sea. 

Still, this “garden isle”’ of Hawaii – the oldest, and arguably lushest, of the state’s island chain – does not have the dramatic scenes of erosion that have come from nearby Oahu, where at least one home has literally toppled into the ocean. Much of the coastline erosion here is happening incrementally, in this place and that, while many beaches still appear picture-perfect. Even as scientists predict increasing sea-level rise and erosion, many community members still question the immediate impact of climate change.

All of this makes Kauai emblematic of many coastal regions across the United States, from California to North Carolina. Yet Kauai’s success at bringing community groups together also makes the county an important model for those communities trying to figure out how to balance the needs of homeowners, infrastructure, beach preservation, and ecology in a world increasingly shaped by climate change.

“Kauai, in my opinion, is the county that the other counties should be looking to for guidance,” says Chris Conger, vice president of Sea Engineering Inc., a coastal and marine consulting company that works throughout the Pacific. “They are just so thoughtful and so practical, and so caring about their people and community and resources.”

Indeed, over the past decade, the island’s planning department, businesses, homeowners, and community groups have worked together – sometimes through yearslong policymaking exercises – to establish some of the most climate-aware building ordinances in the country.

This doesn’t mean that everyone on the island agrees with policy decisions. Advocates on all sides still argue for more dramatic action in different directions.  

But Kauai is one of the first municipalities in the country to connect building setback laws to scientists’ climate-based sea-level rise predictions. With the rest of Hawaii, it has become the first region in the country to legally mandate sea-level rise disclosures during real estate transfers. Kauai’s government has also revisited shoreline rules and zoning priorities, and together with civil society has started to reimagine the way that the island – with its growing year-round population – will develop over the 21st century.  

And because of all of that, even critics of the government will acknowledge that Kauai officials are working toward a sort of balance that will be necessary across the country to adapt to what the island’s director of planning, Ka’aina Hull, calls “the slow creep of climate change.”

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

Erosion is a concern across Hawaii. Here, at the edge of the Poipu Bay Golf Course in Kauai, erosion has made the cliff edge dangerous.

Shifting coastlines

One key challenge for Kauai – as for other coastal areas – is that even without climate change, coastlines shift. 

Native Hawaiians knew this and moved their living structures with the land. But with Western development came a Western belief in permanence, scholars point out. Over the past century, residents and visitors settled near the oceans; built homes, roads, and factories; and basically expected that the landscape would remain static.

But it doesn’t. Especially not with climate change.

According to estimates by scholars at the University of Hawai‘i, warming oceans and rising sea levels will increase the rate of erosion on Kauai by more than 50% by 2050. It could mean the loss of most, if not all, of the island’s beaches by 2100.

“We see climate change in many forms here, and it is intensifying,” says Charles Fletcher, interim dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and the former chair of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission. “One of the ways we see impact is in retreating shorelines. If you are a beach and the ocean is rising, you need to migrate; the shoreline needs to move landward. But right there are roads and homes and communities.”

For years, to protect their land, property owners would install some sort of sea wall, made out of concrete or sandbags or other materials, which kept waves from eroding the land. But the problem with sea walls is that they stop beaches from moving landward, essentially drowning them under the rising water, and they divert wave energy farther down the coast, coastal experts say, making erosion even worse on the next swath of land.  

“A beach that is trying to migrate landward running up against a sea wall will erode away and drown, essentially,” Dr. Fletcher says. “And we have lost beaches, miles and miles of coastline that used to have beautiful white beaches on them. Now we just have sea walls with the water lapping right up against the wall.”

This is a particular issue in Hawaii, Dr. Fletcher and others say, because beaches are owned by everyone and form an essential part of local culture. The Hawaii Constitution enshrines the public’s right of access to all beaches and shorelines in the state, below the “upper reaches of the wash of the waves.” There are no private beaches even for the fanciest of oceanfront homes.  

“That’s extremely important to Hawaii, just the identity of who we are,” says Mr. Hull, the planning director. “It’s why we have coastal advocates. ... It’s where our communities go; it’s where they go on the weekend, where they fish, where they die. There are cultural practices still adhered to in many of these areas.”

A sea wall might protect the property behind it, he says. “But that beach is gone forever.”

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

On Kauai, Hawaii's new building rules require homes and hotels to be built farther from the coast. There is a debate about when – if ever – to use seawalls to protect coastal property from erosion.

Mitigation strategies

In 2020, the state of Hawaii outlawed most sea wall construction, realizing that this climate mitigation effort caused a domino effect of other problems. But that decision left some homeowners – and communities – in a perilous situation.

If individuals didn’t try to protect their properties from the sea, they could lose their homes. The ocean could also inundate property cesspools, a situation that could bring about another sort of environmental damage. 

Much of the state’s road network is by the coast, as are military bases, and government officials have long argued that there needs to be some protection of this infrastructure, if temporarily.  

But Kauai already has experience with “temporary” sea walls, many of which were built by homeowners years, if not decades, ago. The litigation necessary to force their removal, government officials say, is significant. 

This convinces some environmental advocates, such as Gordon LaBedz, chair of the Kauai chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit environmental organization focused on protecting oceans and beaches, that the inevitable response to climate-sped erosion is to shift people away from the coast and to have the government move roads inland. Any other decision, he points out, means the end of Kauai’s beaches.

“Beaches are the lifeblood of Hawaii,” he says. “If we lose our beaches, we lose the lifeblood of our economy.”

“A very long journey together”

But moving inland through “managed retreat,” as it has become known, is not the only solution, says Mr. Conger, the coastal consulting executive. On Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, for instance, hotel companies do regular beach restoration, replacing sand to combat erosion. He also suggests that some shoreline stabilization techniques, such as groins that extend perpendicular from the shore and help control sand movement, could provide shorter-term fixes.

“We’re all walking a very long journey together,” he says. “It’s not going to be one step. We’re promoting smaller steps with more time to adapt and manage and change, and others are saying, ‘Let’s just take the giant steps now.’ I don’t think we have to take the step to 2100 today; let’s take a smaller step and plan.” 

For Kauai planner Mr. Hull, this has meant “yes, and.” While the Kauai government still works to protect some roadways, he and his department have also started to look for property on Kauai that could be offered as an exchange for people who might want to give up their ocean plots, he says. Recently, the county government purchased 400 acres on the western side of the island, with the idea of using a section of it to allow for these sorts of land swaps. Mr. Hull says he is also exploring agricultural zoning ordinances on the island and would like to start conversations about whether it might be possible to loosen some of the restrictions on farmland development.  

But, he says, if there is any lesson from Kauai, it’s that none of these steps can happen without a huge amount of community engagement and conversation. After all, coastal erosion is not the only climate change impact here. Kauai has already seen the effects of super-charged storms and intense rainfall, both connected to climate change. In 2018, for instance, the northern part of the island saw some 50 inches of rain in 24 hours – an unprecedented deluge that caused both landslides and flooding. 

Sea-level rise has also caused inland flooding on many of the Hawaiian Islands when storm surges pushed seawater back through drainage pipes. Making changes anywhere requires balancing all sorts of interests, from tourists and hoteliers to community activists and homeowners. 

“Kauai has taught us a lot,” says Stefanie Sekich, senior manager of the Coast & Climate Initiative of the Surfrider Foundation. “The biggest lesson, especially in an island state, is to stop building in harm’s way. The second biggest lesson learned: Work with the community.”

Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters

Members of the Jordanian parliament attend a session on the proposed cybercrime law, in Amman, Jordan, July 27, 2023. The legislation is expected to land on the king’s desk by early next week.

Jordan, long a West-friendly outlier in a troubled region, may soon have the most restricted internet and speech in the Arab world.

A cybercrime law that conservative elements in the king’s hand-picked government introduced just last month – and are pushing quickly to passage – is being flagged by detractors as a “legislative coup.”

They say it contains vague language that could curb speech and internet freedoms, creating a “throwback to martial law days.”

The legislation was passed by Jordan’s Parliament last week and by the unelected Senate, which made minor revisions, on Tuesday. It is expected to land on the monarch’s desk by early next week, a pen stroke away from becoming law.

By threatening to sabotage King Abdullah’s promised democratic reforms, the legislation is placing the monarch at the center of Jordanians’ struggle for rights and freer speech.

How he responds will be for many liberal Jordanians the final word on whether Jordan is heading toward democratic reform or full autocracy.

Although Jordanians are barred from insulting the king in public, they have enjoyed the freedom to criticize and lampoon king-appointed governments and public officials, freedoms that grew with the spread of the internet and social media over the past 15 years and were taken for granted by many as a right.

New government tool

The draft cybercrime law is an update of an existing law and provides the government with new tools it says it needs to protect the kingdom from hacking, cyberterrorism, cyberbullying, and pornography.

In interviews with local media, the king-appointed Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh has pledged that the law will not curb freedoms and serves to “protect the public,” insisting the government is open to criticism.

But, legal experts warn, that criticism may soon land you in jail.

Several articles in the 40-article bill deal with online expression, criminalizing – without defining – such things as “fake news,” “character assassination,” “hate speech,” and “contempt of religions.”

If the legislation is signed into law, anyone could be held criminally liable for posting, reposting, or “liking” speech the government deems to fit these categories. The law holds individuals legally responsible for comments left by others on their posts, social media pages, or websites – even on past posts that others flag anew.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

Jordan's King Abdullah listens during his meeting on Capitol Hill, May 11, 2022, in Washington. Jordanian lawmakers passed a law July 27, 2023, that dramatically curbs freedom of speech online, rights groups say. Opponents of the law are looking to the king to reject it or send it back to be amended.

The law gives the government the authority to detain a suspect for up to a year before trial.

Mohammad Qteishat, a legal expert and former director of the Jordan Media Commission, which regulates the media, says the law is an assault on speech and expression “in violation of the Jordanian constitution.”

“The text is very flexible. You cannot find explanations for these terms in the law,” says Mr. Qteishat, who terms the law a tool for widening government authority.

“This will protect the government, the prime minister, and governmental departments from criticism,” he says, “and gives the general prosecutor the ability to sue anyone who criticizes the government.”

As of this writing, it is not clear whether this article would be criminalized.

Impact on reforms

The law requires any social media platform, website, or app that has 100,000 or more Jordanian users or followers to open an office in Jordan and submit to regulations. Failure to comply allows the government to severely restrict sites’ internet bandwidth, a tactic already used by security services to disrupt Facebook Live and other livestreaming apps in times of protests.

“They want Jordan’s media silent [just as in] any other Arab autocratic state,” says Nidal Mansour, of the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists.

The law also deals with what some Jordanians are calling a “deathblow” to the king-ordered political reforms launched last year to win over an apathetic and skeptical public, such as allowing political activism on university campuses, encouraging young people to join political parties, and allowing political parties to take part in government.

Pro-palace reformists say they have been “blindsided.”

“We have been fighting like hell to convince Jordanians that this time the king and the state are serious about reforms and that they should take part in political life,” says one, requesting anonymity. “Who is ever going to take part in public life now? We will have lost Jordanians’ trust for generations.”

The government rushed this bill through an extraordinary summer session of Parliament while many prominent figures are outside the country and much of the international community is consumed with the war in Ukraine and the political crisis in neighboring Israel.

The U.S. State Department offered a rare criticism of Jordan last week, noting that “this type of law, with vague definitions and concepts, could undermine Jordan’s homegrown economic and political reform efforts.”

Pro-palace reformists are even more blunt.

“How can we claim we are moving towards democracy?” says a former culture minister, Mohammed Abu Rumman.

Economic cost

The law will likely impact the kingdom’s local tech industry and the thousands of Jordanian computer engineers who work remotely for international companies and collectively manage the majority of Arabic online content.

“If you are pursuing a law like this, you are not encouraging companies to come here and work,” says Issa Mahasneh, director of Jordan Open Source Association, a Jordanian nonprofit that advocates for tech users’ rights.

“This creates so much uncertainty. If I have a food-delivery app, am I now legally liable for bad restaurant reviews left by users?” he said. “This will impact both free speech and the IT [information technology] sector.”

The biggest cost, former officials and economists say, is to the Economic Modernization Vision, the grand strategy to save Jordan’s floundering economy formed by hundreds of businesspeople and experts from 2021 to 2022 at the behest of King Abdullah.

The vision calls for attracting $60 billion in foreign and local investment over a decade to finance thousands of startups and initiatives and create 1 million jobs for Jordanians.

Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters

The parliamentary session on the cybercrime law, in Amman, Jordan, July 27, 2023.

“You are stopping Jordanians from being part of global initiatives, and you are dissuading investors from coming to Jordan,” says Maen Qatamin, former minister of investment and economist. “On what basis are you going to attract $60 billion of investment in a climate of oppression?”

Majdi, an unemployed business administration major seeking an investor for a startup business, says he attended his first-ever protest last Friday against the law.

“Once this law is passed, none of us will be able to criticize an official for failing to live up to their duty or [critique] a failed policy or even the economy,” says Majdi, whose name was changed for legal protection. “We will all pay the price with our future.”

Domestic power play

With such broad opposition, why is the government rushing the law to passage? Observers say the motivations are domestic and reflect fear.

The kingdom is facing 24% unemployment and 40% youth unemployment. Its central bank is raising interest rates alongside the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep the Jordanian dinar pegged to the U.S. dollar.

Jordan is expected to negotiate a new International Monetary Fund loan at the end of 2023, which may require unpopular measures such as lifting water, electricity, or wheat subsidies.

“We are in the middle of a serious economic crisis,” says Oraib Rintawi, a former member of a royal political reform committee. “When you don’t have solid things to offer the public to convince them that the future will be better, one alternative is restriction and ignoring people’s concerns and criticisms. It’s a protective but destructive measure.”

Former lawmakers and observers also say the law is driven by hard-line and autocratic elements who are chafing at public criticism and wish to claw back speech gains and protect their economic and political interests from scrutiny.

“These individuals want to take us back to the era before internet, before social media, before the IT revolution,” says former Parliament member Rula Hroob, a founder of the Labor Party and promoter of political reforms. “They are trying to put every single Jordanian into a time machine and send us back 20 years.”

Former officials and members of Parliament say the law will “make it impossible” for reformist, opposition, and independent candidates to discuss issues or gain a following, ensuring that conservatives and security services dominate Parliament and future governments.

“Instead of releasing pressure from this pressure cooker, you are closing the valve, turning up the heat, and making it boil,” warns Mr. Qatamin, the former investment minister.

Last hope: the king’s pen

State-controlled media outlets and those pressured by the government have so far glossed over the cybercrime law’s impact on speech freedoms, leaving most Jordanians unaware of the full impact.

Legal experts, reformists, journalists, and young Jordanians say their last hope is an intervention by King Abdullah, to either reject the law or demand it is amended.

On Monday evening, the Arabic hashtags #the_cybercrime_law_is_against_the_king’s_vision and #the_king_is_protector_of_freedoms were trending in Jordan.

“This is a chance for the king to stand with the people against those who would destroy his reforms and the economy,” says one former minister.

“If His Majesty returns the law, it will be a victory for civil society and it will encourage reformists within the state to continue pushing,” adds Mr. Abu Rumman.

But an approval of the law, some Jordanians claim, would expose the king’s reform promises as hollow – and put the country on the path to autocracy.  

“All we want to do is to build, innovate, and give back to our country,” says Majdi, the business major, “and now we are being stopped.”

When Arley Gill, head of Grenada’s National Reparations Committee, envisioned his work seeking repair for centuries of enslavement on the Caribbean island, one thing was certain: It was going to be a long slog.

But just two years since its founding, the task force is fielding calls from individuals around the world looking to make amends for ancestors who benefited from enslavement in Grenada. 

“If you had told us this would be happening, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Mr. Gill says, crediting a burgeoning movement of descendants of enslavers getting wise to their family’s history and taking action. 

In Grenada’s case, the momentum began with a public apology made by former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan and her family in February at a ceremony on the island. They apologized for their forebears’ enslavement of people in Grenada and their enrichment from it, pledging an initial contribution of £100,000 ($130,000) toward education on the island.

“She opened the doors for people to feel comfortable” coming forward, says Mr. Gill.

In April, Ms. Trevelyan and journalist Alex Renton co-founded an organization called Heirs of Slavery. Its eight British members have ancestors who benefited financially from slavery in various ways: managing sugar estates in Jamaica, Barbados, or Tobago; receiving compensation from the British government for “lost property” – enslaved people – following abolition; and advocating for the preservation of the institution of slavery to maintain their profits. 

Heirs of Slavery says wealth and privilege trickle down through generations, and that there are possibly millions of Britons whose lives were touched by money generated from enslavement. 

The group aims to amplify the voices of those already calling for reparations, like Caribbean governments. And it supports organizations working to tackle the modern-day consequences of slavery, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, from racism to health care inequities. But it’s also setting an example for others, drafting a road map of reparative justice for enslavement – at the individual level. 

CAROLINE IRBY/COURTESY OF ALEX RENTON

Alex Renton is a descendant of enslaver Sir Adam Fergusson. Mr. Renton co-founded Heirs of Slavery.

There’s no “right” way to go about it, the group says. It can mean apologies, donations, or difficult conversations with relatives. 

“Shining a light is always a good idea,” says Mr. Renton, who published a book in 2021 about his family’s ties to slavery, donating the proceeds to a handful of nongovernmental organizations in the Caribbean and England. “You don’t have to feel guilt about it; you can’t change the past,” he says, paraphrasing Sir Geoff Palmer, a Scottish Jamaican scholar. “But we should feel ashamed that up to this point we’ve done nothing about the consequences” of slavery.

Start anywhere

Most Africans trafficked to the Americas and Caribbean during the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended up in the West Indies. The wealth generated there through unpaid, brutal, forced labor funded much of Europe’s Industrial Revolution and bolstered churches, banks, and educational institutions. When slavery was abolished in British territories in 1833, the government took out a loan to compensate enslavers for their lost “property.” The government only finished paying off that debt in 2015. 

The family of David Lascelles, the 8th Earl of Harewood, for example, received more than £26,000 from the British government after abolition in compensation for nearly 1,300 lives, while “the enslaved people were given nothing,” Mr. Lascelles says. He joined Heirs of Slavery upon its founding, eager to collaborate with peers doing work he’s been focused on for decades.

“People like us have, historically, kept quiet about what our ancestors did. We believe the time has come to face up to what happened, to acknowledge the ongoing repercussions of this human tragedy, and support the existing movements to discuss repair and reconciliation,” reads the group’s webpage.

For Ms. Trevelyan, that meant a very public apology – and resigning from journalism to dedicate herself to activism. It was a slow windup to get here, she says. She first learned about her family’s ties to the slave trade in 2016 when University College London published an online database of compensation.

But it took covering the murder of George Floyd for the BBC and realizing the many legacies of slavery in the United States – like modern-day policing – before she questioned what the effects might look like in the Caribbean, where her family enslaved people.  

COURTESY OF ALEX RENTON

A property inventory of an ancestor of Alex Renton includes enslaved people.

For Mr. Lascelles, a second cousin of King Charles, making repairs included in 2014 handing over digitized copies of slavery-related documents discovered in the basement of the Downton Abbey-esque Harewood House to the National Archives in Barbados, where much of his family’s wealth originated during enslavement. 

“What can we do that is actually useful and wanted – not to solve our own conscience?” he says he asks himself. He and his wife have dedicated two decades to working with communities around Harewood House, where there is a large West Indian population, including investment in the arts and education. 

“When we started, there was no one else doing this. It was a big leap in the dark,” he says of reparative justice. “But we decided, let’s be hated for what we do, rather than for doing nothing.” 

“Listen and learn”

The Caribbean Community, a political and economic bloc, came out with a 10-point plan for reparations in 2014. The groundbreaking document, which calls for a “full formal apology” as its first point, was met broadly by silence in Europe. 

But, apologies by the Dutch prime minister last year and the king this summer, and the burgeoning efforts of Heirs of Slavery.

“We can try to encourage people to do something, to figure out ... where to jump in,” says Mr. Lascelles. “We don’t have the power to change government policy, but we can make a lot of noise.”

COURTESY OF ALEX RENTON

A portrait of enslaver Sir Adam Fergusson.

The group is planning a conference this fall that will bring together families that benefited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade along with representatives from Caribbean governments and Black Europeans advocating for reparations. In the meantime, members are meeting with local advocacy groups to better understand what they want – and how Heirs of Slavery might assist.

At a recent meeting, “there was one man who said he wanted to hear what we had to say, but said he saw us as a distraction. And I understand that,” says Mr. Renton. “Maximum humility is necessary on our part. We are here to listen and learn, not try to take the lead and be the boss.”

Mr. Renton’s family has made donations to youth development and educational organizations, but he doesn’t see it as compensation. “I see this as work of repair. If I sold everything I own, I couldn’t begin to compensate for the lives my ancestors destroyed,” he says. 

One of those organizations is the North Street Educational Development Fund, run by Donald Reynolds in Kingston, Jamaica. “We need more schools, and more children in them,” says Mr. Reynolds, who supports the reparative model of direct donations to NGOs. “We need more hospitals. ... Electricity in rural areas. That is what we need – help develop[ing] our country, not money lining government pockets, or apologies, or chitchat.”

Heirs of Slavery estimates 70 people have contacted it since its April launch, asking for guidance on making repairs.  

And the Caribbean Community’s reparations plan is currently under review, says Mr. Gill in Grenada. He says the work of Heirs of Slavery “is adding a new, important dimension to reparative justice.” 

This story was produced as part of a special Monitor series exploring the reparations debate, in the United States and around the world. Explore more.

When drought hit Kenya three years ago, Agripina Mutuka had to slash her family’s diet to just one meal a day.

This was the most Ms. Mutuka, a widow who has been working as a farmer for 10 years, could afford after the drought dramatically reduced her earnings from the sale of her agricultural produce. “I used to fill 15 bags of maize each harvest. After the drought, I can barely fill three bags,” says Ms. Mutuka, who provides for her four children and two grandchildren in the agricultural region of Kakamega.

Kenya is going through its worst drought in 40 years, drying up the country’s once lush farmlands and leaving 4.4 million people in need of food assistance, according to official estimates. 

On top of the damage wrought by the climate emergency, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also pushed up prices of staple imports such as oil, wheat, rice, maize, fertilizers, and oilseeds.

So when an American nongovernmental organization called 100 Humanitarians invited Ms. Mutuka and others in her village of Lanasawa to a meeting to discuss a possible solution for the dire food situation, she did not think twice.

The NGO introduced Ms. Mutuka and 30 of her neighbors to garden towers, 4-foot-tall durable mesh fabric cylinders, filled with soil and punched with holes a few inches apart into which seedlings are planted to produce a dense vertical garden, capable of growing 120 vegetables and herbs – all in a diameter of just 3 feet.

Ms. Mutuka and her neighbors were trained in planting, maintaining, and selling the vegetables from the garden tower. 

“I fully embraced the idea of the garden towers,” she recalls. “Its model provided convenience in terms of land, as only a small portion is used to grow crops.” 

The NGO’s local staff followed up with each family, helping them to maximize the growing potential of the garden towers and troubleshoot as necessary. 

Moffin Opilio

Agripina Mutuka's garden towers are replete with vegetables in Lanasawa village, Kenya, July 23, 2023.

Two years after first learning about them, Ms. Mutuka now has eight garden towers. She uses two to feed the family, and in the others she grows vegetables to sell. 

“The money from the sale of the garden towers’ vegetables is enough to sustain my family,” she says.

Cheap and easy to use

According to World Bank data, the number of Kenyans suffering from severe food insecurity has been increasing since 2015. 

The 100 Humanitarians founder and executive director, Heidi Totten, had been piloting garden boxes as a sustainable solution to hunger in Kenya after seeing one of them in the capital of Nairobi.

During her experiments with garden boxes, though, she found that they were beset by termites and weren’t hardy enough to survive the weather. So she replaced the boxes with hard-wearing mesh towers and found them far better adapted to the climate and pests in Kenya. The mesh lasts for 10 years, and the soil needs replacing every four years.

A year after the towers were introduced to Lanasawa, the results were already encouraging: Each tower could feed a family of five to six people one meal of vegetables per day. Families could sell any excess vegetables to supplement their incomes, and some earned extra money from sewing and assembling the mesh cylinders. 

Moffin Opilio

Agripina Mutuka sells vegetables grown in her garden tower to her neighbor in Lanasawa village, Kenya, July 23, 2023.

Each garden tower costs about $20, including soil and plant seedlings, and each family needs two to grow enough to meet its nutritional needs. 

So far, 10,000 garden towers have been distributed for free to families most in need of support. Others with the means to buy them are encouraged to purchase the towers directly from the NGO.

Shifting mentalities

Marissa Waldrop, a program director with 100 Humanitarians, says a garden tower is not only cheaper than a traditional vegetable plot, but more sustainable, too.

“It is easy to set up, uses less space, and takes about two months for the vegetables to grow to maturity,” she says. “Also, the project uses less water, because water that would otherwise go to waste travels downwards through other plants in the tower. And soil used in the garden towers holds nutrients better than soil lying on the ground.” 

Despite the fact that the towers use significantly less water than a conventional garden, water remains a challenge in the current conditions, says Ms. Totten. 

“We are researching possible ways of irrigating these garden towers while also saving [water] for other personal use. One way would be to drill boreholes to help give access to clean water,” she says. 

100 Humanitarians plans to build and distribute 5,000 garden towers, serving 2,500 families, every year. It could do more if it had more money, says Ms. Totten. And it seems as if the local government in Kakamega might be interested.

“To help people eat more sustainably if weather patterns stay as they are, we need to introduce a variety of plants, encourage people to grow their own food, and consider cutting down on food waste,” says David Omwenga, an agricultural officer with the Kakamega County government. 

“The garden tower is a sustainable growing system that provides an easy way to grow fresh and healthy produce at home,” he points out.

Lanasawa’s administrative chief, Kepha Lusasi, agrees. “Thanks to the garden towers, people now are very independent. ... We barely have any beggars or people who go without food,” he says. “It’s as if the mentality has shifted.”

This story was published in collaboration with Egab. 

AP

Morocco's Nouhaila Benzina heads the ball during a Women's World Cup soccer match between South Korea and Morocco in Adelaide, Australia, July 30.

Since its soccer matches began in July, the FIFA Women’s World Cup has seen many firsts. The biggest one may be this: Nouhaila Benzina, a player on Morocco’s team, was the first woman to wear a hijab on the pitch. Just a decade ago, Islamic head covering was banned by FIFA. Now, since the ban was lifted in 2014, Ms. Benzina’s choice to wear a hijab during a game has revealed a newfound respect for religious minorities, at least in global sports.

To some degree, her courage will help push back against widespread and often-violent discrimination against people of faith – or no faith – in many countries. “Seeing hijabs represented at such a high level will allow other countries to see that I’m not an oppressed person who wears a headscarf,” Yasmin Rahman, a soccer player for Saltley Stallions in Birmingham, England, told the BBC. “You want everyone to be accepted as they are.”

In many societies with religious diversity, that desire for peaceful inclusion runs deep. In June, it was expressed in a unanimous vote by the United Nations Security Council. The 15-member body passed a resolution asking countries to improve their interreligious dialogue in order to help end religious hate. The resolution also requires the U.N. secretary-general to report next year on how impingements on religious freedom are threats to international security.

In a sign of how attitudes have changed, Ms. Benzina did not even speak about her breakthrough moment after her team played its debut game in Australia. Her religious expression, the hijab, was for her to judge. She spoke to the media only about the game she had played and the games ahead for her team. Her religious freedom in the sport she loves was just accepted as a fact, just as she accepted other players who were not wearing a hijab. Peace is made from such respect.