“Antakya. Antakya. Antakya.” Yakup Cemal repeats the name of his hometown as he clutches his heart with his fists. It comes out more like a wail than the spoken word. 

Mr. Cemal, who is 78 and nearly blind, was displaced from Antakya after living through two catastrophic earthquakes Feb. 6 that ruptured the land across southern Turkey and northern Syria.

The first of the quakes devastated Antakya, but he and his wife of 57 years survived in their bedroom. Their home was left uninhabitable, and they lost their synagogue, their street, their neighbors. In all, over 50,000 people died, with Antakya among the worst hit, and most agree the official toll is a vast undercount. Once known as Antioch, Antakya has been a crossroads of civilizations for over two millennia. Today it sits in nearly complete ruins.

When Mr. Cemal talks about his childhood home, with its courtyard at the center, and about growing up so easily among Christians, Muslims, and Jews, his wife hands him a napkin to wipe his eyes. “Even though we are different, we share a common culture,” he says. “I only hope my life lasts long enough so that I can return home.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“Antakya. Antakya. Antakya.” – Yakup Cemal, repeating the name of his hometown

Just as much as he longs for home, his home needs him. At the time of the earthquake, Mr. Cemal was one of only 13 Jews left in Antakya. The Jewish community’s president and his wife died in the quake, and the rest were evacuated – bringing to a close the continuous practice of Judaism here for nearly 2,500 years. Mr. Cemal, now in Istanbul, is not alone in asking, how will the spirit of coexistence that defines modern Antakya be altered by the quake?

Six months since the destruction, a grief hangs in air still thick with the dust of rubble, and immediate recovery turns to the long road to reconstruction. Many religious communities, civil society groups, and business leaders are focusing their attention on not just the physical city but the spirit of harmony that marks Antakya – at a time when that kind of unity feels out of reach in so many parts of Turkey and beyond.

“The world is getting more multicultural, despite the policies to stop it,” says Anna Maria Beylunioğlu. She is part of an online cultural platform called Nehna, which, she says, means “us” in Arabic. Originally founded to educate about Arabic-speaking Christians in Antakya, it has now pivoted to preserving the city’s multicultural memory. “People are moving, and we are constantly faced with different cultures in different contexts. So we have to learn how to live together,” she says. “And this idea of a mosaic in Antioch, even if sometimes exaggerated, is a reference point for the world.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Men have coffee in Antakya’s Long Bazaar, where a few shops have reopened since the earthquake.

To see the destruction here is to be overwhelmed by scale. In swaths, hardly anything is left standing in the once bustling city of 400,000. Six months since the quake, almost no homes have been rebuilt and no services, like water or sewer, have been restored. The residential west side of the Orontes River is defined by emptiness, save constant police patrols where entire apartment blocks collapsed and are being razed. In their place are gaping lots with nothing except scatterings of former life: leather shoes, children’s umbrellas, kitchen plates. Everyone here knows someone who died. It’s not uncommon for people to know dozens of people who died.

Across the affected regions, which include 11 Turkish provinces like Hatay, whose capital is Antakya, more than 313,000 buildings were destroyed. The United Nations Development Program says the total volume of rubble equals 100 million cubic meters, 10 times more than the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The Turkish government estimates damage will exceed $103 billion, representing a ninth of Turkey’s 2022 gross domestic product.

At least 3.3 million people were displaced across the region. Those who have stayed in Antakya are living in the minority of homes without damage or in shipping containers if they are fortunate. The worst off are in tent cities, many of them informal, erected on sidewalks or empty blocks, the skeletons of standing buildings casting shadows around them.

For these residents, the focus remains on daily survival. Hüsne Bekler, a mother of two children under age 2, is living in a tent set up on a former residential block that was razed and cleared. Her elder child, Elizan, plays in the dirt with a spoon. Her main preoccupations, she says, are swatting mosquitoes away from the children and using the bathroom at night. “May no one ever have to experience this,” she says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“May no one ever have to experience this.” – Hüsne Bekler, a mother of two children under age 2 who lives in a tent on a former residential block where the buildings have been razed and cleared

In the face of such basic needs, it can feel frivolous to prioritize the cultural heritage of ancient Antioch. But it’s also a way to channel grief in the course of rebuilding lives, says Emir Çekmecelioğlu, who lost two of his closest friends and his uncle, aunt, and 12-year-old cousin. “We lost our friends; we lost our families,” says Mr. Çekmecelioğlu. “So we can’t lose the city, too.”

Antioch was founded as an ancient Greek city in 300 B.C. and has been ruled by an array of empires and occupiers ever since. After 300 years, it became the Roman province of Syria – a center of religion, politics, and learning where Roman emperors wintered. In A.D. 637, it came under Muslim control. Later, the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. When that empire broke up following World War I, it was controlled by a French mandate as part of Syria until Turkey annexed it in 1939.

Antioch was always a crossroads linking Asia to the Mediterranean along the historic Silk Road. Many of its citizens speak Arabic as easily as Turkish. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all found a home in Antioch since late antiquity. It’s considered a “cradle of Christianity,” the place in the New Testament where “Christians” were first named.

The Greek orator Libanius declared in the fourth century of Antioch, “If a man had the idea of traveling all over the earth, not to see how cities looked, but to learn their ways, our city would fulfill his purpose and save him his journeying.”

Modern Antakya, with its warm climate and fertile land, is marked by tolerance, apparent in everything from its cuisine to the religious heritage imprinted in the old city – all of which today is gone. Down the street from the Cemals’ empty synagogue, its doors shuttered after the Torah scrolls were saved, stands the centuries-old Habib-i Neccar Mosque, once a church and later considered the first Muslim place of worship in Anatolia, which constitutes most of modern-day Turkey. The toppled finial of the minaret dangles over the standing walls.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

This formal tent camp in Antakya provides shelter for some of those who lost their homes in the Feb. 6 earthquake.

A few blocks away is the Greek Orthodox church, which had been rebuilt after an 1872 earthquake and collapsed completely again Feb. 6. To access it today requires climbing over three mounds of jagged rubble. After making the trek, one finds nothing more than a desolate patio with a tent and chairs. The church’s cross, recovered from the wreckage, is propped up against the ruins.

“The many different religious groups have been living together for a long time, and together we have suffered,” says Dimitri Doğum, head priest of the Antakya Greek Orthodox Church. His parish lost 40 members out of 1,200. Echoing many residents, he says the world has forgotten them. “There are many other cities that have been destroyed by this earthquake, but Antakya needs special attention because it’s an example worldwide.”

That’s not to say there weren’t and aren’t tensions here – between Sunni and Alawite Muslims, or among different Christian communities, or across religions in general. Antakya might celebrate its religious diversity, but Turkey itself is riven by political ideologies under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the earthquake region is no exception. 

Recently there has also been a backlash against Syrian refugees, since that country’s civil war has pushed millions fleeing the conflict into Turkey. Days before Turkey’s presidential election in May, candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost to Mr. Erdoğan, arrived in Antakya – just 20 miles from the Syrian border – to capitalize on anti-Syrian sentiment, saying he’d like to “show them the door.”

Some question whether Antakya’s cultural diversity can be restored. Emre Erdoğan, a professor of international relations at Istanbul Bilgi University, says that with symbolic buildings devastated, attracting the religious communities who were attached to them will be difficult. “All these people will be replaced by ‘average’ Turks who are looking for new opportunities,” he says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Children carrying water head to an informal tent camp on open land between destroyed and damaged apartment buildings. They have electricity but must collect water from a central point.

But if history is a guide, hope outweighs pessimism regarding the city’s multicultural future. Antakya has been destroyed repeatedly by war, crusades, and natural disasters. Several massive earthquakes have collapsed the city throughout history, including one in 526, considered among the worst on record, that killed 250,000.

“I deeply believe that the city will come back, and it’s not just some kind of banal optimism. It’s really the history of the city that basically tells us that no matter how devastated it is, it will recover,” says Andrea U. De Giorgi, co-author of “Antioch: A History.” “And the folks in Antakya have been real upholders of this idea that this is a place where all this can coexist.”

Now, a new crop of citizen activists has emerged to defend that idea. 

Civil society almost always reveals a resilience and generosity of spirit in disasters, according to Rebecca Solnit in her book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which synthesizes decades of literature on disaster reconstruction from the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 to 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While many fear that “in disaster we become something other than we normally are,” she writes, whether that be helpless or bestial and savage, we ultimately “remain ourselves for the most part, but freed to act on, most often, not the worst but the best within.”

In the early days after the destruction, Turks organized pop-up kitchens, provided shelter to strangers, and delivered food, hygiene products, tents, and clothing donated from across the country. Those with no relation at all to Hatay left their jobs and traveled for days to come help.

But the cultural heritage of Antakya adds a complex layer to reconstruction.

Ayhan Kara recalls the “horrifying noise” of buildings collapsing, like crashing waves. After surviving, he filmed the destroyed city for eight hours, gathering evidence, he says, of the faulty construction blamed for the scale of the tragedy. When rescue crews failed to arrive in the earliest days, he, like so many locals, tried to reach those buried under rubble with his bare hands. On day 10, after the funerals of his relatives, he says, he called surviving friends and contacts and founded a new nongovernmental organization called Hatay – Our Common Concern.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“We know that we lost a lot. But the soul of Hatay is somewhere there, so we should catch it. ... If we lose the soul, we lose everything.” – Ayhan Kara, founder of Hatay – Our Common Concern, who refashioned rubble into a new ceiling for his office at the local bus company he runs

It’s a platform of lawyers, artists, local businesspeople, and historians demanding that when Antakya is rebuilt, it is not just constructed in a practical sense but with the spirit of coexistence at its core. The group’s logo includes the symbols of the three Abrahamic faiths. 

“You stare at those ruins, and it is easier to go away and settle down and forget about us,” Mr. Kara says. “We know that we lost a lot. But the soul of Hatay is somewhere there, so we should catch it.” Mr. Kara has collected rubble and refashioned it as the new ceiling for his office in the local bus company he runs. “If we lose the soul, we lose everything,” he adds.

In the days after the earthquakes, President Erdoğan, running for reelection, promised to rebuild housing within months – universally considered not only unachievable but also far too fast to be safe or to safeguard different areas’ history and culture. It put residents of Antakya on the defensive.

On April 6, when authorities were trying to clear rubble, including what many locals feared were remains of historic buildings that could never be recovered, Mr. Kara joined activists who formed a human chain to stop them.

Mr. Çekmecelioğlu, a research assistant in architecture at Mustafa Kemal University, is a member of Hatay – Our Common Concern and created a subgroup of about 20 people that has dubbed itself The Volunteer Conservationists. They took turns in clusters of three or four protecting sites from the bulldozers that work daily clearing the town. 

On a spring day in the centuries-old Long Bazaar, riddled with rubble and puddles, he smiles widely as he takes a photo of a man painting a wall in off-white. Weeks earlier, The Volunteer Conservationists stopped authorities from clearing rubble and likely damaging that wall in the process – one side of a jeweler’s store that has been there for decades. “It’s a small sign of hope,” he says, referring to the fresh coat of paint.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

This view of damaged and destroyed apartment buildings shows a crew knocking down structures and cleaning up the rubble.

Now these activists, many of whom only met because of the earthquake, are organizing conferences and meetings and networking with historians, urban planners, and archaeologists as the future of the city takes center stage.

The central government has hired a lead architect to draw up preliminary blueprints for rebuilding Antakya. They include such ideas as tearing down the homes along the banks of the Orontes River, where the foundation is essentially riverbed, and creating parkland in their place. Another idea involves moving residents into various satellites outside the city center and dispersing cultural and administrative entities to entice residents to new locations.

The government has pledged to rebuild the historic core, but what’s still under discussion is whether residents will – or should – return to it. Mehmet Güzelmansur, a member of the National Assembly for the opposition Republican People’s Party in Hatay province, says he supports a plan to rebuild the historic core but move citizens out of it, since it runs along one of the world’s most active fault lines.

For Tuğçe Tezer, an urban planner whose Ph.D. focuses on Antakya, the historic center must also include the residents or else the city will become nothing more than a museum. “For the 10 years that I’ve been studying Antakya, I’ve noticed the same man every day in the same seat at a cafe in the same gray suit,” Dr. Tezer says. “If we can’t manage to keep him there, it’s no longer Antakya.”

She has no idea if he survived, though, she adds later.

As the future cityscape of Antakya is debated, a looming concern is that, no matter how it reemerges, residents will stay away. Many fled to live with relatives in Istanbul, Ankara, Mersin, or other cities in the region where they are establishing roots.

But the business community sees a role for itself in drawing them back. On the outskirts of the city, Abud Abdo, the CEO of textile manufacturer Hateks, the largest private employer in Antakya, has built 120 container homes on company property to house employees. (He employed 750 before the earthquake; 80 died and several hundred have moved away.) Farmer Elif Ovalı is trying to create opportunities for local producers to export to larger markets outside Hatay. Her farm is also used as a much-needed gathering place, where ideas like a new “container restaurant” have sprung up.

Hikmet Çinçin, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of Antakya, says the organization has not surveyed its 10,000 members to know how many survived. But he knows many blue- and white-collar workers have left, including many with small businesses like key-makers or painters who “sustain life,” he says, and whom the city needs if it is to recover.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“We are finding the strength and the willingness to start our company up again as quickly as possible out of a sense of responsibility. It’s the only reason.” – Abud Abdo, the CEO of textile manufacturer Hateks, the largest private employer in Antakya, who has built 120 container homes on company property to house employees

But the act of rebuilding is more complicated than starting at zero; it’s starting at unimaginable loss. Ethem Selçuk has worked for his family business, making cheeses and tomato pastes and growing olives, since he was 7 years old. He and his siblings grew up in their shop in the heart of the Long Bazaar, a place he calls “magical” for its embodiment of Antakyan coexistence.

On Feb. 6, his store collapsed. His parents both died in the earthquake. So did his only brother, with whom he ran the business, and his only sister. His staff of seven either died or moved away. He was left alone. “In the early days, I considered abandoning it,” he says. “The pain is too big; it’s too large.” But his daughter, Gülendam, urged him to continue working, says Mr. Selçuk, with a gentle smile as he puts his arm around her.

“He was so sad,” Gülendam Selçuk explains. “And he loved his job. I thought this is the only way he will overcome his grief.”

Now she, an architect, and his son, a dentist, are helping him reestablish the business on their family farm in the hills outside the city, along with assistance from a nephew in medical school. They focus on accepting the small blessings. “He is working less, so now we can have breakfast together on Sunday mornings,” Ms. Selçuk says.

Mr. Selçuk is like many residents who are driven by a sense of responsibility to those they lost and to the city they love. Outside the city center, a new Long Bazaar, dubbed the “container bazaar,” has been erected. Sales are scant, with just one or two customers a day, says Mehmet Özkan, a graphic designer working in a friend’s shop selling kömbe, a typical cookie from the region. “All of us are homeless; nobody is living here. So it’s not easy,” he says. “But I’m here because this is my city. I was born here, and I will live here.”

Every building on his street, in the modern section west of the Orontes River, came down except his, which, although still standing, is uninhabitable. “We are angry. We are asking ourselves, ‘Why did this happen? Why are we still living?’ But we are the lucky ones. We are living.”

Rebuilding, restarting, returning are, at once, the hardest tasks and the easiest.

Adnan Fatihoğlu’s mosque is in ruins. But the local imam of the Alawite branch of Islam, which made up a significant portion of the population of Hatay, sits on a bench outside a container now serving as his office near the mosque to talk about how Antakya moves forward.

Initially he went to Ankara with his wife. Now back, he is connecting with dispersed members of the mosque over Facebook. Some have found homes far away; others are living in tent cities and containers nearby. He urges them all to return when they can. He’s under no illusion. “The next 10 years are going to be very difficult,” he says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“The next 10 years are going to be very difficult. ... But our tradition of living together won’t be lost forever.” – Adnan Fatihoğlu, imam of Antakya’s centuries-old Habib-i Neccar Mosque, which is part of the Alawite branch of Islam

He waves to Ayhan Yoğurtçuoğlu, a tire repairman who lives a few blocks away and joins the imam on his bench. Mr. Yoğurtçuoğlu moved in with a brother in Istanbul after the quake but only for the first two months. “It’s like I came running back to Antakya,” he says. “The hardest part is having nowhere to gather, but we will start from scratch.”

“As if we are newly born,” adds the imam.

In fact, despite the surrounding destruction, a slice of the quotidian begins to take shape as the sun sets. A group of women sits on the remnants of front steps. Others have set up folding chairs on the street, and together they share a meal. In an undamaged apartment complex across the street, a man is reading on his balcony.

Amid this scene, many things are different. More men have returned. Without schools or leisure spaces and with basic services still interrupted, women and children have stayed away. And aftershocks continue to convulse the earth. “But our tradition of living together won’t be lost forever,” says the imam.

It simply can’t be, says Mr. Cemal, from afar in Istanbul.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

An older couple walks past rubble in Antakya’s Long Bazaar, where a few shops have reopened.

Mr. Cemal’s daughter Soli, who took in her parents, says it’s painful to watch them suffer. “You’d think it would get easier as time goes on, but the pain has only deepened for him,” she says.

He has lost 14 kilos (31 pounds), unable to eat or sleep. Dressed in a blue cardigan over a crisp button-down shirt, he talks for a long while about his life, how he met his wife while buying fabric for his father’s clothing shop, which he later took over. Mr. Cemal says even though only a dozen Jews were living in Antakya, he never felt like he was in a minority group. “We have always been there, and our grandparents before that, and their grandparents before that,” he says, clasping worry beads in his hand.

“It was such a civilization. There is no place like it in the world,” he says. “I will not give up on Antakya.”

Mark Saludes

Rights organizations stage a protest to denounce the designation of six activists, including four Indigenous leaders, as "terrorist individuals" by the Anti-Terrorism Council in Quezon City, Philippines, July 11, 2023.

The Rev. Glofie Baluntong wishes she could be preaching the gospel and serving the poor in the Philippines’ Mindoro province right now. Instead, she’s sitting tight, away from her parish, praying that the government will absolve her of the “terrorist” label that’s loomed over her for the past year.

“I miss my community, but we have to consider not just my safety but also the safety of the people I serve,” says Ms. Baluntong, a deaconess for 24 years before she was ordained.

For decades, her ministry has focused on serving the region’s Mangyan Indigenous people by conducting humanitarian works and promoting human rights through education. Everything changed in 2019, when the military accused the pastor of having ties to the Communist Party of the Philippines, which the government considers a terrorist organization. In August 2022, she was subpoenaed for alleged violations of the country’s controversial anti-terrorism law, and she hasn’t seen home since. 

Indeed, the “red-tagging” of Indigenous leaders and activists has been an ongoing problem. It was made worse, rights groups say, after the 2020 Anti-Terrorism Act endowed the newly formed Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) with vast power to designate and investigate domestic terrorists. The council has since designated 35 people as terrorists for alleged connection to the communist rebels, and that number is rising. Just last month, the council announced the names of four Indigenous leaders in the northern Philippine region of Cordillera now designated as “terrorist individuals.” Government officials maintain that the council is necessary for fighting insurgencies, but rights groups say it’s become a tool for silencing dissent. 

“The government said the law [will] target terrorists such as the ISIL-linked Abu Sayyaf fighters in the southern Philippines,” says Liza Maza, spokesperson of the Council for People’s Development and Governance, a countrywide network of nongovernmental organizations. “But now it is being used against human rights defenders, activists, and development workers advocating for fundamental political and economic reforms.”

Closed-door process

For a person or organization to be labeled a terrorist in the Philippines, the council need only find probable cause that they “commit, or attempt to commit, or conspire in the commission of” any terrorist act. 

Attorney Ephraim Cortez of the National Union of People’s Lawyers describes the Anti-Terrorism Act as “very dangerous.”

“Unlike in other cases where the accused is assumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the ATC can identify a person as terrorist even without concrete basis,” the lawyer says, adding that the suspect “has no participation in the proceeding.”

Mark Saludes

The Rev. Glofie Baluntong (left), a pastor of the United Methodist Church, comforts fellow human rights activist from the Southern Tagalog region Hailey Pecayo, July 22, 2023, in Quezon City, Philippines. Both were charged with violating the country's controversial anti-terrorism law.

Last year, the Supreme Court broadly upheld the law despite challenges from dozens of groups. Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo spoke to peoples’ fears over its implementation in May. 

“We must balance the need for security with the protection of individual rights and freedoms,” he said. “While we accept the necessity for urgent and enhanced security measures, these must be done within the confines of the law, with proper checks and balances, to guarantee that there is no undue or excessive intrusion to our rights and freedoms.”

However, critics say the vaguely worded law has already allowed authorities to weaponize the “terrorist” label with little to no recourse for targets.

Disrupted work

The rights alliance Karapatan has sounded the alarm over the increasing use of the anti-terrorism law against political activists and human rights defenders in recent months. 

“There is a pattern,” says Cristina Palabay, secretary-general of Karapatan. “Before activists are charged with alleged violations of the anti-terrorism law, they are red-tagged, accused of being members of the Communist Party of the Philippines or supporters of the New People’s Army.”

In the Southern Tagalog region alone, 15 activists, including Ms. Baluntong and pastor Edwin Egar of the United Church of Christ of the Philippines, were “maliciously charged” under the provisions of the law, she adds. 

Ms. Baluntong faces a 2021 murder charge, which she and other church leaders deny, and an Anti-Terrorism Act violation. Both, supporters say, are part of a red-tagging campaign against the Methodist pastor.

“These baseless accusations forced me to vacate my assignment. So these are not just attacks against me but also attacks against the church and the Mangyan community,” says Ms. Baluntong. 

She’s not alone. The council recently “found probable cause for violations” of the anti-terrorism law against the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) chairperson, Windel Bolinget, as well as alliance leaders Jennifer Awingan, Sarah Abellon-Alikes, and Stephen Tauli.

In a press briefing, Undersecretary Ernesto C. Torres Jr., executive director of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, said the designation of the alliance leaders “is a crucial step in safeguarding national security and ensuring the safety of our communities.” 

Immediately after the designation, the country’s Anti-Money Laundering Council issued an order to freeze the four activists’ assets. Sarah Dekdeken, secretary-general of the CPA, says the organization’s bank account was also frozen because Mr. Windel is a signatory.

“These are attacks with clear intent to silence individuals and people’s organizations like the CPA that are critical of anti-poor and anti-Indigenous people policies of the government,” says Ms. Dekdeken, adding that the alliance has submitted a petition to unfreeze its account as well as the properties of the activists and their families. 

No recourse

The Indigenous leaders say not only that the designation is unjust, but also that the “lack of due process” has subjected them and their families “to unwarranted prejudice and adverse consequences.” 

Mr. Cortez, the attorney, explains that the only remedy the anti-terrorism law provides a designated person is a call to submit a request for delisting – which all four CPA leaders did on July 17. But he notes that “there is no provision that allows an individual to question the factual and legal basis of the designation made by the council.”

For him, the priority is getting the law back in front of the Supreme Court. This time, he says, the discussion will revolve around how the government implements the law, rather than the provisions of the law itself.

“We must really bring the discussion on its constitutionality back into the halls of the courts,” says Mr. Cortez.  

It’s not just Earth’s air that’s been hot lately. The oceans are warming, too. 

Last year was their warmest to date, in records going back to the 1800s. Further records have been smashed this year, with global sea surface temperatures reaching unprecedented levels every month so far since May. And in June, Antarctic sea ice levels reached their lowest since satellite observations began – with a drop of some 2.6 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).

The warming trend has big implications for ocean life, and therefore also for the “blue foods” that make up an important part of human diets. In Alaska, a sharp decline in Bering Sea snow crabs – which experts saw as linked to a prolonged marine heat wave – caused the cancellation of this year’s harvest. Coral, a foundation for major ocean ecosystems worldwide, faces widely noted risks from bleaching. Scientists say warming also contributes to ocean-life challenges such as oxygen depletion, acidification, and fish being pushed to migrate from their usual habitat. 

Researchers are sounding warnings but are also pointing toward possible solutions – some of which appear to be gaining momentum over the past year. Measures to protect marine ecosystems are rising. Efforts to raise awareness are having an effect. More broadly, the world’s efforts to curb overall emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere are seen as key to stabilizing temperatures in oceans as well as on land.

The outlook, to many experts, remains sobering. But in the quest to safeguard ocean life, a common thread may be the importance of collaboration, whether the efforts are local or global in scope.

“The oceans don’t have borders - maybe political boundaries, but there really aren’t any that say this fish belongs to this country, etc.,” says Alexandra Dempsey, CEO of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to preserving and restoring the world’s oceans. “So being collaborative in terms of a network of scientists and educators that don’t just represent interests of one country is really important.”

A collective challenge

In fact, no one nation or group can hope to solve the challenge for marine life alone.

Vincent West/Reuters

Fishers offload mackerel in the Basque port of Bermeo, northern Spain, March 22, 2023. The mackerel catch in Europe's North Atlantic waters has been running 41% above what scientists recommend.

“Transboundary collaboration is actually, I think, really important,” says Ling Cao, a professor at the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Xiamen University in China, and one of the lead authors of a recent paper on the pressures facing blue foods. “We know that the water ecosystems are collective – like our oceans, they are all connected.”

In their study, Dr. Cao and her colleagues found that more than 90% of blue food production faces “substantial risks” from environmental change, taking into account myriad factors from pollution to the way climate change is prompting fish to migrate and boosting acidification as more carbon dioxide enters the oceans. 

That assessment doesn’t even consider the pressures of harvesting by humans. Although the worldwide catch has generally continued to rise, overfishing currently affects an estimated one-third of global fish stocks (up threefold since 1970). And the warning comes as other research also points to rising marine threats. Perhaps the most notable danger is a possible stalling of Atlantic conveyor currents including the Gulf Stream, with fallout for everything from fish to rainfall patterns in the Amazon. 

Protection efforts rising

The rising challenges are stirring a response, even if the steps are modest so far. 

Some point to a recent United Nations High Seas Treaty, adopted in June, as a beacon of hope – although it does await ratification to go into effect, and some experts caution that in terms of fishing, the high seas account for just 4% of the global catch. There is also the “30 by 30” goal to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans and land by 2030, agreed to during the 2022 U.N. biodiversity conference, which would represent a crucial milestone.

“Countries’ exclusive economic zones are of far more importance,” says Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer in residence, and founder of the Pristine Seas project. “This is where the urgency really is, and this is where the greatest opportunities lie because individual countries can [designate protected areas].”

In waters extending up to 200 miles from their coastlines, nations can unilaterally declare marine protected areas (MPAs), where fishing can be restricted or prohibited. As countries help fish populations regenerate, this can be good news for both the fish and the fishers.

“Having MPAs is a fundamental part of an improved fisheries management regime,” says Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at Exeter University, and co-author of a study on their benefits in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. “Traditionally, they’ve fished everywhere, but if you’ve got a backbone of areas where the fish are protected, it’s much easier to bounce back from a collapse.”

This doesn’t mean that establishing protected areas is a one-step panacea for marine biodiversity. But the zones can play an important role alongside things like fishery management policies and locking up carbon by nurturing seaweed.

In the Caribbean and elsewhere, researchers have been finding that protecting specific zones has spillover benefits for fish populations elsewhere, among other gains for the environment.

While these zones are often implemented by single countries, some of the largest have seen international collaboration. A Pacific “mega” protected area was created, for example, in 2021 when Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama agreed to expand their protected territorial waters and join them up, creating a contiguous fishing-free corridor covering more than 200,000 square miles of ocean.

Perhaps the best example is the world’s largest – in Antarctica’s Ross Sea region. The protected area is three times the size of California. Its 2016 creation was supported by all key parties, including Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union. 

Mark Ralston/AP/File

Twenty-four nations and the European Union in October 2016 agreed to create the world's largest marine reserve near Antarctica, in the Ross Sea, pictured frozen here at the Scott Base in Antarctica in November 2016. The reserve is three times the size of California.

The other part of the equation is ensuring that where fishing is carried out, it happens in a sustainable manner.

Often this isn’t the case. As temperatures have pushed mackerel northward in the North Atlantic, for example, fishing boats have followed. The mackerel catch has been 41% above levels recommended by scientists since 2010.  

Equally, however, there are places where the picture is much rosier. In U.S. federal waters, 93% of fish stocks are not subject to overfishing, and in New Zealand, the figure is close to 87%.

“So there are some amazing signals, thanks to countries taking management seriously,” says Manuel Barange, director of the fisheries and aquaculture division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. “We must recognize success as well as the problems, because if not, it will be impossible to convince those that are falling short that they can succeed.”

Casting a wider net for allies

Experts say that aiding at-risk marine life will require support from others beyond policymakers – such as researchers, local people on front lines, and new generations caring for habitats.

“I know that for coastal ecosystems, they are greatly overstressed, overfished, but the younger generation in the coastal communities where we work really is taking notice and caring about changing past practices when it comes to fishing and developing,” says Ms. Dempsey of the Living Oceans Foundation. “They’ve been able to see ... that we’re beginning to run out of resources, and they’re starting to take pride in looking after their nations’ resources.”

Adaptation costs money, and the world isn’t currently responding quickly enough to keep pace with the changes, says Kathy Mills, who heads the U.N. Ocean Decade’s fisheries strategies unit. Still, she remains optimistic.

“One of the things that gives me hope is human ingenuity,” says Dr. Mills, who is a senior research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. “I interact with quite a few fishermen, and they have always been entrepreneurial in adapting to changes, and I think that spirit is an innate part of human culture.”

It wasn’t long ago that conservationist Francisco Núñez would set out by mule on one of his weekslong treks into the mountainous region known as the “Mother of the Water,” kicking up dust from the parched land underfoot.

Over the past 100 years, the land was stripped of trees for ranching and has deteriorated amid natural disasters and soaring demand for water in the Dominican Republic’s cities. As a result, the nation’s four watersheds have been under severe strain, setting off extreme drought in 2015.

Mr. Núñez’s treks look vastly different from a decade ago, despite ongoing water scarcity, thanks to his dedication to recuperating the watersheds. The brown dirt has slowly been replaced by green grass, and Mr. Núñez now ducks under branches as he weaves in and out of the lush tree coverage planted to protect coffee and cacao crops across the mountainsides.

This project, part of a broader initiative known as the Latin America Water Funds Partnership, which has created 24 water funds across the region, was successful in part because it involved an array of interests, from the private sector to government officials to local farmers. 

Communities are paid to plant trees, which help prevent soil erosion, enabling the ground to retain its water and revitalize watersheds. Between 2011 and 2023, nearly 5,000 acres of water-producing ecosystems located in the Dominican Republic’s mountains have been restored, connecting hundreds of families with clean water.

“There’s an understanding now that to fix the water crisis, we need to rebuild the watersheds,” says Mr. Núñez. “This model is about everybody coming together ... to work together with the same goal,” he says. 

Photo courtesy of The Nature Conservancy

A lush, healthy landscape is seen in the Yaque del Norte watershed.

From frogs to forest

In many ways, Mr. Núñez was born to be a conservationist. His mother, Ana Mercedes Henriquez, was a pioneering environmentalist here. As a boy, Mr. Núñez helped care for the amphibians she’d bring home for research, and he’d tag along on trips into the field, where his passion for the environment, hikes, and the mountains grew.

“I was her personal assistant from age 12,” he says with a laugh. “I even received a little salary for taking care of the frogs.” 

After completing undergraduate studies in the Dominican Republic, he went on to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship, where he focused on animal behavior, evolution, and ecology in New York. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the environmental challenges unfolding back home, where ranches, agriculture, and development were putting extreme pressures on the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.

“I realized I needed to pay attention to conservation of my home country’s biodiversity,” he says. “There was a need to go beyond just scientific studies.” He returned home, and since 1999, he’s served as the Greater Antilles program director for The Nature Conservancy, an international nonprofit.

“Our country is in severe drought,” Mr. Núñez says, noting that some residents of the capital have gone without water for more than three weeks at a time. “There’s been almost a century of overusing our natural resources.” But in recent years, “the government and the people are understanding that water is a major issue” that needs to be addressed, he says.

Water supply isn’t exactly the problem; it’s the degradation of the forest cover in the mountains, as well as high consumption, that’s making the resource scarce. There’s plenty of rain in the mountains, but it needs to be retained in the ecosystem when it falls and then managed farther downstream, Mr. Núñez says.

He helped develop the Latin America Water Funds Partnership, which works across the region to tackle water insecurity. The Nature Conservancy is one of the fund’s partners, alongside the Inter-American Development Bank and a handful of regional conservation nonprofits. Funding for the Santo Domingo and Yaque del Norte water funds in the Dominican Republic comes from 30 private companies and foundations, including The Coca-Cola Co. Perhaps most importantly, the project works with over 300 local families.

At first, persuading communities to support the initiative was a challenge. There was little trust in outside programs and not much understanding of how forests could reduce soil erosion and aid the health of rivers and crops. It took months, he says, to persuade the initial farmers to sign up, visiting small creeks and pointing out where different tree species could help restore the waterways. “We convinced a couple of farmers,” Mr. Núñez remembers, “and once everybody saw how well this was working, they started lining up to be a part.”

Photo courtesy of The Nature Conservancy

Locals and stakeholders of the Santo Domingo Water Fund plant saplings in the Yaque del Norte watershed.

Water and economy

Local farmers are compensated for planting trees on their farmland. Mr. Núñez’s team provides seeds and fertilizers, as well as training in best agricultural practices. There are additional payments made to participants for tree upkeep, including cleaning around the roots and applying fertilizer if needed. The farmers are also earning money from the sale of the crops. Mr. Núñez and his team return every few months – and still check in on communities that have been working with them for the past decade.            

Esteban Polanco, who heads a farmers association working to combat drought and heal the degraded landscape, describes the project as solving a “fundamental” issue in the community. Mr. Núñez and his team have helped build infrastructure to hold returning water, including pipes, small aqueducts, and water tanks.

It “brings relief to the great needs of the community,” Mr. Polanco says. Today, there are more people waiting to join the efforts than Mr. Núñez can accommodate. “When you see your neighbor is benefiting from something, you want to benefit, too.” 

To date, no farmers have pulled out of the program. “For local agricultural families it creates an influx of jobs and economic opportunities,” adds Mr. Polanco. 

The Dominican Republic’s water funds are some of the “best examples” of collaborative environmentalism in Latin America, says Milagros de Camps, deputy minister of international cooperation in the Ministry of Environment. “It’s an example of where we can truly demonstrate that by bringing together the community with the public and private sectors, we can take more efficient steps to help tackle climate change.”

The legacy continues

Although Mr. Núñez has helped restore thousands of acres of degraded land, he sees his personal impact as small. Over the next decade he hopes to double the number of acres restored. And perhaps, he says, this work won’t stop with him. 

His daughter is a biologist studying invasive species here – the family’s third generation to fight for the nation’s natural resources. Mr. Núñez’s wife is also a scientist, and as in his childhood, together they took their daughter on trips into the field when she was growing up.

It’s “not a coincidence,” he chuckles. “More than ever, this is the time that the planet needs more people dedicated to saving it.”

AP

Students in Kolkata, India, hold candles as they stand in solidarity with the people of Manipur during a protest rally demanding that Prime Minister Modi visit the affected areas and comment on the issue, on Aug. 3, 2023.

Critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi worry that he has cowed the judiciary during his near decade in power, enabling an agenda that has favored India’s Hindu majority and stoked violence against religious and ethnic minorities.

The Supreme Court would like a word.

Last Friday, the high bench struck down a defamation conviction against opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. The decision vacated a March sentence by a lower court in Mr. Modi’s home state that would have prevented Mr. Gandhi from challenging the prime minister in next year’s elections.

Today, the Supreme Court went further. It created a commission of three retired female justices to monitor efforts to restore peace in the northeastern state of Manipur, following months of ethnic violence punctuated by the public gang rape of two women. The new panel reflects the court’s belief that equality is a central pillar of security and stability. “Our efforts are to restore a sense of confidence in the rule of law,” the court said today. 

By linking judicial independence and gender equality, the court amplified a gradual shift in how Indian society values women and girls. As a result of strong public and community initiatives, gender selection – the practice of aborting female fetuses – has decreased over the past decade. A Pew Research Center study last year found that 55% of Indians – male and female – think women and men make equally good political leaders. Some 73% say men and women should share in making family financial decisions. 

Since his swearing in as chief justice last November, Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud has made balancing judicial appointments a priority. Seven women were appointed to high courts during his first 100 days. Such reforms still face head winds. “Chambers are skeptical about recruiting young women advocates,” he said at a ceremony in March to lay the cornerstone of a new regional courthouse. “The reason for that is not a lack of young talented women. ... But ... rather because of our actions being a product of our stereotypes that we hold against women.” 

Since May, violence in Manipur has claimed the lives of at least 150 people and displaced more than 50,000. The assault on the two women there and similar recent incidents in other states have provoked public protests across India. Earlier today, a coalition of opposition parties introduced a motion of no confidence in Parliament against the prime minister. Mr. Modi had remained mostly silent about the incident for nearly two months, until a grisly video was posted on social media last month. The rebuke is likely to fail, as Mr. Modi’s party retains a large enough majority to defeat it. But it raises the profile of gender-based violence just a few weeks before Delhi is set to host an economic summit of G20 world leaders.

The court’s new panel in Manipur, meanwhile, offers an opportunity to demonstrate what India and other countries striving to uproot violence against women are getting right. A case study on women and peace building from Jordan, published in the journal Daedalus in June, found that when “women are able to participate equally, humanitarian responses ... are also more effective and inclusive.”

For India, rejecting violence for equality is a vote of confidence for the rule of law.