Earlier this summer, when the United States Department of Justice quietly settled a long-standing free-speech lawsuit brought by the Texas coder Cody Wilson, many gun rights groups hailed the decision as the beginning of the end for gun control.

In an era of powerful 3D printing, digital technology has made it possible to construct virtually undetectable plastic guns that could be made relatively simply in the privacy of home. The result, say Mr. Wilson and others, could be an unstoppable “disintermediating the State” since such weapons are without manufacturer markings and serial numbers and can remain outside the reach of state bureaucracies and various restrictive gun laws.

Yet the prospect of such stealthy, 3D-printable “ghost guns,” as detractors call them, has laid bare yet another cultural challenge to the concept of freedom of speech and the free flow of information, many scholars say.

In some ways, the advent of printable guns has reversed certain political scripts. Democrats and many liberals are using old states rights arguments to push the need for law and order. By contrast, many conservative libertarians – some of whom, like Mr. Wilson, embrace aspects of the term “anarchist” – have championed classic liberal ideas of free speech: a robust, rough-and-ready free flow of information, competing in the marketplace of ideas.

“The real story is that this is not a cut and dried issue,” says Aram Sinnreich, chairman of the Communication Studies division at American University in Washington. “I care very personally, as a human being and as a citizen, I care very deeply about about gun control.”

“But I also care very deeply about free speech on the internet,” he continues. “And I'm torn on this subject. I don't know what the right answer is.”  One thing is certain, he says: There are profound risks to regulating ideas.

Question of 'prior restraint'

In 2013, Mr. Wilson successfully developed the digital blueprints for a simple one-shot plastic pistol he called the “Liberator” and posted them to his website. It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to shut the site down, ruling that the information he was providing violated federal regulations.

But Wilson, and his attorneys, called this an illegal “prior restraint” of his First Amendment rights. And earlier this summer the Justice department agreed, paying most of his legal fees, his attorneys said, and settled the case.

“Not only is this a First Amendment victory for free speech, it also is a devastating blow to the gun prohibition lobby,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of Second Amendment Foundation, a Washington state based gun rights group that defended Wilson in court, in a statement.

The flipping of the script comes, Democrats say, amid the instant global reach of potentially dangerous information. Some even call for restrictions on certain forms of speech.

“As a result of the Department of State’s settlement with [Wilson], terrorists, criminals, and individuals seeking to do harm would have unfettered access to print and manufacture dangerous firearms,” wrote 21 states attorneys general, most from Democratic states, in a letter to the Trump administration on Monday. “Some of these weapons may even be undetectable by magnetometers in places like airports and government buildings and untraceable by law enforcement.”

Among these, attorneys general in eight states filed a lawsuit challenging the settlement, and on Tuesday a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked Wilson from reposting the repository of an assortment of digital codes for 3D-printable plastic guns.

Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/AP/File

Cody Wilson holds what he calls a Liberator pistol that was completely made on a 3-D-printer at his home in Austin, Texas. Eight states filed suit Monday, July 30, 2018, against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety.

“It’s not that I’m a nihilist about it,” Wilson told The Washington Post in July. He said he knew the information he was providing could be used for radical purposes. But free speech remains a bedrock principle of liberty in the public domain, and the government cannot “violate” his coding or his ideas. His digital blueprints were “equally everyone’s and no one’s,” he said.

It’s an idea that many political liberals have also long espoused.

“Should [Internet Service Providers] be policing every 1 and every 0 that travels along their networks and screen out 3D printed guns?” Professor Sinnreich says. “Well, that's essentially what ISPs do in China. But what they're screening out is words like democracy. So do we really want, at this point in our political development, to empower the internet infrastructure to make those discriminatory choices on our behalf?”

At the same time, many liberal critics have noted that freedom of speech arguments have become a conservative cudgel against the regulatory power of the state on a number of fronts.

This year the Supreme Court’s conservatives used First Amendment freedom of speech arguments to ban compulsory union dues and reject a California law that required pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Religious liberty advocates and wedding vendors have begun to use freedom of speech principles to opt out of providing service for same-sex couples, arguing that their artistic expressions are protected forms of speech that may not be coerced.

In 2010, the high court’s conservative majority used the First Amendment to throw out restrictions on unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions.

Justice Elena Kagan characterized this conservative use of free speech principles as a “weaponizing of the First Amendment.”

“Speech is everywhere — a part of every human activity (employment, health care, securities trading, you name it),” she wrote in her dissent to the June decision that gutted long-established laws governing union dues. “For that reason, almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long. And at every stop are black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices.”

Technology outpacing the law

Still, in the case of the kind of digital information providing the codes for 3D-printable plastic guns, a number of scholars believe existing laws and regulations can fit the free speech challenges posed.

“We’ve always distinguished between laws that deal with the distribution of information and laws that deal with what you do with that information,” says Jonathan Adler, a law professor and director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Ohio.

“These 3D printers are kind of new, and any time we get a new technology, it’s understandable that we, because of our lack of familiarity, we really don’t think about how to actually get technologies into the legal categories we already have,” he continues.

And courts have long accommodated the free flow of information – take “The Anarchist Cookbook,” still sold in retail outlets such as Amazon, which similarly contains information on preparing weapons and explosives at home, as well as various types of drugs.

Both liberal and conservative justices have used the First Amendment to protect images of animal cruelty, violent video games, and other disturbing content.  

Federal court decisions, too, have long established that disseminating certain kinds of information, including digital code in general, is protected speech, notes Erica Goldberg, a First Amendment expert at the University of Dayton School of Law in Ohio. “The sharing of computer code with others to communicate ideas or functionality is protected speech – although the actual printing of the gun can be criminalized,” she says.

Indeed, many point out that federal laws such as the Undetectable Firearms Act still prohibits owning plastic guns, or any weapon designed to avoid detection. Wilson is only providing blueprints for guns that are already legal, advocates say.

“It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that again there are core values of political speech where we want to tolerate the broadest possible dissemination of ideas,” says Saul Cornell, professor of American history at Fordham University in New York and the author of “A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America.” But there are a lot of areas that are at a very minimum gray, and then there are some areas that actually there are competing values.”

Information about weapons of mass destruction or digital codes for military grade weapons would not be protected, Professor Cornell says. And child pornography is always prohibited.

But there remains the possibility that governments and ISPs may be able to do very little to stop such information. “The enforcement problem for the government is that it is near impossible to go after individuals who print the gun code because they are diffuse and undetectable,” says Professor Goldberg. “So the state governments would rather be able to go after the organization or individual who is allowing everyone to access the code.”

Still, a court could rule that speech restrictions are permitted if they serve “a compelling government interest,” she says. “Here, public safety might be a compelling enough interest to restrict speech, but this type of strict constitutional scrutiny is not often satisfied when speech is involved – in order to maintain our robust speech protections.”

Such free speech questions surrounding the digital blueprints for 3D-printable plastic guns are part of a discussion the nation has been having from the start, says Sinnreich: “It's the same argument we've been having since the founding of this country, which is, do you privilege liberty over security, or security over liberty?”

“It’s a question of calculating the net benefit for society,” he continues. “For everything that you gain in this fight, you lose something too. For every 3D printed gun that you stop or intercept, you’re going to be impinging on the privacy and free speech of a million other people. So how do we make those calculations?”

Michael Bonfigli /The Christian Science Monitor

AFL-CIO union president Richard Trumka spoke at a Monitor Breakfast in Washington on Aug. 1, 2018.

Nancy Stough’s vision for a strong American economy harks back to her girlhood. Her father, a union shop steward working at American Chain & Cable, sometimes went on strike with fellow workers to push for better pay and benefits.

“They rallied around” and stood shoulder to shoulder, she recalls. “People would make kettles of soup, that kind of thing, until the strike was over.” A working-class prosperity took root here in her hometown of York, Pa.

Now Ms. Stough, a retired union member in her own right with a solid pension from Harley-Davidson alongside her Social Security, is active with her machinists’ union, promoting the idea of worker empowerment for the next generation of American workers.

It’s an uphill fight, especially in the age of Donald Trump. He won legions of working-class voters with an “America First” trade policy, yet refused to sign on more broadly to what unions view as a pro-worker agenda. The coming midterm elections this fall, with control of Congress at stake, represent a major test of whether organized labor can reclaim its hold on the blue-collar vote and help shape new economic policies for America.

“It’s not true that in rural districts you have to be conservative, or in the middle of the road,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, told news reporters Wednesday at a Washington breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. He said that in Pennsylvania’s suburban/rural 18th District, “Conor Lamb spoke of our issues. He spoke of collective bargaining, he spoke of joining a union, he spoke of protecting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. And he got elected in a district that was computer-designed so that no Democrat could ever win. A computer said no Democrat could ever win this district, and he did.”

From Mr. Trumka to rank-and-file loyalists like Stough, many union voters are fired up and confident they can influence not just the midterm elections but also issues like the “fight for $15” on minimum-wage laws.

And even while feeling embattled politically in the Trump era, they are forging ahead on organizing new workplaces in places like the newsroom of the Chicago Tribune. The number of union workers in the US has risen from a recent low of 14.4 million in 2012 to 14.8 million in 2017.

Public support has also edged up. In a Gallup poll last year, 61 percent of Americans said they “approve” of labor unions, up from 56 percent in 2016 and similar to levels seen when the question was asked in the 1990s and as far back as 1941.

A blip or a rebound?

It is too early to say a turnaround is under way. Unions also saw rising membership during the booms of the late 1990s and mid-2000s but couldn’t sustain the momentum when recession hit. The share of workers represented by unions is nearly half what it was in 1983, in part because of the economy’s shift away from factory jobs, and in part because of state and federal policies that have made it harder to organize in new workplaces.

But what’s clear is that unions aren’t accepting decline as inevitable, and experts see their efforts as having significant political and economic stakes.

“Make no mistake about it, organized labor understands how crucial it is to get out the vote,” says Terry Madonna, a political analyst at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “It's a crucial element for the Democrats ... to reach out to their working-class voters, voters that they lost in 2016.”

A Quinnipiac University poll recently found a drop in support for Trump among white voters who don’t have college degrees. While 49 percent say they approve of the president, 47 percent in the July poll said they disapprove.

At the Monitor Breakfast, Trumka voiced confidence in Democrats’ prospects and in labor’s influence. But partly that’s because unions aren’t taking members’ support of union-endorsed candidates for granted.

“This is going to be the biggest, deepest member-to-member program that we’ve ever had. And I think deepest, because it’s going to go down past House members into state races, state Senate, and state House races.... Normally we start our door knocks and our phone banks after Labor Day weekend. We started the first of June this year.”

The candidates themselves have a role to play, he added.

“All of them, if they talk about kitchen table economics, if they talk about the issues that affect working people – their wages, their health care, their pensions, their schools – if they talk about those, they win,” Trumka said.

Pro-union agenda

Would a stronger labor movement mean a better economy for workers? Economists don’t all agree, but many see the decline of unions as an important factor behind relatively slow wage growth in recent years.

That’s the message unions are trying to sell in places like York, where factory jobs persist but no longer dominate like they once did. Manufacturing facilities dot the landscape along with farms surrounding a city of 44,000. A historic city core is flanked by neighborhoods of sometimes worse-for-the-wear residences.

By many measures, the economy here is strong. Unemployment of 4.1 percent essentially matches the national average.

But jobs that carry better pay and benefits could boost the whole economy, with the benefits more widely shared, says Tom Santone, who heads AFL-CIO activities in the York area. “You can’t have a strong economy if you’re leaving people behind.”

It’s an issue that resonates across Pennsylvania, where a bevy of competitive congressional races symbolize labor’s nationwide effort to flex its muscle.

“We have the density to have a real impact” on close-fought House races from York and suburban Philadelphia to the western part of the state where Mr. Lamb recently won the special election, says Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Trump is scheduled to visit Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Thursday, a former coal-mining center.

Trump’s assertive stand against China and other nations on trade has won support from workers who like the president’s call for fair, “reciprocal” trade relations after an era of offshoring factory work. His tariffs on steel imports have been praised by Trumka and other labor leaders.

But on a host of fronts Trump has rebuffed unions, from a tax-cut plan favoring corporations to moves by agencies including the National Labor Relations Board that undercut unions. Republicans are also moving against unions on the state and local level.

In Missouri, labor is leading the fight against the state’s decision to pass a right-to-work law, allowing workers who don’t join a union to avoid paying dues, even as they benefit from union bargaining over contracts.

“They listened to the whispers of a few right-wing, corporate billionaires,” Trumka said at the breakfast. “So, working people took matters into our own hands. We were tasked with getting 100,000 signatures to put the law to a statewide vote. You know what we did? We organized and turned in more than 300,000 signatures. The election is Tuesday.”

And he predicted: “Let me tell you something: We’re going to win.”

Staff writer Linda Feldmann contributed to this story from Washington.

Michael Holtz/Christian Science Monitor

Homles Hutabara stands in front of his family’s home in Gunung Hasahatan, Indonesia.

Homles Hutabara grows solemn as he peers down at a large swath of clear-cut forest, the patch of exposed red-brown earth an ugly gash in the lush green landscape.

Gone are the rubber trees and oil palms that Mr. Hutabara’s family planted years ago to eke out a living in this remote corner of Indonesia. In their place stand a single-story prefab building and a small battalion of trucks and excavators. On most days, Hutabara says, the din of diesel engines drowns out the calls of gibbons and songbirds that once echoed through the trees.

“I miss hearing the sounds of the rainforest,” he says as he turns to return to his home. “When I come here now, all I hear are the sounds of big machines.”

The sounds serve as a nagging reminder of all that Hutabara and his family have lost. The area has been razed in recent months for the construction of a 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Batang Toru River. The company in charge of the dam paid them for their farmland, but Hutabara says he’s still waiting for part of the payment, and has decided they didn’t receive a fair price, anyway.

Some villagers want the see the dam canceled entirely. They’re joined by conservationists who warn that the project threatens to irreversibly alter Batang Toru's fragile ecosystem. Among the biggest concerns is that the dam could lead to the extinction of a newly discovered orangutan species that numbers only 800 animals. Then there is the risk of earthquakes – the project site is near a fault line – and the threat the dam poses to the livelihoods of some 100,000 people who live downstream.

In fact, the risks are so great that the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank, reportedly declined to invest in it.

But such concerns didn’t stop China from offering a helping hand. The $1.6 billion dam is being built by Sinohydro, a state-owned hydroelectric company, and is being paid for with Chinese loans. It has been folded into the “Belt and Road Initiative,” China’s multi-trillion dollar plan to fund infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

The launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 has led to a worldwide building spree: from ports and power plants to highways and high-speed trains. Beijing has promoted the initiative as “win-win” for the countries that partner with it. But critics say that in the rush to sign new deals, many Chinese companies have been all too willing to ignore a wide range of risks, from social to financial – and especially environmental.

William Laurance, an environmental scientist at James Cook University in Australia, has written that the Batang Toru dam is “merely the beginning of an avalanche of environmental crises” that the Belt and Road Initiative could trigger. An analysis published last year by the World Wildlife Fund found that the Belt and Road Initiative’s six major land-based corridors overlap with the ranges of 265 threatened species, including 81 endangered and 39 critically endangered species, and 46 biodiversity hotspots.

“This is emblematic of the kind of project that rational investors should not be touching,” Dr. Laurance says, referring to the dam, “and yet the Chinese are rushing in.”

The newest great ape

Last fall, Beijing announced a series of environmental guidelines for overseas investments. But the guidelines aren’t legally binding, making environmentalists skeptical that Chinese companies will follow them. What’s more, many of the countries that are tied to the Belt and Road Initiative have notoriously lax environmental regulations. That includes Indonesia.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Dana Prima Tarigan, a regional director of the Indonesian environmental group Walhi, says that the environmental assessment conducted on behalf of the Batang Toru dam didn’t mention anything about earthquakes. It also didn’t mention how the dam would affect people living downstream. As a result of these omissions, Walhi is preparing to file a lawsuit against the project’s developer, North Sumatra Hydro Energy, and is calling on it to stop construction. 

Located on the island of Sumatra, Batang Toru is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Indonesia. The forest is home to the critically endangered Sumatran tiger, pangolin, and a new species of orangutan that was only identified last November.

Matthew Nowak, a biologist with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme who helped discover that the orangutan was genetically distinct, says they are already on the brink of extinction – and that the dam could push them over the edge.

Once completed in 2022, the dam and its supporting facilities will occupy 2-1/2 square miles in the heart of the orangutans’ habitat. Mr. Nowak says that the infrastructure built to support it, namely access roads and high-voltage power lines, will make it virtually impossible to reconnect fragmented forests the species is spread across.

“There are a series of forest blocs that, if you could connect them, you would have essentially a viable population of orangutans,” Nowak says. “If you don't connect them, you run the risk of pushing them rapidly to extinction.”

Staying put

Local villagers have also vowed to fight. Over the past two years, they’ve banded together to hire a legal team and hold demonstrations at the construction site. They even flew to Jakarta last year to protest in front of the presidential palace.

Downstream from the construction site, families that have depended on the Batang Toru River for their livelihoods also face an uncertain future. Fisherman Ruslim Zebua says runoff from a nearby gold mine has already made it difficult to make a living. He’s worried that by interrupting the river’s natural flow, the dam will make it even harder. 

“I’m not sure what I’ll do if the dam is built,” he says while sitting on bamboo bench next to the river. “I need to find a way to support my family.”

Hutabara says he will never leave his home in the village of Gunung Hasahatan. His family has lived there for generations, and his ancestors lie buried in an overgrown cemetery on the edge of the forest.

“I have to stay here to look after their graves,” he says. “I wish that the forest would go back to the way it was before, but that’s hard to imagine.”

When Erik Beever began studying pikas 25 years ago, to gain insights on how mountain ecosystems are changing, he might have expected the evidence that emerged in many alpine habitats: As climates grew steadily warmer and drier, numbers shrank and some areas lost their pika populations entirely.

What was more surprising was what he saw in the Columbia River Gorge, a wet, lush region in northwest Oregon. Pikas there are developing different traits from those in the rest of their range. They’re moving off their traditional talus fields, changing their diets, expanding their range down almost to sea level, and are generally thriving.

“Over the last 20 years, people have talked about species being climate-change winners and losers,” says Dr. Beever, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey. “But it’s more nuanced than that.” Species’ responses can vary drastically in different geographic and climatic contexts. “There’s a not a simple algorithm or simple formula that we could sum up in one eight-word phrase.”

Jacobe Turcotte, Karen Norris, and Amanda Paulson/Staff

While many ecologists believe we’re in the midst of a sixth major extinction, scientists are only beginning to understand the role that climate change is playing in that process, or just how plant and animal species are adapting to seasonal and climatic changes. In some cases, certain species are benefitting. Other species are showing remarkable ability to change behaviors, shift their geographic range, or even evolve more rapidly than was thought possible. The species that may be the most at risk are those with limited ability to change.

“If you look back through biogeography, and other extinction drivers, you can predict that it’s going to be those species that are endemic, or only found in a few places, that have really specialized requirements,” that are the most at risk of disappearing, says Julie Lockwood, an ecologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

But not all species have such specific requirements. Many of the plants and animals that thrive in suburban and urban environments – think dandelions, robins, coyotes, or deer mice – have already demonstrated a strong ability to adapt that could carry them through climatic shifts. And for invasive species, changes in climate can actually create opportunities to become established in a new environment.

One way that species adapt to changing climates is by shifting their phenology, or seasonal timing of events. Certain species seem to do that better than others. “There are fairly clear patterns that some of the species introduced from other countries are the most flexible in their ability to get up and go in the spring in advance of native species,” says Theresa Crimmins, assistant director for the USA National Phenology Network which, among other things, runs a widespread citizen science project called Nature’s Notebook to help understand the ways in which seasons are shifting. “That’s one explanation for why some of these introduced species are becoming more dominant.”

The power of adaptation

Many biologists project that climate change will ultimately contribute to a shrinking of biodiversity overall. In some locations, however, the number of species may actually rise, particularly since warmer habitats tend to support richer biodiversity. But some species are more flexible than others, occasionally in surprising ways.

Beever notes that there are three main vehicles for adaptation: evolution, flexibility in terms of morphology or behavior, and the ability to colonize or disperse in different areas.

Already, he says, some fish and amphibians are evolving higher temperature tolerances. Stickleback fish, a family of fish whose evolutionary characteristics lend themselves to study across disciplines, have been able to adapt to temperature changes in less than a couple decades. “We thought that wasn’t even possible, for species with such long generation times,” says Beever.

The ability to change the timing of events may be the most common adaptation. Some birds are shifting their migration patterns, and plants are flowering earlier, as they adapt to shifting seasons. One study that looked at plant species around Concord, Mass., over 150 years, based in part on the detailed records that Henry David Thoreau kept, found that plants, like knotweeds, that were able to track temperature changes and shift seasonal timing had done fairly well, while those that remained more rigid in their timing – including anemones, orchids, and dogwoods – were decreasing in abundance.

And while numerous studies show species shifting their range northward, or higher in altitude, not all plants or animals are able to do so. For polar species dependent on sea ice, for instance, there may not be a good substitute. Alpine species may have a hard time moving to a different range.

Those creatures with perhaps the easiest ability to migrate are ocean species, and researchers say that is already playing out.

“We’re seeing hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of species shifting toward higher latitudes,” says Malin Pinsky, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers who studies marine life. “It’s happening about 10 times faster in the ocean as on land, and it’s largely unseen.”

In the Northeast of the United States, that’s meant rapidly declining Atlantic cod populations – a result both of overfishing and warming ocean temperatures. On the other hand, says Dr. Pinsky, species like black sea bass, summer flounder, and spiny dogfish are now thriving in those areas.

In some cases, he says, these shifts may even have geopolitical ramifications. When mackerel moved north into Icelandic waters, disagreements about how to share the new populations led to a trade war between Iceland and the European Union, says Pinsky, and may have contributed to Iceland’s decision to drop its bid to join the EU.

And he and others emphasize that scientists are only beginning to understand the ways in which these climate-based shifts are playing out, and which species will manage to adapt.

“We are seeing it happen in front of our eyes,” says Pinsky. “And we are just starting to understand what’s going on.”

Cedric Habiyaremye’s mission to end hunger in Rwanda started with a pinkie promise.

When he was 7 years old, Mr. Habiyaremye fled his home in Rwanda, often traveling through the forest at night and hiding during the day to avoid becoming a victim of a genocide that would later claim 800,000 lives. It was in a Tanzanian refugee camp where he made a pinkie promise to his brother to become a farmer and figure out a way to end mass hunger.

“I was inspired by my upbringing, because I have felt hunger in real life, and malnutrition,” Habiyaremye says in a phone interview. “So I wanted to study agriculture and find ways to contribute to the agricultural development in my country because I didn’t want to see people going through what I went through.”

Now, almost 25 years later, he’s working to keep that promise. Habiyaremye, a PhD student at Washington State University, wants to introduce quinoa into Rwanda’s agricultural industry. And he isn’t alone in his focus on farming. Rwanda’s agricultural sector is showing notable growth thanks in part to strong government leadership, reforms, and outside investment. As a result, Rwanda has transformed its agricultural sector from a scattered network of family farms into a thriving economic system. It is one African country out of many that has seen increased crop yields and productivity amid what some are calling Africa’s “Green Revolution” –  a step beyond Norman Borlaug’s original movement – that has an emphasis on empowering small-scale farmers to end poverty and hunger.

“By focusing on agriculture investment and agricultural prosperity, [the Rwandan government has] shored an inclusive approach to broad growth in the country,” says Tim Robertson, a senior agricultural specialist with the World Bank. “And I think that’s been important not only from an economic and social perspective but also from a perspective of where Rwanda has come from and where it wants to go to.” 

More than 70 percent of Rwanda’s citizens are employed in the agricultural sector, so when food productivity started to surge, poverty levels began to fall. From 2010 to 2014, the value of food production went from $1.2 million to $2 million – a 60 percent increase. And the poverty rate dropped from 59 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2014, according to the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources. By 2015, the total number of households considered food secure reached 80 percent, compared with only 65 percent in 2009. 

A combination of practices allowed for this much growth to happen so quickly, experts say, and myriad government reforms – such as the Land Use Consolidation Act and Crop Intensification Program, which were implemented in 2008 and 2007, respectively – provided farmers with the resources and training they needed to boost production. 

The 1999 Law on Inheritance and Marital Property was also pivotal: It allows women to inherit land from husbands or other family members, a practice that was previously prohibited. And because women have always dominated the agricultural industry, productivity soared once they became landowners, says Swanee Hunt, author of “Rwandan Women Rising.” 

Challenges remain in implementing the government’s one-size-fits-all agricultural campaign across Rwanda’s varied terrain, says Christopher Huggins, assistant professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. He’s also concerned that farmers face risk of going hungry by producing food under experimental reforms. 

Furthermore, critics say that Rwanda’s remarkable agricultural success is not an ideal model; under President Paul Kagame’s ever-tightening grip on power, developmental gains have come at the expense of free and fair elections and human rights.

Still, Rwanda appears to be leading the Green Revolution in Africa and continuing to make progress, says Ousmane Badiane, Africa director for the International Food Policy Research Institute.  

“It’s very, very hard – nearly impossible – to implement a reform where there are no losers,” Mr. Badiane says. “In general, there has been positive change.”

Habiyaremye believes growing quinoa provides a path to furthering agriculture in Rwanda. Quinoa is a versatile, hearty crop and filled with protein, he says, so it could help the farmers themselves, who are suffering from malnutrition. “[I]f we don’t ... eradicate malnutrition ... Rwanda, or any other country, will be an inadequate society.... So that’s why I’m trying quinoa in Rwanda.... And my hope is to expand to all of Africa.”

Reuters

People are silhouetted as they pose with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Facebook logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica.

For months, Facebook has admitted that “bad actors” – mainly Russian – have used fake accounts on its platforms to prey on the social and political fault lines in American society toward one simple end: inflame discourse, sow division, and drive people apart.

On Tuesday, the social media giant took an extraordinary step to mend those fault lines. It began to notify as many as 290,000 users who had visited a few dozen pages and accounts shut down for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” about the malicious targeting campaign.

One “inauthentic” Facebook account, for example, tried to drive people to an anti-rightist protest. Another promoted the elimination of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) – a hot topic among Democrats. The particular cause did not matter. The point was to incite hatred, prejudice, or extremism.

When it comes to sowing discord, of course, Americans can be their own worst enemy. But the move by Facebook represents a new type of whole-of-society effort to end this foreign “meddling” beyond what the government and technology companies are already doing. Media consumers themselves can be enlisted and trained to guard their consumption habits against such organized disinformation.

The Facebook notifications about “bad actors” could be the start of regular alerts by all social media advising users not to be taken in by subtle lies or by efforts to exploit democracy’s openness to amplify hot-button issues. When people are made aware of how some posts and ads are designed to create cynicism toward institutions or challenge the idea of truth, they can be more active in discerning what they find online. Facebook says it is also rolling out an online tool that will allow users to find out if they liked or followed a fake Russian account.

Like other tech giants, Facebook is working with Congress and federal security agencies to bring transparency to these attempts to weaken democracy. So far, lawmakers are very bipartisan in trying to end the threat. “Exposure of foreign influence operations ultimately may be one of the best ways to counter them,” says Adam Hickey of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The new front line in this effort are media consumers. With help from Facebook and others, they can learn to discern “inauthentic” activists and protect themselves from manipulation. Despite the many issues that divide them, Americans can find some unity in not widening their fault lines.