Donzo Monk has no love for the police. 

He’s spent his entire life in Baltimore and says he has learned to expect corruption in local politics and law enforcement. Four years ago, he finished a 10-year prison sentence for selling drugs – a charge he denies. An officer found drugs on him, he admits, but he says he wasn’t selling and the search violated his privacy.

But Mr. Monk doesn’t want fewer police. He wants better police. 

“I don’t believe that they should totally defund the police because we do need law and order,” he says. “Without law and order, we have chaos and anarchy.”

On this issue, Mr. Monk – a Black man from one of America’s most liberal cities – agrees with his white Republican governor. In October, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced $150 million to “refund the police.” Around two-thirds of the money would go to police aid and salary. Another one-third would fund accountability programs, neighborhood safety, and victim services. 

The plan almost certainly won’t pass the state’s heavily Democratic General Assembly. But, oddly enough, it communicates some consensus. A year after widespread calls to defund or abolish the police, those options are increasingly unpopular. In Maryland, the legislature, governor, and citizens in high-crime areas like Baltimore mostly agree that law enforcement can be reformed, and needs to be. 

That’s true across the country, says University of Nebraska Omaha Professor Emeritus Sam Walker. Police reform and police spending aren’t part of a zero-sum game. 

“If Governor Hogan is talking about refunding police, then money becomes the leverage for doing things differently, and I think that’s an important strategic lever to change things,” says Dr. Walker. “I don’t think you have to go through the defund part to say that we want to create a modern and progressive police department that’s going to handle routine problems in a better way.”

In some ways, Maryland has become a national case study on where to start. This summer – over vetoes from the governor – the General Assembly passed bills that repealed the state’s police bill of rights, restricted no-knock warrants, raised the standard for use of force, required body cameras, and involved civilians in police oversight. Meanwhile some of the state’s largest cities, including Baltimore, increased their police budgets. 

The spending and new standards may seem contradictory, but police reform isn’t a binary. In some areas, research suggests spending more on law enforcement could improve public safety and reduce police violence. In others, spending on social programs would help more. Police budgets are more complicated than terms like “refund” or “defund” suggest. 

Uneven police funding

There are around 18,000 police departments in the United States, and about half of them have 10 or fewer officers. By contrast, the largest, in New York City, has roughly 36,000. 

Almost all funding for law enforcement comes from local sales and property taxes. That means two things: There are huge gaps in funding between counties, and the areas with the most crime often have the least money to spend on police. When budgets are tight, that can create a cascade of higher crime and worse policing.

Even though most funding is local, state and federal governments contribute through aid and grant programs. It’s a complex knot to untangle. It’s also a reminder that American police budgets are too complicated for a one-size-fits-all solution, says Loyola University Chicago School of Law Professor Stephen Rushin.

“I think that adequate funding is a prerequisite to quality policing,” says Dr. Rushin. “We just need to make sure that that money is being spent not just on things like officers’ salary and equipment, but is also being spent in part on accountability.” 

Cheye Calvo, former 11-year mayor of small Berwyn Heights, Maryland, spent years advocating for police reform after officers, acting on poor intel, botched a no-knock raid on his home. That experience didn’t change his opinion on their budget. 

“As a mayor, I was constantly at the legislature, lobbying for highway user monies and police aid,” says Mr. Calvo. “Those are probably the two most regular lobbying things we had to do as a group because funding is a real issue in Maryland.” 

Steve Ruark/AP

Baltimore city police instructor Mike Long (left) demonstrates a technique with police trainee Alhaji Fofana of Philadelphia, during defense tactic training on Aug. 4, 2021, in Baltimore. Baltimore's police force is struggling to meet staffing targets to comply with a reform intervention in place as part of federal oversight.

The view from Baltimore 

The environment is much different just 30 miles away in Baltimore. Per capita, the city spends a similar amount on police as Washington, the closest major city. But because Baltimore’s tax base is so much smaller, law enforcement takes up much more of its total budget.

There’s been a huge increase in violent crime during the pandemic, and cities such as Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York have responded with higher funding. Baltimore has as well, with a net $6 million increase in the past year. In a city with some of the state’s worst schools and some of the country’s worst public transit, spending more on police can be difficult to stomach.

“In Baltimore City, it’s hard to digest ‘refund’ when we’ve never taken anything away,” says Ray Kelly, executive director of the Citizens Policing Project and a lifelong Baltimore resident.

Mr. Kelly is part of a team that monitors Baltimore’s Consent Decree, a 2017 agreement with the federal government to reform the police department after the Department of Justice found officers abused citizen’s First and Fourth Amendment rights. Among other things, the decree calls for more civilian oversight, community policing, and higher officer accountability.

Those programs can be expensive – hence the governor’s “refund the police” plan.

“Almost everyone was expressing the same concerns: that they were having difficulty recruiting police officers, that they were having difficulty retaining police officers, and that they didn’t have funding to do a lot of the things that they wanted to do to improve policing,” says Governor Hogan, in an interview with the Monitor. On the right and the left, he says, almost everyone wants police reform.

Public opinion on the issue is confusing and sometimes contradictory. In a Goucher College poll last October, 79% of Maryland residents supported “increasing funding for police departments to hire more or better trained officers” and 54% supported “reducing the budget for the police department in their community and shifting the funds to social programs related to mental health, housing, and education.” 

But Mr. Hogan says that debate doesn’t necessarily have to be an either-or. “I’m for funding all of those things.”

Not all Marylanders believe that. 

Money alone won’t solve the problem

More than six years ago, the governor canceled a massive project to expand public transportation in some of Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods. The city’s mental health and addiction recovery programs still receive a tiny share of the police budget, says Mr. Kelly. In his view, the police budget is a “moral document.” Spending shows priorities; press releases don’t.

“I think the whole refund rhetoric is pure stagecraft,” says Maryland state Del. David Moon, a Democrat from the Washington suburbs of Montgomery County. “There hasn’t been any defunding in Maryland or its localities.” 

Even if there had been, says Mr. Calvo, the former mayor, the state’s problems with policing were never just about funding. Maryland once had some of the nation’s most police-friendly laws, he says, and those often closed the door on reform. The General Assembly’s extensive police bills from earlier this year were a first step, in his eyes. Careful police funding can be a second.

“The more important part is what they do with the funding,” says Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and former Baltimore police officer.

Money is important, says Dr. Moskos, but leadership and strategy matter much more. In his opinion, both are still big problems in Baltimore. Until they improve, he doesn’t expect much to change – funding or not. 

Neither do residents like Mr. Monk, speaking to the Monitor outside a train station on his way to work. Baltimore’s problems with crime and policing are like the city’s problems with poverty or racism, he says. They’re fundamental, and fixing them feels unrealistic.

Mr. Monk’s wife, standing next to him, nods in agreement. The police budget, he says, should probably stay the same. The city needs better social services, better education, more opportunities for young people who feel like crime is their only option. At the same time, Baltimore needs officers who aren’t corrupt, who have better training, who actually live in the city. 

He rises to catch the train, wearing a black Ravens cap and Nike Air Maxes. 

“We need better police, that’s all,” says Mr. Monk.

Noah Robertson reported from Baltimore. Patrik Jonsson reported form Tybee Island, Georgia.

Russia’s most venerable and internationally respected human rights organization, Memorial, has deep roots within Russian society.

It was founded in the Soviet Union more than three decades ago by dissident Andrei Sakharov – with Kremlin approval – to repair the historical record and stimulate the national conscience. It has often worked together with Russian authorities to unearth and document the murderous repression of the Stalin era.

Even Vladimir Putin has supported major projects to memorialize the victims.

So it was unthinkable even a few months ago that the organization could be threatened with forcible shutdown at the hands of Russian authorities. But that is where it stands now.

If the Supreme Court rules against it Nov. 25 for allegedly violating Russia’s intricate and often vague “foreign agent” laws, the country’s once hopeful civil society growth may stall without one of its main cornerstones, as an official campaign to silence independent voices gathers steam.

Over the past year many groups and political activists formerly tolerated by authorities have suddenly found themselves under attack. Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was allegedly poisoned by Russian secret services, arrested upon his return to Russia, and saw all his support groups shut down as “extremist.” Independent media have been branded as “foreign agents” and forced into a struggle for survival. Even Russia’s biggest permitted opposition group, the Communist Party, has found itself under legal assault and its activists arrested for attempting to protest alleged vote-rigging in recent elections.

And now Memorial may be next, despite an outpouring of public support in recent days – not only from the human rights community, but also open appeals by major figures like former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures – calling on authorities to reverse a prosecutor’s demand earlier this month that Memorial be liquidated.

“If someone fell asleep in September 2020 and just woke up today, they would not recognize our civil society landscape,” says Tatiana Glushkova, a lawyer for Memorial. “That’s how badly, and rapidly, the situation has deteriorated.”

“This is a political case”

Memorial’s sister organization, Memorial Human Rights Center, is also facing closure. It applies the lessons of history to call out contemporary abuses and identify political prisoners – who currently number almost 500, more than any time since the USSR’s collapse, according to the group.

Both organizations are accused of failing to observe the terms of the “foreign agent” laws over the past five years. Those laws require all published materials and social media posts to contain a lengthy disclaimer alerting readers that the material “fulfills the function of a foreign agent,” because the organization receives foreign funding while engaging in what authorities deem to be political activity.

According to Ms. Glushkova, Memorial had been trying very hard to comply with the requirements of the law since it was imposed, even while protesting that it should not apply to the organization. But authorities have gone after cases where the disclaimer was inadvertently omitted as well as social media posts where a person using material did not know it was required.

“The labeling laws are very unclear,” she says. “You have to put this label on everything you publish, even business cards and social media posts.”

She gives the illustration of a recent book fair where Memorial was selling its publications to the public. Those published after 2016 had the disclaimer printed in the required way but older ones, obviously, did not. So whenever someone would buy one of those books, the vendor would use a rubber stamp to apply the disclaimer, while explaining the reason to the buyer. But authorities have declared the inventory of older, unstamped books to be in violation of the law. That, says Ms. Glushkova, is one of the main examples being brought in the case against the organization.

“Our understanding is that authorities want to shut down both Memorial organizations,” says Ms. Glushkova. “We understand that this is a political case. Memorial isn’t being threatened with closure because it’s breaking the law. It’s because it criticizes the government. When you are working on a political case like this, you know the outcome doesn’t depend on your [legal] arguments, but other factors. ... Unfortunately, we don’t have support inside the government.”

“They don’t like the way Memorial does it”

Experts say that Memorial has been swimming against the tide of public indifference for a long time. In the late Soviet period, stimulated by Mr. Gorbachev’s glasnost policies, the ugliest sides of the USSR’s history were brought to light, public opinion was deeply shocked, and Memorial was born with official support to continue unraveling the horrors of the past.

But “since the 1990s, this cause of [exposing and documenting the crimes of Stalin] has gone out of fashion,” says Lyubov Borusyak, a sociologist and researcher with Moscow State Pedagogical University. “Maybe half the population knew that Stalin was an executioner, but the majority gradually preferred to see him as the winner of the war. ...

“In this context, Memorial looked increasingly to people as an organization that wanted to concentrate on the bad sides of Soviet history, while people wanted to forget that and embrace sweet dreams about the past. ... For Russian liberals, Memorial is a symbol. It embodies one of the last strongholds of the struggle for historical truth. And they fear not just for Memorial, but for what may happen to themselves in future.”

It’s not clear why Russian authorities have turned on Memorial after decades of coexisting with it. Most experts see it as part of an accelerating campaign to close down any space for independent political action or criticism amid deepening antagonism with the West, a stagnating economy, and uncertainties about the continuing stability of Mr. Putin’s regime.

Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser, says that the West has fought a hybrid war against Russia for the past several years, mobilizing politically active nongovernmental organizations to undermine the government. He says Memorial did great work in the past, but it is now a liberal bastion whose publications openly vilify Mr. Putin and whose human rights wing champions the cause of terrorists and other extremists and refuses to condemn human rights violations in other places, like Ukraine and the Baltic states.

“Memorial is a former human rights organization that is now part of the anti-Putin coalition,” he says. “Russian authorities believe that it works with Western intelligence agencies to undermine Russia. The question is not why it’s being brought to justice now, but why not years ago?”

Masha Lipman, senior associate at the PONARS Eurasia program at George Washington University, says the hybrid-war idea is being used by Russian authorities to crush all critical voices across the political spectrum.

“We have reached a point of chronic confrontation in relations with the West. If we look at how we got here, I think we’ll agree that both sides are to blame,” she says. “But for Russian authorities today, any perceived disloyalty – and that includes a broad range of non-state activities that authorities deem undesirable – are all-too-easily branded as ‘agents of the West.’ ...

“It isn’t that the government opposes mourning the victims of Stalin’s repressions, it’s that they don’t like the way Memorial does it. It is seen as disloyal. From the state’s point of view, it’s OK to grieve the victims, but not to question the system of authority that led to the repressions, or to assign blame to the perpetrators, as Memorial seeks to do,” she says. “I look at this pressure on Memorial as part of a general line of stepped-up repressions that is picking up speed.”

Alberto Pezzali/AP

Delegates gather in the Action Zone at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 11, 2021.

If one thing became clear at the COP26 gathering of world leaders this month, it’s that tackling climate change is going to be expensive.

Making the leap to decarbonized energy is pricey. So, too, is adapting to a warming planet that unleashes more deadly wildfires, storms, and heat waves. Meanwhile, many of the communities already bearing the brunt of climate disasters are among those least equipped to foot the bill. 

All of this means that “climate finance,” the money needed to both fight climate change and try to adjust to it, is increasingly taking the spotlight. And under that glare, it is revealing the underlying global inequities that make collective climate action so challenging. 

At the United Nations climate change conference here, delegates from Africa, Asia, and Latin America chided wealthy countries for not fulfilling a promise to drum up $100 billion a year for climate-related projects. Developed countries had agreed to that payment plan at another U.N. summit in 2009, an acknowledgment that they were disproportionately responsible for the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. By 2019, they were still $20 billion behind. At the conference this year, delegates from developing countries said this parsimony had undermined their trust in the U.N. process. 

Here’s the thing: Even $100 billion isn’t a big number when it comes to climate change. Not when you add up what it would take to climate-proof the world in the next few decades while also cutting emissions as fast as possible. 

“The $100 billion, quite frankly, pales in comparison to the actual needs,” says Iskander Erzini Vernoit, a policy adviser at E3G, an environmental think tank in London. “And I think COP26 has been useful for establishing that recognition.” 

Trillions, not billions

Indeed, the summit made clear that transforming how the world is powered, built, and managed – from building offshore wind farms and smart grids to installing storm barriers and preserving mangrove forests – will require trillions, not billions, of dollars in new investments. By 2030, the energy sector alone would likely need $4 trillion annually to put carbon emissions on track to reach net-zero by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. 

Government spending by itself won’t pay for this transition. So attention in Glasgow turned to private financiers, including a new alliance of more than 450 insurers, banks, and asset managers with around $130 trillion in capital. All are committed to canceling out the carbon emissions in their portfolios by midcentury, after first making major reductions by 2030.

The details are fuzzy about how, exactly, the financial institutions will measure this “net-zero” approach to assets, or how quickly they will move away from fossil fuels. But the alliance, and other commitments within the financial sector, are a step in the right direction, says Yannick Glemarec, executive director of the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), which was set up to provide money for developing countries. 

Alastair Grant/AP

Delegates convene in a room as discussions continue at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 12, 2021. The question of who is going to finance adaption for climate change and pay for climate disasters remains a thorny one.

“If we want to finance climate [action] at scale to avert catastrophic climate change, all the pieces have to come together,” he says. 

The GCF has committed $10 billion in grants and loans since 2015, when countries signed agreements at the last big international climate summit, held in Paris. 

But he is hopeful that the fund can start to ramp up programs now that the United States and other donors have pledged more funding. He sees the fund’s role as helping to mobilize private capital – those needed trillions of dollars – by investing in projects that private financiers might deem too unpredictable, such as a solar energy plant in an emerging African market. The goal is to get those projects off the ground and show that they are commercially viable, which, he says, can prompt private investment.

“Once you have a commercial track record you’re not speaking about uncertainty. You’re speaking about risk. Bankers cannot deal with uncertainty. They can deal with, and price, risk,” he says.   

But who pays for adaptation? 

The catch for developing countries, though, is that while investors may be keen on green technology, which both cuts emissions and makes profits, it’s harder to raise private capital for what’s called adaptation. Those are the storm barriers and fortified buildings and drought-resistant crops and other efforts communities will increasingly need as the planet warms. Lower income countries, many of which are facing the most extreme risks from climate change, may struggle to finance these crucial investments. 

And that, delegates at COP26 pointed out, could exacerbate global inequities, even as diplomats talk about increased worldwide financing.

“We need to ensure the developing world isn’t left behind by their unequal access to global capital,” says Mr. Vernoit, who previously served as a U.N. climate negotiator for Morocco. 

In the corridors of Glasgow, negotiators from low- and middle-income countries seemed skeptical that private capital could pick up the slack left by rich donors that had missed their aid targets. 

“Adaptation is public goods, and the private sector is not very interested,” says Mizan Khan, a delegate from Bangladesh.

But neither, worry many lower income countries, are wealthy nations.

In his speech in Glasgow, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said developed countries should provide $1 trillion in climate finance “at the earliest” and said their commitments should be tracked, just as scientists track carbon emissions. “The proper justice would be that the countries which do not live up to their promises made on climate finance, pressure should be put on them,” he said. 

The COP26 agreement, signed last Saturday, urged a doubling of public financing for climate adaptation by 2025, compared to the $20 billion provided in 2019 – itself a fraction of the pledged climate aid. But wealthy countries resisted additional commitments to compensate lower-income countries for climate-related losses. 

Developing countries already face wrenching choices about how to decarbonize, such as whether to take money from health or education and put it to clean energy, says Harjeet Singh, a Delhi-based senior adviser to Climate Action Network International, a campaign group. The backtracking by donors creates a political dilemma on top of this – and threatens collective climate action overall. 

“If they don’t get enough confidence about where the money will come from, why would they change a paradigm?” he asks. 

“We don’t know how to access the trillions”

Professor Khan and other delegates complained that money from GCF and other multilateral lenders took too long to arrive, was often in the form of loans and not grants, and rarely went to front-line communities impacted by climate change. (Mr. Glemarec said GCF had sped up its review process to take a year, down from more than two previously.)  

Diego Pacheco Balanza, Bolivia’s chief negotiator, said Bolivia has been trying to conserve its carbon-rich forests and improve their management, working with Indigenous groups, but that it couldn’t get GCF to fund its programs. “Forests are under a lot of pressure. ... We need to have good incentives in order to avoid the degradation of the forests,” he says. 

As for private capital, “we don’t know how to access the trillions of dollars that are outside” formal aid channels, Mr. Pacheco says. 

In reality, if financial institutions do redirect trillions of dollars into net-zero assets, only a fraction would be allocated to investments in developing countries, given the perceived risk. But that fraction matters when it comes to climate financing, since the global pool of savings is so large.

Mr. Glemarec reckons that building climate-resilient infrastructure in the global south can be an investment opportunity, provided GCF or other government-backed lenders go first. He’s also set up a $500 million private equity fund for coral reef protection, sustainable tourism, and fishing in 16 countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. GCF has committed $125 million. 

“We are the first to lose our money if it goes wrong. But if it goes right, this $500 million of equity might finance anywhere between $2.5 to $5 trillion of actual investment,” he says. If so, he adds, “we will have demonstrated that investing in the protection of a coral reef is a legitimate investment for a pension fund or a bank.”

Still, he agrees that some climate adaptation projects in low-income and indebted countries simply won’t make the grade. “Some of these needs will have to be financed with public money because there is no business model,” he says.

Bloomsbury Publishing/Crown

Our reviewers’ selections include a collection of essays by beloved novelist Ann Patchett, a ground-breaking biography on Picasso, and the history of the American Transcendentalist movement in the 19th century.

1. The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

Cyprus, 1974. Tensions between the island’s Greek and Turkish communities are at a boil, as Kostas, a Christian, and Defne, a Muslim, fall in love. Their poignant story, told in part from a watchful fig tree’s perspective, blends facts about Cyprus with moving reflections on the toll of civil war, the challenges of being uprooted, and the interconnectedness of all life.

2. State of Terror

by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

Well-crafted and engrossing, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny’s jointly written political thriller delivers wise commentary on power, partnership, and trust. (Full review here.)

Scribner

3. Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone

by John Edgar Wideman

How does one capture the vastness of Black life in America? In his sixth collection, author and essayist John Edgar Wideman continues to use the short-story form to paint a powerful, faceted reflection of Black history and culture. Both joyous and haunting, Wideman’s book deftly weaves together the past, present, and future.

4. The Bad Immigrant

by Sefi Atta

A modern-day Nigerian family wins the visa lottery to pursue their American dreams. Sefi Atta’s layered novel examines the culture clash faced by migrants trying to assimilate while still preserving their identities. Atta’s intelligent, unfiltered, satirical storytelling is compelling and compassionate.

5. White on White

by Ayşegül Savaş

The author, a Turkish writer living in Paris, has produced an elegantly stark character study of Agnes, a painter. As Agnes shares stories of her life – as well as her artistic ideas – with an unnamed postgraduate student who narrates the book, her path becomes a haunting cautionary tale.

6. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

by Ai Weiwei

Art world superstar Ai Weiwei mines decades of history in a memoir that is equal parts political statement and personal narrative. The son of celebrated poet Ai Qing, who was banished by Mao Zedong during China’s Cultural Revolution, the author finds that his life hauntingly echoes his father’s when he is detained without charges and then forced into exile. The book illumines the vital importance of freedom of expression and stands as a declaration of the triumph of creativity in the midst of political oppression.

Harper Collins

7. These Precious Days

by Ann Patchett

The heart of this generous collection of essays is a moving tribute to a woman named Sooki, whom Ann Patchett befriended during Sooki’s cancer treatment and helped in what turned out to be the last years of her life. Mixing the personal and professional, Patchett also writes about her three beloved fathers (biological plus two stepfathers), about book jackets good and bad, and about the sense of community that grew from opening Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. 

8. A Life of Picasso 

by John Richardson

The fourth volume of John Richardson’s “Life of Picasso” biography tracks the great artist through Paris in the 1930s and early ’40s. Clear and compelling, it carefully and fairly examines his life and art. 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

9. The Transcendentalists and Their World

by Robert A. Gross

Robert A. Gross explores the wider community in Concord, Massachusetts, that challenged and sustained Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Gross spent decades on this exhaustively researched chronicle, and it’s worth the wait. In it, he explores the tension between individual contentment and social responsibility, which is as topical as the morning headlines.

10. The Correspondents

by Judith Mackrell

Judith Mackrell’s thrilling account tells the stories of six dauntless female journalists who covered the most dangerous World War II combat zones in Europe, reporting on the action while also fighting for the same access as their male counterparts.

Retuers

Aerial view of Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Oct. 28.

For some employees who worked at home during the pandemic – perhaps rediscovering nature and a different rhythm of life – a return to the office may come with a surprise. Forward-looking companies are trying a new way to attract and retain workers: workplaces where nature transforms former cubicles and meeting rooms into tranquil alcoves and flexible communal spaces.

The idea is not new. Think spider plants near office windows. And it builds on a deeper concept called biophilia, a term coined by social psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm in 1964 that assumes an innate human connection to and love for nature and all living things. Yet in recent years, more architects and designers have been translating biophilia into commercial buildings. The pandemic has accelerated the trend.

Its promoters put a focus not only on the mental effects of nature but also on the origins of health. In a CNBC interview, Rick Cook, biophilic pioneer and architect in the New York borough of Manhattan, describes linking humanity and nature through design as “enjoying the richness and complexity of nature and using the amazing ecosystem as a stress reduction tool to make our lives better.” More than livening up the office with a scattering of potted plants, biophilic design brings the outside in with immersive experiences.

Companies with deep pockets such as Google and Amazon are blazing the biophilic path: Google’s Manhattan campus – designed by Mr. Cook’s firm – welcomes birds, caterpillars, and bees (and honey); in Arlington, Virginia, a 350-foot plant-covered tower rises in the shape of a double helix above Amazon’s new headquarters. Biophilic buildings can feature air-cleaning green walls, natural materials like wood, calming ponds and waterfalls, circadian lights that mimic daylight, and sounds and scents found in nature. Flexible open space can foster collaborative creativity and more mobility; individual cocoons, as in Etsy’s Manhattan offices, nurture sustained focus.

“We’re looking to create workplaces that reduce stress, improve cognitive function, enhance creativity – all of these make our employees healthier, happier and more engaged in their work,” Michele Neptune of Google’s sustainability team told the Financial Times.

Another concept sits at the heart of this front line of design. Named salutogenesis, it emphasizes the origins of health rather than the pathogenic causes and treatment of disease. At its core is a measurable “sense of coherence,” or a recognition of life as meaningful and manageable. This affirmative approach arms people against stress and can be found in nature experiences such as regular forest walking. In its broader application, salutogenics augments biophilics by including everyday surroundings – physical, social, cultural, and technological – all potentially resting in a coherent relationship.

A lofty goal. Meanwhile, returning workers can relax. “We’re blurring the line between work and home,” Asheshh Saheba, managing partner at architecture firm Steinberg Hart in San Francisco, told CNBC. “Your office doesn’t have to be enclosed at your desk.” It can also lead to a rediscovery of the mental origins of health.