Civil society

Civil society encompasses the nonprofits, advocacy groups, community organizations, and grassroots movements that operate outside government and business to advance the public good. This archive collects stories of civil society actors driving measurable progress on issues ranging from human rights and environmental protection to public health and civic participation.

A person preparing for planting the plant, for article on Colombian Amazon restoration

Campesinos plant nearly a million trees in deforestation hotspot in the Colombian Amazon

By / / Good News For Humankind

More than 700 campesino families in the Colombian Amazon have planted nearly a million native trees across former cattle pasture, transforming one of the country’s worst deforestation hotspots into recovering forest. In just four months, families across the Cuemaní region planted over 984,000 trees and palms — and tapirs, deer, and parrots that had disappeared with the chainsaws are already coming back. Teenagers who joined botanical surveys alongside scientists discovered they could earn a living as local forest experts, with some now pursuing degrees in agroforestry. What makes this remarkable isn’t just the scale, but the model: when the people who once cleared the land become its protectors, restoration starts to hold — a lesson echoing across the Amazon and beyond.

Karla Sofia Gascon, for article on Cannes Film Festival history

Karla Sofía Gascón becomes the first trans woman to win award for Best Actress at Cannes

By / / Good News For Humankind

Karla Sofía Gascón became the first openly transgender woman to win Best Actress at Cannes, sharing the 2024 honor with her three Emilia Pérez co-stars in a collective award chosen by Greta Gerwig’s jury. Gascón plays a Mexican drug lord who transitions in Jacques Audiard’s genre-bending musical, which also took home the festival’s Jury Prize. In her speech, she dedicated the win to “all trans people who suffer so much and must keep faith that changing is possible.” When a far-right politician responded with a transphobic post, six French LGBTQ+ groups filed a joint legal complaint — civil society closing ranks around her. Moments like this shift what young trans artists and audiences believe is possible.

Howler monkey, for article on howler monkey rewilding

Brazil takes pioneering action to rewild howler monkeys

By / / Good News For Humankind

Brazil has launched its first national population management program for the brown howler monkey, a species now ranked among the 25 most threatened primates on Earth after yellow fever outbreaks killed thousands. Coordinated across eight states, the program pairs a newly adapted yellow fever vaccine with strategic translocations to restore wild populations. In Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca National Park, two groups of howlers now live in an urban forest where the species had been absent for over a century. The effort offers a potential model for other imperiled Atlantic Forest species.

A rainforest river winding through dense green jungle in Suriname for an article about Suriname malaria-free certification, for article on dual-insecticide bed nets

New types of mosquito bed nets could cut malaria risk by up to half, trial finds

By / / Good News For Humankind

New mosquito bed nets cut malaria transmission by 20 to 50 percent in a major trial across 17 African countries, offering a real answer to the growing problem of insecticide resistance. The nets pair the standard pyrethroid coating with a second insecticide that hits mosquitoes through a different biological pathway, so the ones that used to shrug off treated nets no longer can. At under three dollars each, they cost about the same as the older versions they’re replacing. Paired with the malaria vaccine now rolling out across Africa, these nets are part of a layered defense that could meaningfully shift the trajectory of a disease that still kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Tall old-growth redwood trees in northern California for an article about Yurok Tribe land return, for article on tribal co-management

Yurok Tribe becomes first Native people to co-manage land with the National Park Service

By / / Good News For Humankind

Yurok Tribe land return marks a historic milestone as the tribe reclaims 125 acres of ancestral territory and becomes the first Native nation to formally co-manage land alongside the National Park Service. The agreement returns the parcel known as ‘O Rew, near Orick in Humboldt County, after more than a century of displacement that stripped the Yurok of roughly 90% of their homeland. Ecological restoration is already underway, with thousands of juvenile salmon returning to a rebuilt Prairie Creek. The deal reflects a growing Land Back movement and sets a new precedent for Indigenous stewardship of public lands.

Milky Way arching over dark desert sagebrush landscape for an article about Oregon Outback dark sky sanctuary, for article on dark sky sanctuary

Oregon outback becomes world’s largest dark sky sanctuary at 2.5 million acres

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary has become the largest dark sky sanctuary on Earth, covering 2.5 million acres of southeastern Oregon’s Lake County after receiving official certification from DarkSky International. The designation protects skies already considered among the darkest in the world, with nearly 1.7 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management under commitments for ongoing monitoring and lighting improvements. Beyond stargazing, the protection matters for wildlife along the Pacific Flyway and species like bighorn sheep and sage grouse that depend on undisturbed terrain. Organizers hope the sanctuary could eventually expand to over 11 million acres.

Young trees, for article on African reforestation

The TREES program has planted tens of millions of trees across Africa since 2015

By / / Good News For Humankind

Reforestation done right looks less like a planting day and more like a four-year partnership with farmers — and the TREES program has quietly restored more than 41,000 hectares across nine African countries, an area roughly seven times the size of Manhattan. Instead of dropping seeds on remote land, TREES helps smallholder families build “forest gardens” of about 5,800 trees per hectare, weaving in fruit orchards, food crops, and windbreaks that feed households and generate a market surplus. In Kenya’s Kesouma region alone, 17,000 farmers have joined in. Earlier this year, the UN named it a World Restoration Flagship — a reminder that the most durable climate work tends to be the kind that pays the people doing it.

Dominican Republic forested landscape, for article on Plan Yaque land restoration

The Dominican Republic reforests a fifth of the country in 10 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Dominican Republic restored 18% of its territory in a single decade — not through sweeping mandates, but through conversations with farmers, one at a time. Plan Yaque, a coalition of 30 NGOs and government agencies, launched in 2009 with a simple premise: help landowners see trees as a path to water security and steadier farm income. Project leaders traveled farm by farm, and as restored hillsides began holding water and reviving streams, neighbors became the project’s most persuasive advocates. The result is one of the largest land recoveries in the Western Hemisphere this century — and a reminder that some of the most durable environmental wins come from trust, not enforcement.

Mangrove forest, for article on Pakistan mangrove restoration

Pakistan has expanded mangroves nearly threefold between 1986 and 2020

By / / Good News For Humankind

Pakistan’s mangrove forests have nearly tripled since 1986, growing from about 48,000 hectares to 144,000 hectares — a striking reversal of the global pattern of mangrove loss. Most of that expansion sits in the Indus Delta, where roughly 100,000 people depend on healthy mangroves for fishing livelihoods. The recovery has been driven by an unusual mix: provincial forest departments, international scientific partnerships, carbon credit financing, and fishing villages whose residents work as nursery hands and patrol against illegal cutting. In one coastal town, a single nursery holds 50,000 saplings ready for planting. As coastlines worldwide face rising seas and intensifying storms, Pakistan’s quietly persistent restoration offers a real-world template for what sustained, community-rooted conservation can achieve.

Squirrel monkey, for article on Indigenous-led land management

New fund supports Indigenous-led land management in biodiverse area of Bolivia

By / / Good News For Humankind

Indigenous communities in Bolivia’s Madidi Landscape just launched a dedicated conservation fund, opening with $650,000 from the Bezos Earth Fund to back work they’ve been doing for generations. Four nations — the Tacana, Lecos, T’simane Mosetene, and San José de Uchupiamonas — will direct the money themselves through an Indigenous-led board, finally putting resources behind territorial plans they first drafted twenty years ago. Madidi National Park is the most biodiverse protected area on land anywhere, home to more than 9,000 recorded species, from Andean condors to maned wolves. Globally, only a sliver of conservation funding reaches Indigenous hands directly, even though these communities steward most of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Funds like this one offer a hopeful blueprint for changing that.