Nations

This archive collects milestones and progress stories involving nations — countries and their governments — acting to improve lives, protect rights, or address shared challenges. From policy breakthroughs to international cooperation, these stories show what countries are doing right.

Aerial view of a geothermal power facility surrounded by tropical landscape for an article about Indonesia coal phase-out, for article on India coal capacity share

Coal’s share of power capacity in India drops below 50% for first time since 1960s

By / / Good News For Humankind

Coal now powers less than half of India’s electricity capacity for the first time since the 1960s — a quiet but historic line just crossed by the world’s most populous country. Renewables made up nearly three-quarters of the new capacity India added in the first quarter of 2024, and the country has already hit its 2030 goal of sourcing half its power from non-fossil sources, six years ahead of schedule. India has also climbed from ninth to third in global solar generation in less than a decade, behind only China and the United States. It’s a vivid reminder that when ambition, policy, and investment line up, energy transitions can move faster than almost anyone expected.

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.

North Macedonia presidential handover 2024 Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, for article on North Macedonia first woman president

Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova elected North Macedonia’s first woman president

By / / Good News For Humankind

North Macedonia’s first woman president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, has been welcomed into the Council of Women World Leaders, a network of current and former heads of state working to expand women’s leadership worldwide. A constitutional law professor before entering politics, she brings decades of work on democratic reform to an office no woman in her country had ever held. Her election matters in a global landscape where fewer than 10 percent of heads of government are women. Each new name on that list shifts what’s imaginable for the next generation, and signals quiet progress in a movement that grows one leader, one country, at a time.

Salmon in stream, for article on U.S. overfishing list

The number of fish on U.S. overfishing list reaches an all-time low

By / / Good News For Humankind

Overfishing in U.S. waters just hit a hopeful milestone: 94% of tracked fish stocks are no longer being overfished, the best result since federal record-keeping began. Atlantic mackerel populations off the Gulf of Maine and Cape Hatteras have recovered enough to come off the overfishing list, alongside Gulf of Mexico cubera snapper and a Washington coast coho salmon stock that holds deep meaning for Pacific Northwest tribal nations. What’s most encouraging isn’t any single year’s numbers but the steady downward trend across multiple years, suggesting real structural progress. With roughly 3.3 billion people worldwide relying on seafood as a primary protein source, getting fisheries right is one of the most consequential food-system stories on the planet — and the U.S. is showing it can be done.

Offshore wind turbines, for article on offshore wind tender

Denmark plans massive 10GW offshore wind tender to insure against “Putin’s black gas”

By / / Good News For Humankind

Denmark’s new offshore wind tender — the largest in the country’s history — guarantees at least 6 gigawatts of new capacity across six wind farms, with room to grow past 10 GW if developers take up the option. That alone would more than triple Denmark’s existing offshore wind fleet and is projected to cover all of the country’s electricity needs, with surplus left over for export and green hydrogen production. Two of the farms must demonstrate a net positive impact on marine biodiversity, and turbine blades must be recyclable — a first for Danish tenders. It’s a hopeful signal that Europe’s pivot away from fossil gas can be fast, ambitious, and built with the ocean in mind.

Wind turbines amid clouds, for article on E.U. wind power, for article on renewable electricity generation

Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy

By / / Good News For Humankind

Renewable energy now powers more than 99.7% of electricity in seven countries: Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each one leaned into what their landscape offered — Himalayan rivers, volcanic heat, massive shared dams — and built their grids around it. They’re the leading edge of a wider shift, with roughly 40 countries now sourcing at least half their electricity from renewables. Stanford’s Mark Jacobson puts it plainly: no miracle technologies are needed, just focused deployment of wind, water, and solar. These seven nations are quiet proof that a modern society running on clean power isn’t a distant goal — it’s already happening, and the rest of the world is catching up.

Dominica flag, for article on Dominica same-sex decriminalization

Dominica’s High Court ends the country’s ban on being gay in historic ruling

By / / Good News For Humankind

Dominica’s High Court has struck down a colonial-era ban on consensual same-sex activity between adults, with Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence finding the law violated constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, and free expression. The case was brought by an anonymous gay man who described living in constant fear of prosecution simply for who he loved — and his courage now extends protection to everyone in the country. Dominica becomes the sixth anglophone Caribbean nation in the past decade to dismantle these 19th-century British-imposed statutes, joining Belize, Barbados, and others, with a similar case pending in St. Lucia. Advocates were quick to note that homophobia won’t vanish overnight, but the law itself is no longer the enemy — a quiet, powerful shift rippling across the region.

Offshore wind turbines in the North Sea at dusk for an article about wind power in the U.K., for article on wind energy capacity

Wind power beats fossil fuels as the U.K.’s top electricity source for the first time

By / / Good news links

Wind power in the United Kingdom surpassed all fossil fuels combined for the first time in 2024, marking a genuine turning point in the country’s energy history. Across the first quarter of the year, onshore and offshore turbines supplied more electricity than natural gas, coal, and oil combined. This matters because the U.K. was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and once ran almost entirely on coal, which now contributes less than 1% of its electricity. The milestone shows that a large, modern economy can restructure its power system around renewables rather than simply supplement fossil fuels with them.

Technicians carrying photovoltaic solar module while installing solar panel system on roof of house, for article on Solar for All grants

U.S. President Joe Biden announces $7 billion in federal solar power grants

By / / Good News For Humankind

Solar for All, a new $7 billion federal program, is set to bring rooftop and community solar to more than 900,000 lower- and middle-income households across the United States. Sixty grants will flow to state projects, tribal nations, and multi-state efforts, with participating families expected to save a combined $350 million each year on their energy bills. Alongside the funding, nearly 2,000 American Climate Corps positions will train local workers — in partnership with building trades unions — to install and maintain these systems. For communities long left out of the clean energy boom, it’s a real shift: the people who’ve shouldered the heaviest costs of fossil fuels are finally being placed at the front of the transition.

A Polar bear surrounded by arctic wilderness, for article on Alaska petroleum reserve drilling limits

Biden limits oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaskan Arctic

By / / Good News For Humankind

Thirteen million acres of Arctic Alaska just got a stronger legal shield, with the Interior Department banning new oil and gas leases outright across more than 10 million of them. The protected lands include Teshekpuk Lake, a summer gathering place for up to 100,000 geese and a continental waystation for birds that winter as far south as South America. A companion decision blocks the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road, which would have cut through caribou migration corridors and affected subsistence hunting in more than 60 Alaska Native communities. The rule won’t end every fight over Arctic drilling, and Indigenous voices remain genuinely divided. Still, safeguarding a wild expanse the size of Indiana is the kind of durable win conservation movements everywhere can build on.