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.

Coal pollution, for article on Germany coal use

German coal use plunges nearly 40% in 2024

By / / Good News For Humankind

Germany’s coal cleanup took a striking leap forward: hard coal use in power plants dropped 39 percent in the first nine months of 2024 compared to the same stretch in 2023, avoiding roughly 20 million tonnes of CO2. The shift is being driven by a surge in renewables, which now supply more than half of Germany’s electricity, alongside cleaner imports from European neighbors. Lignite, the dirtier sibling, fell 14.5 percent over the same months. Analysts now expect Germany’s coal exit to arrive well before its 2038 legal deadline. When the continent’s largest economy can pull this off, it reshapes what’s possible for every country still wrestling with how to leave coal behind.

Professional workers clean and inspect solar panels on a floating buoy. Power plant with water, for article on China solar power

China adds unprecedented 160 GW of solar power in first 3 quarters of 2024

By / / Good News For Humankind

China’s solar boom hit a staggering new milestone: 160 gigawatts of new capacity added in just the first nine months of 2024, roughly equal to Germany’s entire electricity system built in under a year. That pushed cumulative solar capacity past 770 GW, a 48% jump from the year before, with rooftops and desert mega-farms growing side by side. Driving it all is a remarkable cost story: solar panel prices have fallen more than 90% over the past 15 years, making sunlight the cheapest new electricity humans have ever generated. Because China makes most of the world’s panels, every gigawatt it installs ripples outward, putting affordable clean power within reach of countries that have long been priced out.

Island off the shore of the Azores, for article on pre-Portuguese Azores settlement, for article on Azores marine protected area

The Azores creates largest marine protected area network in the North Atlantic

By / / Good News For Humankind

Marine protected area status now covers 287,000 square kilometers around Portugal’s Azores islands, creating the largest such network in Europe. Half of that expanse bans fishing and other harmful activities outright, giving deep-sea corals, whales, manta rays, and sharks real room to thrive. Scientists mapped the zones using underwater cameras and deep-sea surveys, working alongside local fishers and officials so the boundaries reflect both ecological richness and community life. The Azores sits at a crossroads of Atlantic currents, with hydrothermal vents and seamounts that support some of the region’s most diverse marine communities. With less than 3 percent of the global ocean currently fully protected, this decision offers the worldwide 30×30 movement something it badly needs — a credible, science-led example others can follow.

Aerial view of a high voltage substation., for article on India grid investment

India unveils whopping $109 billion transmission plan for renewable energy

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s power ministry just committed $109 billion to rebuild the country’s electricity grid — one of the largest single energy infrastructure investments any nation has ever made. The plan would triple India’s renewable capacity to 600 gigawatts by 2032, with long-distance high-voltage lines carrying solar power from Rajasthan’s plains and wind from Tamil Nadu’s coast to the cities and factories that need it. Grid bottlenecks have quietly become the biggest obstacle to clean energy worldwide, from the U.S. to Germany to Australia, so it matters that the world’s third-largest emitter is treating transmission as a top priority. If the wires get built, hundreds of millions gain cleaner, cheaper power — and other large economies gain a model worth copying.

A worker replacing a corroded lead pipe in a residential street for an article about Flint lead pipe replacement, for article on lead pipe removal

U.S. announces 10-year deadline to remove all lead pipes nationwide

By / / Good News For Humankind

Lead pipes in roughly nine million American homes are now on a federal clock: the EPA’s new rule requires every utility to find and replace them within 10 years. Backed by $2.6 billion in fresh funding, the policy marks a dramatic shift from previous timelines that stretched 40 or even 50 years out. Nearly half the money is directed to disadvantaged communities, where decades of disinvestment left lead lines in place long after wealthier neighborhoods got upgrades. Milwaukee mother and advocate Deanna Branch, whose son was poisoned by lead, said the shorter timeline finally gives her hope she’ll live to see the pipes pulled from her city. For a country where clean water has long depended on your zip code, a hard deadline is itself a milestone.

Good news for marine protection, for article on Australia ocean protection

Australia to protect 52% of its oceans, more than any other country

By / / Good News For Humankind

Australia’s ocean protection just leveled up in a big way, with a sub-Antarctic marine reserve quadrupling to add 300,000 square kilometers of safeguarded waters — an area roughly the size of Italy. The expansion around Heard and McDonald Islands shields glaciers, albatross, macaroni penguins, elephant seals, and fish found almost nowhere else, keeping mining and new commercial fisheries out of one of the planet’s least-disturbed places. With this move, Australia now protects 52% of its marine territory, leaping past the global 30-by-2030 target it pledged to just two years ago. As nations everywhere search for tools to reverse ocean biodiversity loss, large, serious marine reserves like this one are quietly becoming a blueprint others can follow.

Good news, for article on Mexico's first female president

Claudia Sheinbaum is sworn in as Mexico’s first female president

By / / Good News For Humankind

Claudia Sheinbaum won Mexico’s presidency with roughly 59% of the vote in June 2024 — the largest margin in the country’s modern democratic era — and took office as the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the nation of 130 million. A climate scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, she contributed to landmark IPCC reports before entering politics, and as Mexico City’s environment secretary she helped launch the Metrobús system that reshaped how millions get around. In her first months in office, she used a legislative supermajority to write universal healthcare and inflation-beating minimum wage protections directly into the constitution. Her rise signals that scientific expertise and bold social reform can sit at the very center of democratic leadership.

Good news for LGBTQ rights, for article on Thailand marriage equality, for article on conversion therapy ban, for article on same-sex partnership rights, for article on forced outing of queer students, for article on Greece same-sex marriage

Thailand becomes first Southeast Asian country to legalize marriage equality

By / / Good News For Humankind

Marriage equality arrived in Thailand on January 22, 2025, when the first same-sex weddings became legal — including a mass ceremony in Bangkok for more than a thousand couples. The new law gives same-sex partners the same rights heterosexual couples have always had: adopting children together, inheriting estates, and making medical decisions for each other. It also rewrites Thailand’s civil code in gender-neutral language, swapping “husband” and “wife” for “partner” throughout. For activists like Siritata Ninlapruek, who spent over a decade pushing for this, the win felt almost unreal. Thailand is now the third country in Asia to fully recognize same-sex marriage, offering a hopeful reference point for advocates across a region where many neighbors still criminalize same-sex relationships.

Closeup hands of old woman suffering from leprosy, for article on leprosy elimination

Jordan becomes first country to receive WHO verification for eliminating leprosy

By / / Good News For Humankind

Leprosy has officially been eliminated in a country for the first time, with the World Health Organization verifying that Jordan has gone more than 20 years without a single locally transmitted case. Reaching that milestone took decades of coordination between Jordan’s Ministry of Health and WHO, plus surveillance systems sharp enough to catch cases arriving from abroad before they could spark local spread. Health leaders are quick to note that this was also a fight against stigma, which has shadowed the disease for millennia. With over 200,000 new cases still diagnosed worldwide each year, mostly in lower-income regions, Jordan offers something the global effort hasn’t had before: living proof that the finish line is reachable.

A busy highway filled with electric vehicles charging at roadside stations for an article about global EV fleet milestone, for article on electric vehicles Norway

Norway becomes world’s first country to have more fully electric cars than gas cars

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric vehicles in Norway have officially overtaken gasoline cars on the road, a first for any country. Out of roughly 2.87 million passenger vehicles nationwide, battery electric cars now lead — a stunning flip from 2004, when just 1,000 EVs shared the road with 1.6 million gas cars. The shift came not through bans but through years of steady incentives: tax breaks, cheaper tolls, and accessible charging that made going electric the obvious choice. Diesel could be the next domino to fall, possibly as soon as 2026. Norway’s quiet, two-decade transformation offers the rest of the world a hopeful blueprint — proof that a car-loving country really can rewire its roads within a single generation.