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.

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.

School of fish, for article on bottom trawling ban

Greece becomes first E.U. country to ban bottom fishing in marine protected areas

By / / Good News For Humankind

Greece’s bottom trawling ban makes it the first European Union country to shut this destructive practice out of its marine protected areas, covering stretches of the Aegean and Ionian seas. That matters because trawling drags weighted nets across the seafloor, tearing up ancient seagrass meadows and coral that can take centuries to grow back. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put it plainly: the ocean has given humanity so much, and we have not been kind in return. The move offers refuge to species like the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, and it directly answers critics who say protected areas without fishing limits are “paper parks.” For the rest of Europe, Greece has just turned a long-debated idea into a real precedent.

Aerial view of open ocean waves for an article about the E.U. ocean investment of €3.5 billion

The E.U. makes its biggest-ever ocean investment at €3.5 billion

By / / Good News For Humankind

The European Union’s €3.5 billion ocean conservation pledge, announced at the Our Ocean Conference, is the largest single ocean commitment any government has ever made at the forum. The package funds marine pollution reduction, sustainable fisheries reform, blue economy innovation, and international ocean governance — including support for implementing the landmark High Seas Treaty. For coastal communities across Europe, the investment represents real economic stakes, not just environmental symbolism. The scale and specificity of the commitment sets a new bar for wealthy nations and signals that ocean protection can move from aspiration to action.

Water flowing from faucet, for article on PFAS drinking water limits

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announces first-ever national regulations for “forever chemicals” in drinking water

By / / Good News For Humankind

PFAS drinking water protections are now federal law, with the EPA setting the first-ever national limits on six “forever chemicals” found in tap water across the country. The rules are expected to reduce exposure for around 100 million Americans and will require roughly 6 to 10 percent of public water systems to upgrade testing and treatment. To help with the lift, $1 billion in federal funding is immediately available to states, with priority for the communities — often low-income and disproportionately communities of color — that have carried the heaviest contamination. After decades of industry resistance and slow-moving science, a binding national standard signals that public health can still win out, and offers a template for confronting the thousands of PFAS compounds still unregulated.

Facility production thick air pollution, for article on Slovakia coal phaseout

Slovakia plans to be coal-free by 2024, six years earlier than originally planned

By / / Good News For Humankind

Slovakia just closed its last coal-fired power station, six years ahead of its original 2030 target. The Vojany plant in the country’s east — once the largest power station in former Czechoslovakia — shut down its final units this year, and the operator says Slovakia’s electricity supply will be free of direct CO2 emissions starting in June. Even better, the site won’t just sit empty: the company is exploring turning it into a solar park or battery storage facility, cleaning up the landfill and sludge pond in the process. Slovakia’s early exit shows that leaving coal behind isn’t just for Western Europe’s wealthiest nations — the economics have shifted faster than almost anyone predicted, opening real possibilities for the global energy transition.

Argentinian flag flying near a building, for article on crimes against trans women

In first, an Argentine court convicts ex-officers of crimes against trans women during dictatorship

By / / Good News For Humankind

Argentina just made legal history: a court in La Plata convicted 11 former officials of the 1976–1983 dictatorship for crimes against humanity specifically committed against transgender women — believed to be the first ruling of its kind anywhere in the world. Eight trans plaintiffs took the stand to testify about rape and torture at the Banfield Pit, one of the country’s largest clandestine detention centers. Ten defendants received life sentences; one was sentenced to 25 years. When the verdict was read, survivors and families packed the courtroom and wept. Argentina has been quietly building the world’s most ambitious reckoning with state terror, and this ruling extends that work to a community long left outside official memory — a model other nations are studying.

Charging an EV, for article on municipal fleet electrification, for article on tailpipe emission standards

Biden administration rolls out new tailpipe rules that will boost EVs and hybrids

By / / Good News For Humankind

New U.S. tailpipe pollution rules are projected to prevent more than 7 billion metric tons of planet-warming emissions over their lifetime, cutting passenger car pollution nearly in half by 2032 compared to 2026 levels. Rather than mandating a hard electric vehicle quota, the EPA lets automakers mix battery EVs, plug-in hybrids, and more efficient gas engines to hit the same pollution ceiling. A former EPA transportation chief called it the single most important climate regulation in American history, and cleaner air will especially benefit communities living near busy roadways. With transportation being the largest source of U.S. climate pollution, this rule nudges the world’s second-biggest car market closer to the pace of change already underway in Europe and China.

African girl sleeping on mother's shoulder, for article on global child mortality

‘Historic milestone’ as global child mortality hits record low of 4.9 million in 2022

By / / Good News For Humankind

Child deaths worldwide have fallen to 4.9 million in 2022 — the lowest number ever recorded, and roughly half the toll of the year 2000. Behind that drop is decades of unglamorous, working-everyday care: vaccines, bed nets, oral rehydration, skilled midwives, and community health workers showing up in their own neighborhoods. Rwanda offers a remarkable glimpse of what’s possible, having cut its under-five mortality rate by more than 80% since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide through community-based insurance and a serious investment in primary care. The number is still far too high, and newborns and children in conflict zones remain especially vulnerable. But the trend is one of humanity’s quiet, steady triumphs — proof that coordinated care, sustained over decades, saves millions of lives.