This archive collects stories from Good News for Humankind involving nations — countries and their governments — as key actors in progress. Across 1,807 articles, you’ll find reporting on policy wins, international cooperation, and measurable improvements in health, climate, rights, and more.
The European Union has become the first international body to criminalize the most serious cases of environmental damage that are “comparable to ecocide.” Ecosystem destruction, including habitat loss and illegal logging, will now be punished with tougher penalties and prison sentences. Member countries will have two years to put the updated directive into national law.
The European Parliament has approved the Nature Restoration Law – setting a target for the E.U. to restore at least 20% of its land and sea areas by 2030, and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. With over 80% of European habitats in poor shape, the E.U. Nature Restoration Law aims to restore degraded ecosystems in all Member States, help achieve the E.U.’s climate and biodiversity objectives and enhance food security.
In a “landmark” ruling, Bangladesh’s High Court has suspended all licenses for the adoption of critically endangered wild elephants, meaning they can no longer be legally taken into captivity or exploited. The ban to protect the approximately 200 wild elephants remaining in Bangladesh was welcomed by animal rights groups. Nearly half the elephants are living in captivity.
The plan brokered by the Biden administration pauses long-running litigation over federal dam operations and represents the most significant step yet toward eventually taking the four Snake River dams down. The plan will strengthen tribal clean energy projects and provide other benefits for tribes and other communities that depend on the Columbia Basin for agriculture, energy, recreation and transportation, the White House said.
In 2024, the U.S. power industry is choosing clean energy for almost all its new capacity additions. The latest federal forecast for power plant additions from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows solar sweeping with 58% of all new utility-scale generating capacity this year. In an upset, battery storage will provide the second-most new capacity, with 23%. Wind delivers a modest 13%, while the long-delayed final nuclear reactor at Vogtle in Georgia will add 2% of new capacity.
The U.K. will quit the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT) after efforts to align it with net zero emissions plans failed. The treaty allows fossil fuel investors to sue states for lost profit expectations in an opaque corporate arbitration system set up to protect fossil fuel investors in the former Soviet economies in the 1990s.
The Biden administration will forgive another $1.2 billion in student debt for nearly 153,000 borrowers enrolled its new repayment program, called the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan. The relief will go to borrowers who have been in repayment for a decade or longer, and originally took out $12,000 or less. Biden has now canceled debt for almost 3.9 million borrowers, totaling $138 billion in relief.
The park, which celebrated its 30th anniversary on December 31 of 2023, also shared an exciting conservation milestone: 2023 was the first year without any elephant poaching detected. “We didn’t detect any elephants killed in the Park this year, a first for the Park since [we] began collecting data. This success comes after nearly a decade of concerted efforts to protect forest elephants from armed poaching in the Park,” Ben Evans, the Park’s management unit director, said in a press release.
Greece has become the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to legalize same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children after the 176-76 vote in parliament. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proclaimed “People who have been invisible will finally be made visible around us, and with them, many children will finally find their rightful place.”
Child marriage is now illegal in Zambia, thanks to the new Marriage (Amendment) Act. The landmark amendment defines a child as a “person who has attained, or is below, the age of eighteen years”. It also states that any marriage between persons where either is a child is now void. Although the practice has become less common in recent years, the UNFPA and UNICEF reported that in 2018, 29% of all young women in Zambia aged 20–24 married before 18 years old, and 5% before turning 15.
