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.
Building on the success of a pilot plan last year, which provided 600 victims with critical funding, the new initiative aims to expand what are now known as “flee funds.” Survivors will each receive a monetary reward of around $3,200, meeting a critical need for people who face financial difficulties in leaving abusive environments.
Since the 1980s, the combined populations of river dolphin species have plummeted by 73%. With the Global Declaration for River Dolphins, 14 countries are expected to join forces to protect six surviving species. So far, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, and Venezuela have signed the declaration.
Cape Verde, an island nation off the coast of West Africa, was given the status by the World Health Organization (WHO) as it has not reported a single case of local transmission in three years. Experts have hailed this as a major achievement. It’s the first time a sub-Saharan African nation has been declared malaria-free in 50 years.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to end deforestation by 2030 when he took office a year ago.
Preliminary data from national space agency Inpe showed 5,153 sq km of the Amazon were cleared in 2023, down from 10,278 sq km in 2022. Rainforest destruction had surged to a 12-year high under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Consumption poverty in the United States has fallen dramatically since 1980, according to a major new study from the University of Notre Dame. Researchers found the poverty rate dropped 27 percentage points when measured by what families actually spend rather than what they report earning. The official income-based measure, by contrast, showed only a 1.5 percentage point decline over the same period. The findings suggest decades of policy investment in Social Security, tax credits, and safety net programs have produced far greater results than conventional statistics indicate.
The $3.7-million project could take several decades because of the severity of the environmental damage done by illegal mining, which has deforested the park and polluted its rivers with mercury. The 485,226-acre national park is an important biological corridor along Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Paulina Hennig-Kloska, who was appointed climate and environment minister in December 2023, said that the half-year moratorium in forests across the country was the first step to limiting logging. The government promised in its coalition agreement to protect 20% of the country’s forests.
Education Minister Gabriel Attal has just been appointed prime minister of France, the first out gay man and LGBTQ+ person to be named to the position. At age 34, he will also be the country’s youngest prime minister in its Fifth Republic.
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that four additional heat pump manufacturers successfully produced heat pump prototypes as part of the Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump (CCHP) Technology Challenge. Launched in 2021, this initiative brings together public and private sector stakeholders to address technical challenges and market barriers to adopting next-generation cold-climate heat pumps—a key clean energy technology that can potentially save households $500 a year or more on their utility bills while also slashing harmful carbon emissions.
A new Polish national program plans to replace half the country’s 2.7 million wood and coal-fired furnaces with natural gas furnaces or even more efficient heat pumps by 2030. The policy is projected to save more than 21,000 lives a year in Poland, increase the number of people breathing clean air 15-fold, and help Poland reach new E.U. air quality standards.
