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.

Abstract image with woman's face repeated, for article on psychedelics approved as medicines

Australia becomes world’s first country to officially recognize psychedelics as medicines

By / / Good News For Humankind

Psychedelic medicine just crossed a historic threshold — Australia is now the first country to give psychiatrists a legal pathway to prescribe psilocybin and MDMA as regulated treatments for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression. For patients who have cycled through every available option without relief, that’s a genuinely new door opening. The decision followed thousands of public submissions and a growing body of clinical evidence, including a landmark New Zealand Journal of Medicine study on psilocybin’s efficacy. It shows that political barriers — not just scientific ones — can eventually fall when evidence and public pressure align.\n\n—\n\n**Word count: 95**

Aerial view of Tongass National Forest, for article on Tongass National Forest roadless rule

Biden restores protections to Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

By / / Good News For Humankind

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is once again off-limits to logging and new road construction, after the USDA restored protections across the 17-million-acre rainforest — a landscape slightly larger than West Virginia that holds nearly half of all carbon stored in U.S. national forests. Tribal Nations in Southeast Alaska, including the Organized Village of Kake, led the years-long push to bring the safeguards back. For communities who have hunted, fished, and lived among the 800-year-old cedars and wild salmon streams for thousands of years, it’s a hard-won recognition. The victory also points to something bigger: protecting old-growth forests at scale is one of the most affordable, ready-now climate tools we have — no new technology required, just the will to leave ancient places standing.

Electric buses, for article on Kenya electric buses

Kenya is producing its first electric buses

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric buses are now being assembled in Kenya for the first time, marking a genuine shift in how East Africa thinks about clean public transit. A Nairobi startup called BasiGo partnered with a veteran Mombasa assembler to build 1,000 electric buses over three years — creating over 600 jobs in manufacturing, maintenance, and charging. What makes this especially promising is BasiGo’s pay-per-kilometer financing model, which makes electric buses as affordable upfront as diesel for everyday operators. Kenya’s already-clean electricity grid means these buses will run on genuinely green power. It’s a hopeful template other African cities could follow.