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.
Under the partnership, Indonesia will aim to cap its emissions from the power sector by 2030, faster than the initial target of 2037, and to generate 34% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
Rewilding Europe’s first project in Spain is bringing an 850,000-acre mountain landscape back to life — and the early signs are genuinely hopeful. Wild horses are already breeding, black vultures are being released at up to 15 a year, and Iberian lynx are expected within two years. The project is also designed around local communities, creating economic incentives for nature-based tourism and forest protection. Stories like this show that recovery is possible when wildlife, people, and landscape are treated as one connected system.
The new provisions are part of French president Macron’s large-scale plan to heavily invest in renewables, which aims to multiply by 10 the amount of solar energy produced in the country.
According to a recent study for estimating the prevalence of blindness and visual impairment in the Indian population, more than one fourth of people in India aged 50 years and above are visually impaired.
Rich nations, which bear the brunt of responsibility for warming the atmosphere, have long resisted making such payments, seeking to avoid assuming legal liability for their contributions to climate change.
The age-adjusted prevalence of dementia declined from 12.2 percent of people over age 65 in 2000 to 8.5 percent of people over age 65 in 2016—a nearly one-third drop from the 2000 level, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The small island nation in the South Pacific Ocean has designated its entire exclusive economic zone — an area about the size of Vietnam — as a multiple-use marine park called Niue Nukutuluea.
This “monumental” breakthrough formally ends a two-year war that has displaced millions and threatened to destabilize a swath of the continent.
The Social Security Administration has announced that it is now possible to self-select sex on Social Security records without the need to provide any legal or medical proof of a gender change.
In the deal, the Nordic country will pay Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical forests, to keep its forests standing, thereby reducing its emissions.
