U.S. to plant 1 billion trees as climate change kills forests
The Forest Service plans over the next couple years to scale up work from about 60,000 acres replanted last year to about 400,000 acres annually.
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.
Andorra becomes the 33rd country with marriage equality
The tiny nation’s new law also creates a system for transgender people to update the name and gender marker on legal documents without providing proof of medical care.
Greece bans genital surgery on non-consenting intersex babies
The surgeries are often unnecessary for the health of the child and are performed so that adults feel better about how the child’s genitalia look, even though the child often cannot consent to the procedures.
Droupadi Murmu becomes India’s first tribal president
Droupadi Murmu became India’s first president from a Scheduled Tribe community when she took office in July 2022, representing roughly 104 million people whose voices have rarely reached the country’s highest institutions. Born in a small Santali village in Odisha, she was the first girl from her village to attend college and began her career as a schoolteacher and government clerk before entering politics in 1997. She later served two terms in the state legislature and as Governor of Jharkhand. While the presidency is largely ceremonial, who holds it shapes how India tells its own story — and her rise sends a powerful signal about belonging in public life, echoing far beyond India for every community still waiting to see itself reflected at the top.
Rwanda’s mountain gorillas make strong comeback in conservation win
When American naturalist Dian Fossey moved to Rwanda half a century ago to study mountain gorillas, their numbers were dwindling, down to just 254 individuals, but today they’re up to over 600.
Botswana reduces mother-baby HIV transmission rates from 40% to below 1% since 1999
Mother-to-child HIV transmission in Botswana has plummeted from 40% in 1999 to below 1% today, with seven health districts recording zero cases in 2021. The country built its success on three simple pillars — free testing, free antiretroviral treatment, and community health workers who visit pregnant women at home to walk them through the process. Nearly every pregnant woman with HIV now receives treatment, up from just 27% two decades ago. In December 2021, Botswana became the first high-burden country to earn the WHO’s silver tier recognition for this work. It’s a powerful blueprint for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa: when care is free, trusted, and close to home, an AIDS-free generation moves within reach.
Colombia launches $245-million initiative to create and maintain protected areas
Heritage Colombia is one of the most significant conservation investments the country has ever made — pooling $245 million from governments, international institutions, and private donors to protect nearly 80 million acres of land and sea over the next decade. Colombia holds roughly 10% of the world’s biodiversity, making it one of the most ecologically critical places on Earth to get this right. Crucially, local communities are central to the design, not an afterthought. If it succeeds, Heritage Colombia could become a replicable model for how nations fund lasting, community-rooted conservation at scale.
China installs massive 17 GB of offshore wind power in 2021
China now has 26 GW of offshore wind power installed, the most of any nation and nearly half of the world’s cumulative capacity.
Switzerland builds the world’s largest water battery to store surplus renewable energy
Nant de Drance represents something genuinely exciting: proof that we can store renewable energy at a scale that changes how entire continents manage their grids. Tucked 2,000 feet inside the Swiss Alps, the plant holds 20 million kWh by moving water between two mountain reservoirs — absorbing surplus solar and wind, then releasing it as hydropower within minutes when demand spikes. It can supply roughly 900,000 homes and acts as a rapid-response buffer for Switzerland and neighboring European countries. Projects like this show that the hardest engineering problems in the clean energy transition are solvable.
Slovenia set to be the first former communist country with marriage equality
Slovenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Balkan nation’s ban on LGBTQ marriage equality and adoption is “inadmissible discrimination against same-sex couples.”