Milestones from Today (2017 C.E. - 2025 C.E.)

180+ organizations join massive effort to restore 4.4M acres of Brazil’s Cerrado

By Peter Schulte / September 24, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

The Cerrado gets a fraction of the attention the Amazon does, despite being the world’s most biodiverse savanna — and losing more than half its native vegetation already. The coalition working to change that has built real infrastructure from scratch: seed banks, nurseries, trained technicians, land agreements. A separate Cerrado finance fund has quadrupled its investment in a year, growing from 32 to 122 participating farms. Neither effort has finished the job. But real capacity and real capital are both now flowing toward saving it.

Kentucky erases $250 million in medical debt for 130,000 residents

By Peter Schulte / September 23, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

For tens of thousands of Kentuckians, medical debt just disappeared — no forms, no applications, just a letter in the mail. Governor Andy Beshear directed $2.5 million to a nonprofit that buys medical debt for pennies on the dollar and cancels it. The first wave already erased $103 million for 46,000 people. The money came from a fund originally set aside for housing assistance — a reminder that even well-designed relief still competes for limited dollars.

South Korea’s forest wood volume has grown 30-fold since 1950s

By Peter Schulte / September 22, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

South Korea’s reforestation is often reduced to a single number: 10 billion trees. The real story is what happened after planting day. A new study of over 9,000 archival records found tree survival rates were often below 50% in the 1950s — and only climbed above 90% once officials began systematically checking, and replanting, what failed. By 2020, the country’s forests held roughly 30 times more standing wood than in 1952, and now cover 63% of the country.

Burkina Faso’s malaria vaccine rollout cuts cases 32%, deaths 44%

By Peter Schulte / September 21, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Malaria has killed more people in Burkina Faso than almost any other disease, hitting children under five hardest. The country’s malaria vaccine rollout, scaled to all 70 health districts by mid-2025, helped drive a historic single-year decline: total cases fell from over 10.8 million to 7.3 million, while deaths dropped 44%. Still, 7.3 million cases in one year remains an enormous toll, and whether the pace holds amid funding pressures is far from settled.

Solar panel costs have plummeted from $6 to 12 cents per watt since 2000

By Peter Schulte / September 17, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

A single number is quietly reshaping how electricity gets made and sold worldwide: solar panel costs have fallen more than 98% since the early 2000s, driven largely by Chinese manufacturing scale. That collapse has made solar cheap enough for a Pakistani cement plant to cut its power bill by 40%, for Filipino homeowners to pay off rooftop systems in three years, and for over five million Indian households to install panels through a national subsidy program. But the same shift is straining power grids and utility finances, and in places like Karachi, shifting costs onto those who can’t afford solar.

Inside Episcopal church, for article on transgender Episcopal dean

Episcopal Church names Micah Cronin of Milwaukee its first out transgender dean

By Peter Schulte / September 17, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Micah Cronin’s appointment as dean of All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee marks a meaningful milestone for LGBTQ+ inclusion inside one of America’s major Christian denominations. Cronin, who found the Episcopal Church after feeling unwelcome in the conservative Methodist tradition he grew up in, sees his presence at the altar as an act of witness during a difficult moment for transgender Americans. Real tensions remain within the broader church, and not every diocese has embraced the same degree of inclusion. Still, his story shows how institutions long resistant to change can open doors that matter far beyond their walls.

Bison, for article on Chihuahuan Desert bison

Bison return to Mexican state of Coahuila for first time in 200 years

By Peter Schulte / September 16, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Cuatrociénegas is one of North America’s strangest landscapes: 324 square miles of spring-fed pools, gypsum dunes, and diverse plant life. What it lacked was a large grazer. Forty-eight bison, most transferred from the Rancho El Uno herd in Chihuahua’s Janos Biosphere Reserve, now break up compacted soil, carry seeds in their coats, and carve shallow wallows — restarting processes that stopped generations ago. That herd descends from 23 bison the U.S. sent from Wind Cave National Park in 2009. Mexico still lists bison as at risk, and with no predators here, managing the herd’s growth is an open question.

Eye, for article on trachoma elimination

Timor-Leste eliminates trachoma, world’s leading cause of blindness

By Peter Schulte / September 16, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Trachoma elimination has now reached every corner of WHO’s South-East Asia Region, and Timor-Leste — one of Southeast Asia’s youngest nations — pushed it over the finish line. The disease spreads through poverty-linked conditions like poor sanitation and limited clean water, making elimination genuinely hard-won here. A 2025 survey across all 13 municipalities found zero transmission requiring public health action, though individual trichiasis cases will still need ongoing care and sustained funding. This milestone shows that coordinated global health efforts can conquer diseases once seen as permanent features of poverty.

Black bear, for article on black bear recolonization

Black bear population rebounds across the American South after near collapse

By Peter Schulte / September 15, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Bears are not mountain animals — they thrive in swamps, pine stands, and farm-field margins, which is why the Mississippi floodplain was once their heartland. Mississippi had an estimated 12 bears left when it protected them in 1932; Arkansas, down to 40 or 50 in the 1950s, restocked with bears trucked in from Minnesota and Manitoba, now holds roughly 5,000. Louisiana’s bears left the federal threatened list in 2016. Females breed slowly and young males wander hundreds of miles, so the return is measured in decades. Conflict with farms and suburbs is the next problem to solve.

Colombia landscape and water, for article on Amazon extraction ban

Colombia protects 42% of its territory, creating the Amazon’s largest reserve

By Peter Schulte / September 11, 2026 / Good News For Humankind

Colombia’s Amazon protection sets a permanent ceiling on extraction across 186,500 square miles — the largest extraction-free zone in the basin, in a forest storing 6.5 gigatons of carbon and supplying water to 670 million people. The resolution invokes a rarely used legal mechanism to block new mining and fossil fuel contracts, while existing projects run to expiry. Indigenous-governed lands, retaining 99.5% of their forest cover, account for more than half the protected area. Whether the protection holds remains uncertain, as the incoming president has signaled plans to revive oil exploration and expand fracking.