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

This archive spans the years 2017 through 2025, a period marked by rapid advances in clean energy, medicine, technology, and social equity. It collects documented breakthroughs, policy wins, and scientific achievements from the present era. If you want evidence that progress is real and ongoing, this is where to look.

School of fish, for article on bottom trawling ban

Greece becomes first E.U. country to ban bottom fishing in marine protected areas

By / / Good News For Humankind

Greece’s bottom trawling ban makes it the first European Union country to shut this destructive practice out of its marine protected areas, covering stretches of the Aegean and Ionian seas. That matters because trawling drags weighted nets across the seafloor, tearing up ancient seagrass meadows and coral that can take centuries to grow back. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put it plainly: the ocean has given humanity so much, and we have not been kind in return. The move offers refuge to species like the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, and it directly answers critics who say protected areas without fishing limits are “paper parks.” For the rest of Europe, Greece has just turned a long-debated idea into a real precedent.

Aerial view of open ocean waves for an article about the E.U. ocean investment of €3.5 billion

The E.U. makes its biggest-ever ocean investment at €3.5 billion

By / / Good News For Humankind

The European Union’s €3.5 billion ocean conservation pledge, announced at the Our Ocean Conference, is the largest single ocean commitment any government has ever made at the forum. The package funds marine pollution reduction, sustainable fisheries reform, blue economy innovation, and international ocean governance — including support for implementing the landmark High Seas Treaty. For coastal communities across Europe, the investment represents real economic stakes, not just environmental symbolism. The scale and specificity of the commitment sets a new bar for wealthy nations and signals that ocean protection can move from aspiration to action.

Inside Passage Landscape, for article on Haida land title

British Columbia agrees to hand title of a million acres of land back to the Haida Nation

By / / Good News For Humankind

Haida title recognition just became real: nearly half a million hectares of Crown land across more than 200 islands off Canada’s northwest coast are being transferred to the Haida Nation, after Haida citizens approved the “Rising Tide” agreement by a wide margin. What makes this remarkable is how it happened — not through a generations-long court battle, but through direct negotiation with British Columbia, sparing the Nation the ruinous legal fights other Indigenous peoples have endured. Premier David Eby called it “long-overdue,” and advocates are already pointing to it as a model. For Indigenous land-rights movements worldwide, it offers something hopeful: proof that governments can choose to act with integrity, rather than wait to be forced by a judge.

Water flowing from faucet, for article on PFAS drinking water limits

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announces first-ever national regulations for “forever chemicals” in drinking water

By / / Good News For Humankind

PFAS drinking water protections are now federal law, with the EPA setting the first-ever national limits on six “forever chemicals” found in tap water across the country. The rules are expected to reduce exposure for around 100 million Americans and will require roughly 6 to 10 percent of public water systems to upgrade testing and treatment. To help with the lift, $1 billion in federal funding is immediately available to states, with priority for the communities — often low-income and disproportionately communities of color — that have carried the heaviest contamination. After decades of industry resistance and slow-moving science, a binding national standard signals that public health can still win out, and offers a template for confronting the thousands of PFAS compounds still unregulated.

"One World" sign, for article on Swiss women's climate case

A group of older Swiss women win first-ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights

By / / Good News For Humankind

KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of more than 2,000 Swiss women mostly in their 70s, just won a landmark climate case at the European Court of Human Rights after nine years of pursuing what most observers considered a long shot. The court ruled that Switzerland’s inadequate climate policies violated their right to private and family life, marking the first time it has ever ruled on global warming. Because the court’s decisions shape law across 46 member states, the ruling opens a powerful new path for climate cases everywhere. As member Elisabeth Stern, 76, put it, they did this not for themselves but for their children and grandchildren — and proved that ordinary citizens can hold governments legally accountable for climate inaction.

Intersex Pride flag, for article on intersex rights resolution

U.N. makes history with first-ever resolution supporting intersex rights

By / / Good News For Humankind

Intersex rights just got their first-ever resolution from the U.N. Human Rights Council — a milestone for the roughly 1.7 percent of people born with variations in sex characteristics, about as common as having red hair. Brought forward by Australia, Chile, Finland, and South Africa, the measure pushes back on decades of “normalizing” surgeries performed on intersex children too young to consent. It also calls for a global report documenting where these violations are happening, giving advocates a shared map for reform. After generations of quiet, persistent work by intersex activists, this vote signals that bodily autonomy for every child — however they were born — is becoming a standard the world is willing to name out loud.

A medical professional drawing blood from a patient's arm for an article about blood tests for dementia, for article on dementia blood test

U.K. launches blood tests for dementia in landmark five-year trial

By / / Good News For Humankind

Dementia blood tests are now being offered at more than 50 memory clinics across the U.K., in a landmark five-year trial aiming to transform how the disease is detected. Led by researchers at Oxford and University College London, the study will screen approximately 5,000 volunteers for protein biomarkers linked to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Currently, around one in three people with dementia in England has never received a formal diagnosis, and painful, slow pathways mean some patients wait up to four years for results. Earlier detection could connect patients to newer treatments that work best in the disease’s earliest stages.

Elderly person smiling, for article on global life expectancy gains

Global life expectancy increased by 6.2 years between 1990 and 2021

By / / Good News For Humankind

Global life expectancy rose by 6.2 years between 1990 and 2021, according to a sweeping Lancet study built from over 607 billion estimates by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The biggest leap came in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa, where people gained 10.7 years of life, largely thanks to clean water, vaccines, and oral rehydration therapy beating back diarrheal diseases. Steep drops in lower respiratory infections, stroke, and heart disease added further years almost everywhere. The pandemic set things back, but the deeper story is hopeful: targeted public health investment works at scale, and extending those same tools to every country is now the defining frontier of global health.

Honeybee by yellow flowers, for article on honeybee colonies

Hobbyist beekeepers help reverse America’s critical bee shortage in just 5 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Honeybees are having a moment: the U.S. just hit 3.8 million managed colonies, the highest count ever recorded, with nearly a million added in just five years. The comeback didn’t come from a big federal push — it came from backyards and small landowners, often nudged along by smart state tax policy. Texas is the clearest example, where a law rewarding landowners who keep bees for five years has helped grow the state into the country’s third-largest colony hub. There’s still a real catch: wild pollinators remain in trouble, and more managed hives can crowd them out. Still, this rebound offers a hopeful template for pairing everyday enthusiasm with policy that actually works.

Facility production thick air pollution, for article on Slovakia coal phaseout

Slovakia plans to be coal-free by 2024, six years earlier than originally planned

By / / Good News For Humankind

Slovakia just closed its last coal-fired power station, six years ahead of its original 2030 target. The Vojany plant in the country’s east — once the largest power station in former Czechoslovakia — shut down its final units this year, and the operator says Slovakia’s electricity supply will be free of direct CO2 emissions starting in June. Even better, the site won’t just sit empty: the company is exploring turning it into a solar park or battery storage facility, cleaning up the landfill and sludge pond in the process. Slovakia’s early exit shows that leaving coal behind isn’t just for Western Europe’s wealthiest nations — the economics have shifted faster than almost anyone predicted, opening real possibilities for the global energy transition.