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.

Young trees, for article on African reforestation

The TREES program has planted tens of millions of trees across Africa since 2015

By / / Good News For Humankind

Reforestation done right looks less like a planting day and more like a four-year partnership with farmers — and the TREES program has quietly restored more than 41,000 hectares across nine African countries, an area roughly seven times the size of Manhattan. Instead of dropping seeds on remote land, TREES helps smallholder families build “forest gardens” of about 5,800 trees per hectare, weaving in fruit orchards, food crops, and windbreaks that feed households and generate a market surplus. In Kenya’s Kesouma region alone, 17,000 farmers have joined in. Earlier this year, the UN named it a World Restoration Flagship — a reminder that the most durable climate work tends to be the kind that pays the people doing it.

African girl sleeping on mother's shoulder, for article on global child mortality

‘Historic milestone’ as global child mortality hits record low of 4.9 million in 2022

By / / Good News For Humankind

Child deaths worldwide have fallen to 4.9 million in 2022 — the lowest number ever recorded, and roughly half the toll of the year 2000. Behind that drop is decades of unglamorous, working-everyday care: vaccines, bed nets, oral rehydration, skilled midwives, and community health workers showing up in their own neighborhoods. Rwanda offers a remarkable glimpse of what’s possible, having cut its under-five mortality rate by more than 80% since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide through community-based insurance and a serious investment in primary care. The number is still far too high, and newborns and children in conflict zones remain especially vulnerable. But the trend is one of humanity’s quiet, steady triumphs — proof that coordinated care, sustained over decades, saves millions of lives.

A large french flag fluttering under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, for article on constitutional abortion rights

France becomes world’s first country to enshrine abortion rights in constitution

By / / Good News For Humankind

Constitutional abortion rights became reality in France on Monday when lawmakers gathered at Versailles voted 780 to 72 to embed the protection in the nation’s founding document — the first country anywhere to do so. The amendment guarantees a “freedom” to abortion, language Prime Minister Gabriel Attal framed as a moral debt owed to generations of women, and a message that “your body belongs to you.” That night, the Eiffel Tower glowed with the words “my body my choice.” The move came as a direct response to the unraveling of Roe v. Wade, and it offers the world a powerful new template: lifting reproductive freedom above the reach of shifting politics, where it becomes structurally harder to take away.

DSV rooftop solar in Horsens, for article on Denmark rooftop solar

World’s largest rooftop solar power plant to be built in Denmark

By / / Good News For Humankind

Rooftop solar is about to hit a new high in Horsens, Denmark, where a 35-megawatt system will blanket a logistics center spanning more than 300,000 square meters — roughly the area of 42 soccer pitches. Danish firm SolarFuture, known for its tricky install on the curved roof of the Copenhagen Opera, is leading the build, with completion targeted for December 2024. The project shows what becomes possible when warehouses are designed from day one to carry panels, turning ordinary industrial roofs into serious power plants. As corporations around the world look for on-site clean energy, a single rooftop in a town of 60,000 quietly raises the bar for everyone else.

Dominican Republic forested landscape, for article on Plan Yaque land restoration

The Dominican Republic reforests a fifth of the country in 10 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Dominican Republic restored 18% of its territory in a single decade — not through sweeping mandates, but through conversations with farmers, one at a time. Plan Yaque, a coalition of 30 NGOs and government agencies, launched in 2009 with a simple premise: help landowners see trees as a path to water security and steadier farm income. Project leaders traveled farm by farm, and as restored hillsides began holding water and reviving streams, neighbors became the project’s most persuasive advocates. The result is one of the largest land recoveries in the Western Hemisphere this century — and a reminder that some of the most durable environmental wins come from trust, not enforcement.

Bee on yellow flowers, for article on EU nature restoration law

E.U. passes landmark law to restore 20% of Europe’s degraded land and sea by 2030

By / / Good News For Humankind

The EU nature restoration law is now official, requiring all 27 member states to put restoration measures in place across at least 20% of Europe’s land and seas by 2030, with every degraded ecosystem on track for repair by 2050. It’s the first legally binding restoration target in EU history, with enforceable milestones, national plans, and consequences for falling behind. Among its boldest commitments: rewetting drained peatlands, freeing 25,000 kilometers of rivers from obsolete dams and barriers, and reversing pollinator decline by the end of the decade. Coming after a razor-thin parliamentary vote and months of political resistance, the law shows that a major democracy can still choose to act on ecological collapse — offering a template the rest of the world can learn from.

3d illustration of gut and stomach pain, for article on Crohn's disease remission

79% of Crohn’s disease patients in remission after early intervention

By / / Good News For Humankind

Crohn’s disease patients given the drug infliximab right after diagnosis reached sustained remission at a rate of 79% after one year, compared to just 15% for those on the standard step-by-step approach. The Cambridge-led trial of 386 patients also found that only one person in the early-treatment group needed urgent bowel surgery, versus ten in the conventional group. Researchers say the old wisdom of saving the strongest drugs for last lets quiet damage build up while the clock ticks. With cheaper biosimilar versions now widely available, this finding could reshape care for the millions living with Crohn’s worldwide — and it’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the best medicine is simply not waiting.

Salmon jumping upstream, for article on Columbia River salmon restoration

President Biden brokers $1 billion deal with Oregon, Washington, 4 Columbia River tribes to revive Northwest salmon population

By / / Good News For Humankind

A billion-dollar plan to bring salmon back to the Columbia River Basin just got a formal signature from the Biden administration, Oregon, Washington, and four tribal nations. The Columbia was once the greatest salmon-producing river system on Earth, supporting 16 stocks — four are now extinct and seven are listed as endangered. The agreement pauses decades of litigation and, crucially, puts tribes at the center as active partners in clean energy development, not just consultation. Yakama Nation Chairman Gerald Lewis put it plainly: more clean energy, yes, but built in a way that’s socially just. It’s a hopeful blueprint for what an honest, Indigenous-led ecological recovery can look like — for the Pacific Northwest and for river systems everywhere.

Aerial view of large electrical power plant with many rows of solar photovoltaic panels for producing clean ecological electric energy in morning, for article on zero-carbon power capacity

96% of all new power capacity in the U.S. in 2024 will be carbon-free

By / / Good News For Humankind

Clean energy just crossed a quiet threshold in the United States: 96 percent of new electricity capacity planned for 2024 is zero-carbon, while new natural gas additions have fallen to a 25-year low. The real game-changer is battery storage, which lets solar and wind power flow steadily even when the sun sets or the wind dies down. Utility-scale batteries alone account for 14.3 gigawatts of planned additions this year, dwarfing new gas builds. Tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped unlock a wave of domestic battery manufacturing, bringing costs down and deployment up. It is a hopeful signal that the long-promised clean grid is finally being built, not just imagined.

Bolivian rainforest, for article on Amazon rainforest protection

Bolivian town Sena protects 1 million acres of Amazon rainforest

By / / Good News For Humankind

Amazon rainforest protection just got a remarkable boost from an unlikely source: a Bolivian town of 2,500 people passed a law safeguarding 1.1 million acres of intact forest. The new Gran Manupare reserve lifts conservation coverage in Bolivia’s Pando Department to 26% of its land, and locks in an estimated 9.2 million tons of irrecoverable carbon. It’s also a haven for giant river otters, jaguars, and big-leaf mahogany — and it works because standing forests pay, thanks to a Brazil nut economy that depends on healthy ecosystems. Piece by piece, Bolivian communities have now stitched together 10 million contiguous hectares of protected Amazon, proving that community-led conservation can match anything achieved by national decree.