This archive spans one of the most eventful periods in recent history, from 2017 through 2025. Browse more than 4,100 articles documenting scientific breakthroughs, policy wins, social progress, and human ingenuity from the present era. Each story highlights what people and communities around the world are building, solving, and achieving right now.
Greece will start with national marine parks, where bottom fishing will be banned “by 2026.” Then, it will be prohibited “in all marine protected areas by 2030.” This method of fishing, decried by environmental associations, involves dragging heavy nets along the seabed, damaging ecosystems and releasing carbon trapped in the seabed.
Jera, Japan’s largest power company and one of the largest thermal power producers in the world, has announced the launch of a major new global renewables business, becoming the latest fossil giant to act on the existential threat of net zero to its business model. Based out of the U.K., the new company – called Jera Nex – will be tasked with delivering on Jera’s stated ambition to develop a massive 20GW of renewable capacity by 2035, enough to power millions of homes.
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.
For centuries, the Haida people have known that the impenetrable forests and bountiful waters of Haida Gwaii – “the islands at the boundary of the world” – were both a life-giving force and their rightful home. Now, after decades of negotiation, the province of British Columbia has come to the same conclusion: the title over more than 200 islands off Canada’s west coast should rightfully be held by the Haida Nation.
Nigeria has become the first country to roll out a “revolutionary” five-in-one vaccine against meningitis, the World Health Organization has announced. The Men5CV vaccine offers a powerful shield against the five major strains of the meningococcal bacteria that cause the disease. Known by the brand name MenFive, it provides broader protection than the vaccine currently used in much of Africa.
The Path to Scale dashboard, developed in a partnership between the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), provides information on funding from 133 donors since 2011 based on publicly available information. According to the developers, this publicly accessible dashboard will help donors, NGOs and rights holders identify critical funding gaps and opportunities in global efforts to secure communities’ rights.
According to a recent study from Our World In Data, in the early-to-mid 20th century, the average annual death toll from disasters was very high, often climbing to over a million. In recent decades, such deaths are typically fewer than 20,000 people, even as natural disasters become more frequent and more extreme.
A massive subsidy program to help Indian households install rooftop solar panels in their homes and apartments aims to provide 30 gigawatt hours of solar power to the nation’s inventory. The scheme, called PM-Surya Ghar, will provide free electricity to 10 million homes according to estimates, and the designing of a national portal will streamline the process of installation and payment.
Commonly called “forever chemicals,” PFAS are synthetic chemicals found nearly everywhere — in air, water, and soil — and can take thousands of years to break down in the environment.
The EPA has stated there is no safe level of exposure to PFAS without risk of health impacts, but now it will require that public water utilities test for six different types of PFAS chemicals to reduce exposure in drinking water. The new standards will reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people, according to the EPA, and prevent thousands of deaths and illnesses.
The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate. The ruling is binding and can trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe.
