Oct 1, 2023
Summary of last week's most important good news from around the world.
Conservation Success: The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has announced a “milestone achievement” after seeing a 40 percent increase in its snow leopard population - demonstrating that conservation efforts are having a positive impact.
Kidney Breakthrough: An eight-year-old girl at Great Ormond Street Hospital has become the first child in the UK to receive a special type of kidney transplant that does not require the use of long-term drugs to stop rejection of the organ.
US Cancer Progress: America is making remarkable progress in the war on cancer, says ACS Journals. In 1970, the number of people who were still alive five years after a cancer diagnosis was 49 percent. By 2018, it was 68 percent. Survival rates for childhood cancer have risen from 58 percent to 85 percent in that same period. All told, the cancer death rate fell by one third from 1991 to 2020.
First High Seas Treaty: Nearly 70 countries (including the US, EU, and China) at the United Nations have signed the first-ever treaty on protecting the international high seas, raising hopes that it will come into force soon and protect threatened ecosystems vital to the planet.
Nature Restoration: Norway has just completed its largest-ever nature restoration project, removing all traces of a large-scale mining project in Svalbard that ran for over a century. And the polar bears are starting to return.
German Renewables: New report says that the country is likely to generate more than half of its power from renewable energy this year.
EU ups Targets: The European Parliament has given its final approval to legally binding targets to expand renewable energy faster than originally planned this decade. The new law significantly raises the EU’s renewable energy targets, requiring 42.5 percent of EU energy to be renewable by 2030.
UK Peatland Restoration: The UK is ‘supercharging’ peatland restoration with new funding for 12 projects across 35,000 hectares (135 square miles). Peatlands cover 10 percent of the UK’s total land area, but it's estimated that 87 percent of the peatlands are degraded. Even in their degraded state, they contain more than half of the country’s terrestrial carbon stores. Restoring them could prove crucial to delivering the UK’s legally binding climate and nature targets.
Ancestral Lands: Brazil's Supreme Court has rejected efforts to restrict native peoples' rights to reservations on their ancestral lands and ruled in favour of restoring territory to the Xokleng people, from which they were evicted. The ruling sets a precedent for hundreds of indigenous land claims and is expected to have widespread positive consequences for indigenous land rights, reports the BBC.
World's Oldest Post Office: The world’s oldest working post office has been operating continuously in southern Scotland since 1712. But when its owners decided they were ready to retire, some onlookers worried the facility would close and lose its title. Fortunately, those concerns never came to fruition. Barry and Mary Ford have now taken over the 311-year-old site in Sanquhar, a small village situated about 50 miles south of Glasgow. They will be the 17th operators in the facility’s history.
eBikes Booming in Asia: The cacophony of small engines spewing pollution is one of the most recognisable sights and sounds in traffic-choked cities across Asia - but soon that may be a thing of the past, as electric two-wheelers explode across the continent, reports The Economist. Half of all new scooters sold in China are already electric, and in places like India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, sales of battery-powered two-wheelers are booming.
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