A week of good news
w/c 8 July 2024
Harsh past / Imperfect present / Better future
A regular weekly bulletin of good news stories where the future is bright
1. In the DRC, the elimination of primary school fees in public schools has resulted in 3.7 million more children gaining access to education — https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P172341?ref=fixthenews.com
2. Mobile phones and the Internet have enabled the growth of mobile money accounts in regions with limited banking infrastructure. These accounts provide simple financial services like deposits, transfers, and payments to hundreds of millions of people — https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/mobile-money-accounts-are-surging-globally-especially-in-africa-and-asia
As this chart shows, the number of active mobile money accounts globally has grown from 13 million in 2010 to more than 640 million in 2023. This is based on data published by the GSM Association.
While the adoption of mobile banking was almost exclusive to Sub-Saharan Africa in the early 2010s, Asian countries have seen significant growth in recent years
3. A push to provide clean cooking options for over a billion people in Africa has raised $2.2 billion in pledges from governments and the private sector — https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/inaugural-africa-clean-cooking-summit-sees-22-bln-pledged-2024-05-14/?ref=fixthenews.com
4. Tanzania’s results-based education financing program has led to an additional 1.8 million students enrolling in primary schools — https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P169380?ref=fixthenews.com
5. Global Economic Growth Expected to Increase Through 2025, United Nations Report Says — https://nicenews.com/culture/united-nations-global-economic-growth-report-mid-2024/
Things are looking up for the global economy, according to new data from the United Nations. Last week, the organization released its mid-2024 World Economic Situation and Prospects report, which forecasted that the world economy will grow by 2.7% this year, surpassing the 2.3% prediction made in January.
The report also projected a 2.8% increase in 2025, indicating a slow yet steady progression toward a stronger financial future.
6. Climeworks Captures Double the CO2 for Half the Energy. The world’s first megaton carbon capture site will join a growing field — https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-capture-climeworks
The Zurich-based company has just unveiled the latest generation of its direct-air capture (DAC) technology, which it says will help remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by the end of the decade.
The new system features a revamped cubelike design and a reengineered sorbent (the material used to absorb CO2), which Wurzbacher said can capture twice as much carbon dioxide as the previous design. The new system also uses half the energy, while the materials are projected to last three times as long — all of which cuts overall costs by 50 percent.
7. Wild Horses Return to Kazakhstan Steppes after Two Centuries — https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/10/przewalskis-horses-only-wild-species-return-central-asian-steppes-kazakhstan
A group of the world’s last wild horses have returned to their native Kazakhstan after an absence of about 200 years. The seven horses, four mares from Berlin and a stallion and two other mares from Prague, were flown to the central Asian country on a Czech air force transport plane.
The wild horses, known as Przewalski’s horses, once roamed the vast steppe grasslands of central Asia, where horses are believed to have been first domesticated about 5,500 years ago.
8. One man’s determination has reduced traffic deaths on some roads in India by 40%, and his solution has been rolled out to the 15 most dangerous highways in the country — https://www.rolex.org/rolex-awards/milestones/science-health/piyush-tewari?ref=fixthenews.com
9. The Takaful and Karama (Solidarity and Dignity) Programme in Egypt now reaches 4.67 million vulnerable households — https://www.worldbank.org/en/reslts/2024/05/28/promoting-inclusive-human-capital-development-and-building-resilience-in-egypt-through-cash-transfer-programs?ref=fixthenews.com
10. The last ozone-layer damaging chemicals to be phased out are finally falling in the atmosphere — https://uk.news.yahoo.com/last-ozone-layer-damaging-chemicals-154132449.html?guccounter=1
Levels of HCFCs in the atmosphere have been falling since 2021 — the first decline since scientists started taking measurements in the late 1970s. This milestone shows the enormous success of the Montreal protocol in not only tackling the original problem of CFCs but also its lesser known and less destructive successor.
This is very good news for the ozone layer’s continuing recovery. The most recent scientific prediction, made in 2022, anticipated that HCFC levels would not start falling until 2026.
11. If it bleeds, it leads. Negativity is [still] making everyone miserable — read what Matthew Yglesias has to say — https://www.slowboring.com/p/negativity-is-still-making-everyone?ref=fixthenews.com
12. Mangrove conservation in Rio de Janeiro — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/rio-de-janeiro-bay-reforestation-shows-mangroves-power-to-mitigate-climate-disasters?ref=fixthenews.com
Over the past four years, the Green Guanabara Project in Rio de Janeiro has restored a huge area of mangroves, planting 30,000 trees in Guanabara Bay. The initiative will help safeguard one million residents in the nearby city of São Gonçalo from flood while preserving marine biodiversity and reducing river pollution.
13. AI and satellite imager can spot fires 500x faster than on-ground — https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/ai-and-satellite-imager-can-spot-fires-500x-faster-than-on-ground/
Wildfire detection is set to reach new heights — literally — thanks to a special CubeSat in low Earth orbit.
This shoebox-sized satellite, Kanyini, was developed at the University of South Australia as part of the federally-funded SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre.
According to data published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth and Remote Sensing, the on-board AI model reduced data beamed back to Earth by 16% and used almost 70% less energy to perform the analysis while detecting fire smoke 500 times faster than conventional processing at ground facilities.
14. In Kenya, the Tusome program has improved the reading of Grade 1 and 2 students by the equivalent of 3–5 years of schooling — https://www.rti.org/impact/lets-read-understanding-kenyas-success-improving-foundational-literacy-scale?ref=fixthenews.com
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I hope you feet uplifted, positive and hopeful after reading some or all of these examples of good news stories where the future is bright.
In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.
Remember, hope lives here.
(Credit and copyright — all the stories here have been previoulsy highlighted by:
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