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GOOD PLANET NEWS, 12 October 2026

World Food Day Edition Theme: Food Security It’s World Food Day on 16 October. This year, it asks us to ‘innovate today so we can nourish tomorrow’. Communities were already doing so long ago by saving seeds, raising backyard flocks, sharing surplus food and knowledge, and growing the foods of their Country. From a Buen … Continue reading “GOOD PLANET NEWS, 13 October 2026”

World Food Day Edition

Theme: Food Security

It’s World Food Day on 16 October. This year, it asks us to ‘innovate today so we can nourish tomorrow’. Communities were already doing so long ago by saving seeds, raising backyard flocks, sharing surplus food and knowledge, and growing the foods of their Country.

From a Buen Vivir lens, food security and reliable access to safe, nourishing food relies on a healthy environment. Food that is grown and shared in ways that protect the land, when communities hold genuine control over their own food sources rather than depending on it is really a specific expression of self-determination. That is, a community’s right and capacity to manage its own resources and chart its own path to climate resilience.

This edition looks at five community-led stories from around the world, many led by women, showing that while food security is dependent on decisions at the global and national levels, it is led from the ground up.

1. Kenyan women guard the seeds of tomorrow

african women harvesting tea in taraba nigeria — Photo by AHMED ABUBAKAR BATURE on Pexels.com

In Nyakach, western Kenya, a group of 25 women farmers has built the Kabudi-Agoro Seed Bank, conserving more than 100 indigenous seed varieties, including 69 types of bean and 18 of sorghum. The women pool their land into a 52-acre collectively managed farm and turn their harvest into composite flours and traditional nutritious foods, boosting both dietary diversity and income. A legal ruling affirming farmers’ right to share and sell protected indigenous seeds has strengthened their work, which sits within a wider programme aiming to reach 2 million farmers across 15 countries by 2030.

Source: CGIAR, December 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Common food resources tied to local food traditions, reflect Buen Vivir’s view of food as a shared inheritance that supports wellbeing rather than a large-scale commodity. The initiative boosts productivity and livelihoods but also strengthens seed security and supports women-led conservation efforts.

Why it matters: Women do most of Kenya’s farm work, accounting for approximately 80% of Kenya’s agricultural labour. They rarely, however, manage farming. This initiative shows that when hen they do, food becomes more diverse, more resilient and more locally owned.

2. Vieques women grow their island’s food future

woman cleaning sweet potatoes — Photo by Mark Stebnicki on Pexels.com

On the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, La Colmena Cimarrona is an agroecological farm run by an all-women team. It grew out of the food crisis after Hurricane Maria, when the island went two weeks without ferry deliveries and its founders began by providing meals. Today, it grows more than 30 crops from cassava and sweet potato to plantain and pineapple. It also sells produce, honey and juices at markets with a 25% discount for residents. Every fortnight, up to 15 local families receive a box of Vieques-grown food. Abejas Reinas, a monthly programme for girls aged 12 to 16, teaches history, culture and food sovereignty. One academic describes it as a space where women, mostly of African descent, make the decisions about their land.

Source: 9 Millones, November 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Women making decisions about their own land and food, and passing that knowledge on to the next generation of girls, reflects Buen Vivir’s emphasis on self-determination.

Why it matters: Island communities that rely on imported food are especially exposed when supply lines break. Growing food locally, under local control, is a practical form of climate resilience.

3. Pacific knowledge brokers grow food futures

man hands planting plant on ground — Photo by FRANK MERIÑO on Pexels.com

In Kiribati and Solomon Islands face cyclones, rising seas and salty soils. Communities choosing their own paths to food security through local knowledge brokers help build resilience in an uncertain future. Local leaders such as Nerolyn Loni on Ijo Maringi, who focuses on fisheries management, and Terereniti Tiiman on Abaiang, who trials new methods himself first, run peer-to-peer learning that brings women and youth into decisions, plant mangroves and trial water-efficient gardens. Their work is shaping Food System Pathways Guidebooks for both countries, so that the next decisions about food are shaped by the people. As Tiiman puts it, people are more confident when they see results in their own community.

Source: ACIAR, July 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Peer-to-peer learning, with each person trusted as a holder of knowledge, reflects Buen Vivir’s belief that wellbeing grows from relationships and shared learning.

Why it matters: Pacific communities are on the front line of climate change, and they are already leading the practical work of adapting how they grow, catch and share food.

4. Bundjalung bush foods grow a nursery of self-determination

branches of acacia with seeds — Photo by Orhan Akbaba on Pexels.com

In Myocum, on Bundjalung Country in northern New South Wales, a First Nations-led native nursery is taking root to grow the bush foods of the region. Led by Bundjalung chef Mindy Woods with Ella Bancroft’s organisation ‘The Returning’, the nursery has Bundjalung Elder Uncle Mark Cora as its manager and is creating employment, training and a pathway for cultural knowledge to be passed on. While Australia’s native food industry is worth about $80 million a year, First Nations-led enterprises hold less than 2 per cent of the supply chain. The nursery is a community-driven step toward changing that, and it is still raising funds through a crowdfunding campaign. As Woods says, “We’re not looking for handouts. We’re looking for a hand up.”

Source: Echonetdaily, July 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Growing foods from Country, guided by Elders and shared across generations, reflects Buen Vivir’s understanding that food security, culture and land are inseparable.

Why it matters: Indigenous peoples hold the deepest knowledge of the foods their Country provides. Leadership over those foods is part of food sovereignty, and part of climate resilience.

5. UK community fridges become food hubs

community garden with greenhouse in england — Photo by Jan Wright on Pexels.com

Across the United Kingdom, more than 250 community fridges, set up by neighbours to share surplus food, are growing into food hubs where people also cook, eat and grow together. Last year these groups shared the equivalent of more than 27 million meals, and in 2025 they launched 266 new community projects with 12,556 participants, from cooking classes to community gardens and sharing libraries. Many participants reported lasting changes in their habits. For these communities, redistribution is only part of the story, as the fridge becomes a place of connection as well as food.

Source: Hubbub UK, Community Food Hubs

Buen Vivir connection: Neighbours sharing food, skills and time, reflect Buen Vivir’s principles of reciprocity, education and community.

Why it matters: Food security is not only a challenge in distant places. Community-run sharing keeps good food out of landfill, cuts emissions and builds the social ties that make neighbourhoods more resilient.

If this edition motivates you, please share it.

Check out some of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s ‘Food Heroes’:

https://www.fao.org/world-food-day/food-heroes/en

GOOD PLANET NEWS, 8 September 2026

Edition: 8 September 2026

Theme: Scaling Hope

This week the United Nations declared that the world will miss target and exceed 1.5 degrees warming. While we now know that it will get worse before it gets better, there is still so much we can do to avoid worst-case scenario. To do so we can still work to reduce future emissions, and we have at our disposal a multitude of solutions to adapt and thrive. This is where climate hope comes in.

Climate hope as a practice isn’t naive, and new research shows it isn’t passive either. Hope can be an enabler of climate change adaptation – they reinforce each other. This week we look at five stories that trace that feedback loop, from a community’s resilience after disaster, to grassroots practices that scaled into systemic change, to local initiatives cutting emissions and already showing measurable results.

1. How one town’s hope grew from rebuilding together

lush sugarcane field under dramatic clouds — Photo by Prerna Singh on Pexels.com

In 2011, catastrophic flash flooding devastated the Queensland town of Grantham, killing twelve people and destroying much of the community. Rather than simply rebuilding, the residents chose, through a voluntary land swap led by their own mayor, to move much of the town to higher ground, staying together as neighbours. Research on hope and climate adaptation points to towns like Grantham as evidence that collective action after disaster can reinforce, rather than deplete, community wellbeing. Fifteen years on, Grantham is studied worldwide as a model of community-led hope-driven resilience.

Source: Communications Psychology, Nature — October 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Grantham’s recovery was built on solidarity and choosing to collectively prioritise the wellbeing of the whole community over any individual, a living example of Buen Vivir’s relational view of a Good Life.

Why it matters: Emerging psychological research suggests hope and adaptation reinforce each other in a loop: communities that act together to adapt build the hope that fuels further action, and that hope fuels more adaptation in turn.

2. Seven seedlings that grew into a movement

farming gardening and community — Photo by illustrate Digital Ug on Pexels.com

In 1977, Wangari Maathai and a handful of Kenyan women planted seven trees on World Environment Day, the start of what became the Green Belt Movement. Organised into local groups that collect seeds, grow seedlings, and plant and tend trees, participants, mostly women, are paid for their work, turning conservation into a livelihood rather than a favour. Today the movement has planted more than 51 million trees across Kenya and trained over 100,000 women, and its model has been replicated by grassroots groups across Africa and helped inspire the UN’s global tree-planting campaigns.

Source: Green Belt Movement

Buen Vivir connection: Maathai’s insistence that environmental restoration and women’s empowerment were the same project, not two competing goals, reflects Buen Vivir’s holistic vision of community and environmental wellbeing as one whole.

Why it matters: What began as seven seedlings became one of the clearest examples anywhere of a local practice scaling into systemic change, proof that grassroots climate action can grow far beyond its origins.

3. From one village in India to solar power in 96 countries

smiling women in traditional headscarves at the construction site — Photo by Nishant Aneja on Pexels.com

Barefoot College began in Tilonia, in India’s Rajasthan desert, training rural women with no formal education to become solar engineers, wiring and maintaining their own villages’ power. The model has since scaled to 96 countries, and between 2022 and 2024 alone trained 3,800 women who went on to electrify 212,500 homes. Communities report a 90 percent drop in fossil fuel use for lighting and cooking, and in 2024 the programme’s installations avoided an estimated 132,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions, all while cutting household energy costs and respiratory illness.

Source: Lipman Family Prize, University of Pennsylvania — March 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Barefoot College trains communities to own their own power, literally, refusing outside dependency in favour of self-determined, locally controlled technology, a model of self-sufficiency at the heart of Buen Vivir.

Why it matters: This is what scaled climate impact looks like when a community-owned model is replicated rather than centralised. Measurable emissions are avoided, with the knowledge and equipment staying in the hands of the people who need them.

4. The English village that cut its emissions by 40%

scenic park and residential buildings in the distance — Photo by Boys in Bristol Photography on Pexels.com

In January 2006, around 400 residents of Ashton Hayes, a village of roughly 1,000 people in rural Cheshire, gathered in the local school and voted to try to become England’s first carbon-neutral community. Two decades on, through measures as simple as clotheslines, better insulation and fewer flights, alongside a community-owned renewable energy company, the village has cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent. Residents surveyed their own footprint, tracked their own progress, and shared everything they learned for free, and the village now links with more than 1,000 other communities worldwide who are following its lead.

Source: Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral — November 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Twenty years of villagers choosing collective, voluntary change, and openly sharing what they learn rather than guarding it, reflects Buen Vivir’s understanding of wellbeing as something built and shared collectively.

Why it matters: Ashton Hayes shows a local emissions-reduction initiative can deliver real, measured results while becoming a template thousands of other communities have since adapted for themselves.

5. Brazil’s cooperatives turn membership into climate action

group of people walking along green grass field — Photo by Caio on Pexels.com

Across Brazil, a country with more than 14 million cooperative members, member-owned cooperatives are increasingly becoming vehicles for climate action alongside their traditional work in farming and credit. In 2023, 736 Brazilian cooperatives generated their own energy, more than 3,500 of them through new solar installations, up from 582 the year before. In Bahia, the Pataxó Indigenous village of Boca da Mata runs its own forestry cooperative, Cooplanjé, which has reforested 210 hectares of Atlantic Rainforest to help form an ecological corridor connecting two protected areas.

Source: Resilience.org / Grassroots Economic Organizing — May 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Cooperatives run democratically by their own members, whether reforesting ancestral land or installing solar panels, embody Buen Vivir’s insistence that economic activity serve the community and the land together, not one at the expense of the other.

Why it matters: Brazil already has a vast, trusted network of local cooperatives; channelling climate action through institutions communities already own and run may scale faster than building new ones from scratch.

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GOOD PLANET NEWS, 12 August 2026

Edition: 12 August 2026

Theme: Community Solidarity

The climate responses that work best come from communities working together. They come from those on the ground with firsthand knowledge, experience and heritage to protect. This week we look at five stories from communities around the world that have responded to climate change not with resistance but with solidarity – building a Good Life and a Good Planet, together.

1. Community groups in Bangladesh turning knowledge into government action

woman carrying goat in lush green field in bangladesh — Photo by masudar rahman on Pexels.com

In flood-prone northern Bangladesh, Community Resilience Action Groups aided by Concern Worldwide are helping villages turn local knowledge into practical climate action. Meeting monthly in Hatibandha and Sundarganj, these groups identify risks, set priorities, and advocate for them in union budgets and development plans. Their work has already helped improve early warning systems, flood-resilient infrastructure, and access to climate-smart agriculture, showing how resilience is strongest when government planning is shaped by the communities most exposed to climate risk.

Source: Concern Worldwide / Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance — July 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Climate resilience is built when communities have the power to identify their own priorities and see them reflected in the decisions that shape their lives. The CRAGs in Bangladesh are a model of what locally led adaptation can look like.

Why it matters: Bangladesh’s flood-vulnerable communities face some of the sharpest climate impacts on Earth, with the least historical access to the decisions that determine their safety. A model that channels their knowledge directly into local government budgets is both more effective and more just than any top-down alternative.

2. Indigenous Women in Guatemala are remaking food systems

traditional guatemalan woman walking in acul — Photo by Diego Girón on Pexels.com

In Guatemala’s highlands, Indigenous women are strengthening food security by combining traditional Mayan farming knowledge with practical climate adaptation techniques. The programme now involves more than 1,000 families across 12 municipalities, with women making up most participants and leading community gardens that use intercropping, seed saving, soil care, water management, and nutrition training. With poultry farms added in 2025, many families now have surplus produce and higher monthly incomes, while women’s regular gatherings have become a vital network for sharing knowledge, solving problems, and sustaining community self-determination in the face of climate stress.

Source: Climate Home News — July 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Food sovereignty and security — the ability of a community to grow, access, share, and control its own food — is a vital aspect of Buen Vivir. These Guatemalan women are building solutions from the inside, using local traditional knowledge.

Why it matters: Women-led community food systems are among the most durable and equitable forms of climate adaptation available. When the people who feed communities are also the ones designing the food system, the result is both more resilient and more just.

3. Mutual connections in Philadelphia

close up photo of food donations — Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

In North Philadelphia, Rutgers University researchers are partnering with the mutual aid group Homies Helping Homies to rethink how climate science engages with vulnerable communities. By joining trusted food and supply distribution events instead of relying on conventional surveys, researchers learned how flooding, heat, and resource scarcity are experienced alongside housing insecurity, language barriers, health access gaps, and distrust of institutions. The collaboration has reshaped the research itself, showing that mutual aid networks are not just sources of data but essential infrastructure for locally grounded climate adaptation.

Source: Rutgers University — December 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Knowledge is relational. The Rutgers and Homies Helping Homies collaboration is an example of what happens when researchers stop extracting data from communities and start co-designing and building understanding with them. That power shift changes everything.

Why it matters: Climate adaptation that does not reach the most vulnerable communities is not adaptation. Mutual aid organisations are already doing the relational work that makes outreach possible. Partnering with them, rather than building parallel systems, is both more effective and more ethical.

4. Minneapolis community centre rewiring itself for the climate era

organized cables plugged in patch panel — Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

In Minneapolis, Sabathani Community Centre is marking 60 years as a neighbourhood anchor by transforming itself into a climate-ready resilience hub. The centre is replacing ageing systems with geothermal heating and cooling, rooftop solar, and battery storage so it can stay powered during outages and continue offering food, shelter, medical-device charging, and support during extreme weather. The project is also creating clean-energy training opportunities for local young people, turning a trusted community institution into both emergency infrastructure and a practical investment in the neighbourhood’s shared future.

Source: Sabathani Community Centre — July 2026

Buen Vivir connection: A community that invests in its own capacity to care for its most vulnerable members, across whatever conditions come, is practising Buen Vivir in one of its most essential forms. In doing so Sabathani is deepening the social fabric that makes climate resilience and recovery possible.

Why it matters: Community resilience hubs, spaces that are trusted, accessible, and climate-ready, are increasingly recognised as among the most cost-effective climate adaptation investments available.

5. Community-owned solar changing the balance of power

top view of houses with solar panel — Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com

Cooperative Energy Futures in Minneapolis is showing how the clean energy transition can benefit the people it serves by building community-owned solar systems that deliver bill credits to members, including renters and low-income households without access to rooftop solar. Its Lake Elmo Community Solar Garden is part of a wider movement proving that locally owned renewable energy can build trust, share economic benefits more fairly, and strengthen community agency. Similar projects, from UK community energy groups to People Power Solar Cooperative in Oakland, show that solar can be more than infrastructure, it can be a tool for collective self-determination.

Source: Cooperative Energy Futures — Lake Elmo Solar Garden, 2025

Source: Earth.org — Community Energy Overview, August 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Energy that is owned collectively, governed democratically, and whose benefits stay in the community is not just cleaner, it is an expression of Buen Vivir. That is the belief that the systems that sustain life should be local commons, not extracted for profit.

Why it matters: The clean energy transition will only be just if the communities who have historically borne the costs of fossil fuel extraction are among those who own and benefit from what replaces it. Community-owned solar is one of the clearest available models of what that looks like in practice.

If this edition motivates you, please share it.

GOOD PLANET NEWS, 7 July 2026

Edition: 7 July 2026

Theme: El Niño — What the Pacific’s Great Warming Brings

On 11 June 2026, the NOAA officially declared El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific. Sea surface temperatures in the El Niño 3.4 monitoring region had climbed to +1.7°C above average by mid-June, and models now project a 63 percent chance this becomes a very strong or historic event by late 2026. El Niño causes disruption to the environment, communities and is a serious risk to public health. But El Niño can also bring with it some positive impacts to specific places and ecosystems, and without diminishing the hardships it can bring, this week I want to highlight those. Here are five positive impacts the current El Niño is having around the world.

1. El Niño brings calm to the Atlantic Hurricane Season

satellite view of earth — Photo by SpaceX on Pexels.com

In June 2026, both NOAA and Colorado State University (CSU) revised their Atlantic hurricane season forecasts sharply downward, citing the rapidly developing El Niño as the dominant factor. The resulting atmospheric changes El Niño creates produce a higher-than-average vertical wind shear in the tropical Atlantic. This can prevent tropical cyclones from forming or intensifying. In other words, El Niño breaks hurricanes down before they become dangerous.

NOAA now predicts a 55% chance of a below-normal season, with just 8 to 14 named storms compared to a historical average of 14 to 17. CSU dropped its forecast to 11 named storms, only 5 of which are expected to become hurricanes.

Source: NOAA — 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, May 2026; Yale Climate Connections — June 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Reciprocity.Coastal communities have always read the sea for signs of what is coming. El Niño, in this instance, is sending a signal of relative calm. That breathing space matters for communities that are still recovering from recent storm seasons.

Why it matters: This matters enormously for the tens of millions of people living in coastal communities from the Gulf Coast to the Caribbean. A quieter hurricane season is not without risk entirely, but the current El Niño has significantly reduced the odds of a catastrophic hurricane making landfall this year, and that is genuinely good news.

2. The Colorado River will receive life-restoring rainfall

aerial view of the horseshoe bend arizona united states — Photo by Johan Van Geijl on Pexels.com

A multi-decadal drought, compounded by record-low snowpack this past winter, has pushed Lake Mead and Lake Powell– the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado River – to some of the lowest water levels since they were constructed. The reservoirs are the primary water supply for tens of millions of people across the American Southwest.

El Niño is now the most significant source of hope for rainfall relief. Strong El Niño events historically bring above-average precipitation to the US Southwest, and the developing 2026 event is already influencing the monsoon outlook. NOAA’s drought monitoring team noted that El Niño events have been drought-busters for the Southern US in past strong cycles, including the winters of 1982 to 1983, 1997 to 1998, and 2015 to 2016. A strong-to-very-strong (or so-called ‘super’ El Niño) event this year could help recharge both reservoirs and the groundwater aquifers that underlie farming communities across Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California.

Source: Weather West — El Niño 2026 Analysis, June 2026; Drought.gov — El Niño and the Southern Plains, March 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Water is life. It is the foundation of everything. For the communities, farms, and ecosystems of the American Southwest that have been living under increasing scarcity, the promise of El Niño rains this year bring with it both food security and the regeneration.

Why it matters: The Colorado River sustains 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. Its long-term health depends on wet winters. The current El Niño may not fully restore what years of drought have taken, but it meaningfully shifts the odds in the river’s favour.

3. Chile’s Atacama Desert is blooming

purple flower field near gray rocky mountain — Photo by Soly Moses on Pexels.com

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the driest places on Earth. For this reason it is often used to study conditions on mars, a hyper-arid desert. In a normal year, it receives less than four millimetres of rain, but the Atacama has a long memory of El Niño. The warming of Pacific waters along the South American coast that defines El Niño brings anomalous rainfall to the region, which triggers one of the most extraordinary ecological events on the planet: the desierto florido (or flowering desert).

In August 2025, ahead of the formal declaration of El Niño conditions, the Atacama received a rare downpour of more than 12 millimetres of rain. More than 200 species of wildflowers bloomed across hillsides that had been bare for years: fuchsia, yellow, violet, white. This is because seeds that had been dormant in the soil for up to 15 years germinated almost simultaneously. Scientists who have studied the Atacama for decades describe the botanical response to El Niño rainfall as one of the most dramatic ecological events associated with any climate phenomenon on Earth. The blooms have also been documented in 1983, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, and 2015 — all El Niño years. This encourgaed the Chilean government to create the Desierto Florido National Park in 2023, protecting 57,000 hectares of this desert ecosystem and the seed banks that make the blooms possible. As the current El Niño intensifies through 2026, another bloom season is anticipated for the region.

Source: EBSCO Research — Atacama Desert Ecosystem; PLOS One — El Niño and Coastal Desert Vegetation, 2018

Buen Vivir connection: For Atacama’s seeds that hold the memory of past rains and the potential for future abundance, El Niño is their signal for a healthy environment, allowing it to flourish.

Why it matters: The Desierto Florido National Park is a direct conservation response to the link between El Niño rainfall and this extraordinary biodiversity. The Atacama’s endemic flowering plants exist nowhere else on Earth, and protecting the seed banks now means the blooms will continue long into the future.

4. Peru’s fog oases are expanding

aerial view of a foggy mountain top — Photo by Nandakumar R on Pexels.com

Along the Pacific coast of Peru lie the lomas, or fog oases, which are some of the most unusual ecosystems on Earth. Moisture from Pacific fogs supports surprisingly rich life in an otherwise hyperarid landscape, pushing isolated communities of plants to cling to coastal hillsides. The lomas are both fragile and seasonal, and intimately connected to El Niño.

Research published in PLOS One tracked a lomas ecosystem at Lomas de Lachay through the 1997 to 1998 El Niño, and found strong, consistent positive correlations between El Niño rainfall and vegetation cover, plant density, species diversity, and richness of endemic species. Scientists describe El Niño as one of the main forces shaping coastal desert vegetation across South America, which is essential to the long-term functioning and evolutionary history of communities across the Andes.

Scientists and conservationists in Peru are watching closely as the 2026 El Niño strengthens and Pacific sea surface temperatures rise, suggesting this El Niño may produce one of the most significant lomas bloom years in a generation.

Source: PLOS One / PMC — El Niño and Peru’s Lomas Ecosystems; NASA Earth Observatory — El Niño Is Underway, June 2026

Buen Vivir connection: The lomas hold ancient cultural significance. For thousands of years, the lomas have strengthened the relationship between people, plants, and Pacific climate for the people of the Andes. They are one of the oldest and most continuous examples of ecological knowledge on the continent and highlight the importance of reciprocity, harmony and a healthy environment.

Why it matters: The lomas are among the most threatened ecosystems in South America, wedged between urban expansion, wide-scale agriculture, and mining. Understanding how important El Niño rainfall is to their survival, strengthens the scientific and cultural case for protecting them.

5. The 2026 El Niño is teaching us about better adaptation and resilience

ocean waves during sunset — Photo by kien virak on Pexels.com

The 2026 El Niño is the most closely observed in human history. The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission launched in 2020, is providing unprecedented real-time mapping of sea surface height anomalies across the Pacific, a reliable proxy for ocean temperature. Scientists are now tracking not just whether this becomes a historic event, but what it will teach us about how a warming baseline ocean amplifies and reshapes the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory — El Niño Is Underway, June 2026; IRI Columbia — June 2026 ENSO Quick Look

Buen Vivir connection: El Niño has been shaping life on Earth for millions of years. That we can now watch it unfold in real time, tracking warm water moving across an ocean in satellite images, is a remarkable convergence of human knowledge and planetary scale. The question is whether we use that knowledge wisely.

Why it matters: The scientific attention matters beyond the data. The better we understand El Niño in real time, the more accurately communities can prepare for its impacts and its challenges, the more precisely we can anticipate ecosystem responses, and the more we learn about the deep relationship between Pacific climate and life on Earth. In other words by monitoring what’s happening now, it can help us better prepare for adaptation in the future. Accurate, early El Niño prediction saves lives, protects food systems, and allows ecosystems and communities to prepare. The investment in ocean monitoring and climate science that makes this possible is one of the most consequential and underappreciated forms of planetary stewardship we have.

El Niño is here, strengthening, and heading toward what may become a historic event. It will bring disruption in some places and real hardship, but it will also bring rain to parched deserts, calm hurricane-prone coastlines, and help bloom some of the most extraordinary ecosystems on Earth. Paying attention to both sides of that story is not optimism, it is accuracy.

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Understanding Earth’s Vital Signs: A Call for Climate Action

Earth’s vital signs are like planetary health indicators, and all of them tell us that climate change is happening, it’s serious, and it’s urgent. Scientists use these signs to monitor the changes. There are many reasons to be alarmed, but what if, instead of letting dread immobilise much-needed action, we instead use the science as a call for transformative change?

Every few months, a new climate record is broken. If we were talking competitive sports, it would be a case for celebration. When it comes to our changing planet, rarely is this good news.

The science provides us a story of what we have set in motion, how fast it is moving, and crucially, what kinds of actions, at what scales, can still make a difference. Understanding Earth’s vital signs can help us translate the story into actions.

Let’s take a look at three key climate variables – atmospheric CO₂, Arctic sea ice extent, and sea level rise – and turn them into people-led solutions that can help drive systems change. When we understand and gain clarity about the scale of the problem and about the full range of responses available to us, only then can we shift the trajectory in a meaningful way.

The Keeling Curve — Atmospheric CO₂ Source: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

What does it mean? This graph might not look like much, but what it shows is that average annual atmospheric CO₂ is growing exponentially at 50 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. In scientific terms, average annual atmospheric CO₂ reached a record high of 427.35 ppm in 2025, compared to around 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution.

That is kind of a big deal in terms of flow-on effects. The rate of increase over the last 60 years is 100 times faster than any previous natural increase. During the ice age cycles of the past million years, CO₂ never exceeded 300 ppm. Ralph Keeling, whose father began the CO₂ monitoring programme in 1958, responded this to the 2025 record: “Another year, another record. It’s sad.”

The systems change needed: Move away from extractive economies and fossil fuels. The world still needs a clear plan to phase out fossil fuels, but mass extraction of other natural resources contributes to increases in atmospheric carbon. Eighteen countries have signed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has been endorsed by 199 jurisdictions at the subnational level. Advocates, consumers, investors, and voters can push for a faster transition by embracing renewable energies, public transport, lower consumption, and making sustainable choices. Industry has a vital role in leading the clean transition.

What individuals can do:

Make dietary changes and practice less food wastage. Food systems account for roughly a third of global emissions.
Electrify the home and increase its energy efficiency where possible with heat pumps, induction cooking, insulation, thermal windows, and installing rooftop solar and home batteries where accessible. Not all changes are financially accessible to many, but households can also limit energy usage by turning off power points, lights and appliances when not in use.
Support businesses with credible, science-based net-zero commitments rather than offset-only strategies.
Talk about it: normalising climate in everyday conversation remains one of the most underrated personal actions.

2. Arctic Sea Ice Extent Source NSIDC

What does it mean? The Arctic is like Earth’s cooling system, but sea ice record has become a story of record lows. In planetary terms, that’s not a good thing. Once the ancient ice melts and the permafrost thaws, it will lead to a cascade of global challenges.

In March 2025, the winter maximum extent reached just 14.33 million square kilometres. That is the lowest in the 47-year satellite record, approximately 1.31 million square kilometres below the long-term average. Then in March 2026, the winter maximum tied that record, placing two consecutive years at the very bottom of everything scientists have ever measured from space.

But the winter figures only tell part of the story. The NSIDC graph for 2026, updated to 10 June, shows that this year’s melt season is running well ahead of historical norms. Over the long term, the Arctic is losing its oldest and thickest ice. Since the 1980s, ice older than four years (younger, more vulnerable ice) has fallen by more than 95 percent. The remaining ice is thinner and melts more easily each year. In other words, these record lows are not one-off events. They show a system that is steadily getting weaker and more vulnerable. The current trend suggests 2026 may end with one of the lowest summer sea-ice levels on record.

You can also take a look at the NSIDC Charctic Interactive Graph (plot any year from 1979 to present): https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph.

The systems change needed: The legal recognition of the Rights of Nature could help protect Arctic ecosystems by granting legal personhood to rivers, forests, and ecosystems, giving them standing in courts and formal protection in governance.

In addition to Indigenous governance structures already deeply embedded in the polar regions, instituting the Rights of Nature would create legal accountability for protection. There are already several countries that have introduced it as a legal framework, which means that in international environmental law is slowly and unevenly becoming custom.

What individuals can do:

Reduce your carbon footprint to help slow climate impacts. In addition to actions listed above, this includes things like reducing consumption of fast fashion and single-use plastics as carbon-intensive consumer industries.
Fly less where alternatives exist. When flying, choose direct routes and economy class (which has lower per-passenger emissions).
Support Indigenous-led conservation initiatives. Indigenous communities in the Arctic act as stewards and have ancestral knowledge and expertise in protecting nature and biodiversity, and addressing climate and disaster risks through adaptation and mitigation – these are among the most effective strategies at protecting Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems.
Participate in citizen science programmes like NASA’s Globe Observer Clouds. It is a free downloadable app where anyone can help track cloud cover and surface conditions anywhere in the world. Studying global cloud patterns can be helpful in understand changes in the polar regions because when global cloud structures trap heat, they make the lower atmosphere less stably stratified. This accelerates what is known as ‘Arctic amplification’, where the poles warm faster than the rest of the globe.

3. Global Mean Sea Level Rise Source: NASA

What does it means? Since satellites first began measuring sea level in 1993, the ocean surface has risen by 10.1 centimetres. The acceleration of this rise is the essential element of the story. The rate in 2024 (0.43 cm per year) is more than double what it was when measurements began in 1993 (around 0.18 cm per year).

An article in Nature explains that warming oceans are the largest single contributor, responsible for 43 percent of the increase, with mountain glaciers at 27 percent, the Greenland Ice Sheet at 15 percent, and Antarctica contributing a further 12 percent.

This links back to Arctic sea ice melt, and the continuous reciprocal loop between all of Earth’s systems. If current trends continue, sea level is projected to rise by a further 169 mm over the next 30 years, consistent with mid-range IPCC projections. These rates sound like a small amount, but even a small rise can lead to catastrophic consequences globally.

The systems change needed: level rise is not evenly distributed. The communities facing the sharpest increases are overwhelmingly those that contributed least to the emissions driving them: Pacific Island nations, low-lying coastal communities in South and Southeast Asia, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Kiribati. The need for accessible climate finance is a vital systems change mechanism (beyond current pledges which are a fraction of what is needed, and disbursement mechanisms are slow and complex).

What individuals can do:

Engage with local coastal impacts and resilience planning, where community input is often genuinely sought.
Reduce household water consumption to ease pressure on groundwater systems, which contribute to sea level rise when over-extracted.
Advocate for mangrove restoration and coastal wetland protection, which are natural buffers that also sequester carbon.
Support climate finance advocacy, directing resources to low-lying nations and communities most at risk.

Good Planet News, 31 May 2026

Edition: 31 May 2026

Theme: Water

Oceans, Rivers, Wetlands and the Communities That Live By Them

Water is life, and it is also a story, a memory, and an identity. Water is the thread that runs through every culture and protecting it is an act of collective responsibility with positive impacts on communal wellbeing. In this edition we move through different sources and honour this important element. There is good news from the world’s waters (with one additional story in this edition), and it is more hopeful than you might expect.

1. Beavers are building carbon sinks

beaver on grass — Photo by Daniil Komov on Pexels.com

New research published in Communications Earth and Environment has now put numbers to something ecologists have long suspected. Beaver-built wetlands are powerful, durable carbon sinks. The study, led by the University of Birmingham in collaboration with Wageningen University and the University of Bern, tracked over a decade of beaver activity in a Swiss stream corridor and found that those wetlands were storing carbon at rates up to ten times higher than comparable systems without beavers.

The sediments the beavers create contain up to 14 times more inorganic carbon and eight times more organic carbon than the surrounding forest soils. Methane emissions, often the catch with wetland carbon accounting, were negligible, making up less than 0.1% of the total carbon budget. According to the researchers, within just over a decade, the system had already transformed into a long-term carbon sink, far exceeding what we would expect from an unmanaged stream corridor.

Beavers were hunted to near-extinction across much of Europe and North America. As their populations slowly recover, they are undertaking restoration work that would cost millions to replicate by hand.

Source: University of Birmingham — March 2026

Buen Vivir connection: The beaver does not restore the river to store carbon. It builds a home, and the carbon storage follows. This is what it looks like when nature is allowed to flourish.

Why it matters: Rewilding beaver populations in suitable wetland areas could be one of the lowest-cost, highest-impact tools for climate resilience we have. Nature does the work, we just have to let it.

2. Salmon have returned to English rivers for the first time since 2015

dynamic salmon leaping over a waterfall — Photo by Héctor Berganza on Pexels.com

In late 2025, the Environment Agency made a discovery that had conservationists celebrating: juvenile Atlantic salmon had been found in the River Mersey catchment, including the Bollin and Goyt tributaries, for the first time in a decade. These young fish are the direct offspring of adults that migrated back from the sea to spawn. Their presence is biological proof that the river has become hospitable breeding grounds again.

Atlantic salmon are an important indicator of river health. They need cold, clean water, gravel riverbeds, and unobstructed passage upstream to survive. Their return to the Mersey is the result of years of painstaking work, removing barriers, improving water quality, and restoring spawning habitat. The Environment Agency has planned an expanded eDNA monitoring programme for 2026 to find out whether similar quiet recoveries are happening elsewhere in the UK river network.

Source: Environment Agency reporting — January 2026

Buen Vivir connection: The salmon’s return is not just ecological. Rivers, like all water sources, have memory, and when we heal them, that memory comes back.

Why it matters: Salmon are ecosystem engineers as well as cultural touchstones. Their return to industrial-era rivers in the heart of England is a signal of what sustained regeneration can achieve.

3. Klamath River aquatic life regenerated for Indigenous populations

scenic river in yosemite national park landscape — Photo by Elijah Cobb on Pexels.com

In 2024, the largest dam removal project in US history was completed on the Klamath River in northern California. Four dams were taken down and the river ran free for the first time in over a century. By October 2025, observers were reporting something remarkable: the fish had returned.

Water quality improved faster than models had predicted and wildlife returned. For the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Valley tribes who had fought for decades to see this happen, the return of the fish also meant the return of ceremony, of food sovereignty, and of a way of life that had been severed by a concrete wall. The Klamath restoration is now the most closely watched river recovery project in the world, and its early results are rewriting what we thought we knew about how quickly rivers can heal.

Source: Science Array — October 2025

Buen Vivir connection: For the Yurok and Karuk peoples, fish are not a resource, they are a relative. Restoring the river was restoring a relationship, and restoring the conditions for a full life.

Why it matters: The Klamath shows that river restoration can exceed optimistic timelines. Nature does not need decades to respond once the obstacles are removed.

4. Kerala’s wells back to life for villagers

close up photo of a well and a plant — Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels.com

In Thuruthikkara, a small village in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, residents got tired of watching their wells run dry every summer. So together, they built a network of low-cost rooftop rainwater harvesting systems, and installed them across homes and public buildings, channelling filtered rainwater directly into the open wells for community use.

Wells that used to drop dangerously low, are now holding steady. Households no longer need to buy water during the dry months. Residents also established a community science and technology centre in the village, which has become a hub for water monitoring and education. This is a story about a community that decided to take responsibility for its own water future, using simple technology, collective action, and knowledge passed between neighbours.

Mongabay India reported on the initiative in February 2026, describing 53-year-old Vidhya Manjush standing beside her well in January, checking the water level with a calm she had not felt in years.

Source: Mongabay India — February 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Water sovereignty begins at the community level, with local resource management becomign a source of communal Socio-Eco Wellbeing.

Why it matters: Thuruthikkara’s model is inexpensive, replicable, and community-owned. In a world of increasingly unpredictable rainfall, this kind of local water resilience may matter more than any large-scale engineering project.

5. Reciprocity in freshwater restoration

egrets in flight over scenic wetlands — Photo by Vladimir Srajber on Pexels.com

A major new report from WWF published in March 2026, has found that healing rivers and wetlands pays back far more than it costs. The research reviewed 88 freshwater restoration projects around the world and found that 80% showed measurable improvements in water quality and nutrient retention. In the US, every dollar invested in floodplain restoration today avoids around US$5 in future flood damage. In South Africa, removing invasive vegetation from catchment areas increased water yield by the equivalent of 42% of a new dam’s output, at less than 20% of the cost per cubic metre.

The Freshwater Challenge, now supported by 54 countries and the European Union, is pushing to restore 300,000 kilometres of rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands by 2030. The WWF report argues the economic case that healthy freshwater ecosystems are not a luxury, they are critical infrastructure, and restoring them is one of the best investments any community or country can make.

Source: Water Magazine / WWF — March 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Water is not an economic resource to exploit. But, in the language of economics, if you protect water, everything else follows. It is reciprocity at its finest.

Why it matters: This report gives communities, scientists, and advocates a powerful new tool. The restoration of freshwater ecosystems is not idealism. It is the most cost-effective climate solution we have, and the evidence is growing.

6. More than 10% of the ocean is now officially protected

an aerial photography of waves crashing on a rock formation — Photo by Bálint Toldi on Pexels.com

In April 2026, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that the world had crossed a long-awaited threshold: more than 10% of the Earth’s ocean is now officially under conservation protection. In just two years, five million square kilometres of ocean came under protective status — an area larger than the entire European Union.

Source: IUCN

The figure now stands at 10.01%, up from 8.6% in 2024. Neville Ash, Director of UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre, called it an important global milestone for people and planet, noting that over half the world’s oxygen is produced by life in the ocean. The milestone is also, he was careful to add, a reminder of how much work remains. Under the 2022 global biodiversity agreement, nations committed to protecting 30% of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030. To reach that target, an area the size of the Indian Ocean still needs to come under protection in the next four years.

The quality of that protection matters too. Recent reporting has highlighted that some existing marine protected areas remain vulnerable to industrial fishing. Getting the number right is one thing, but ensuring the ocean inside those boundaries can actually breathe, feed, and recover is the work that comes next.

Buen Vivir connection: Protecting the ocean is an act of collective responsibility and an acknowledgement that what sustains all life cannot be owned, only cared for.

Why it matters: Every percentage point of protected ocean represents habitat for fish, whales, corals, and the billions of people whose food and livelihoods depend on a living sea. Passing 10% is a real achievement, and sets the forward momentum for further protection.

Water has its own intelligence. It finds the lowest point, the path of least resistance, the crack in the dam. Protection of water sources leads to greater regeneration than expected.

If this edition reached you at the right moment, please share it, and follow me on socials. The planet needs more people paying attention to good news for our planet.

Good Planet News, 18 May 2026

Theme: The Circular Life — Repairing, Reclaiming, Reimagining

This week we slow down and look at one of the most quietly radical ideas of our time: that nothing needs to be wasted. From community repair tables in Buffalo to fashion factories in France, from Kenya’s waste pickers to a breakthrough that could finally crack the textile recycling puzzle, people around the world are choosing to mend, recover, and reimagine. In Buen Vivir this resonates with the idea to live in reciprocity: in other words, taking only what we need, and caring deeply for what we already have.

1. The World Has Too Many Repair Cafes for Throwaway Culture to Win

outdoor electronics repair in kaduna nigeria — Photo by mk_photoz on Pexels.com

Something quiet and powerful is growing in libraries, church halls, and community centres around the world. Repair Cafes — free community gatherings where skilled volunteers help neighbours fix whatever’s broken — now number more than 2,500 globally, and they show no signs of slowing down. The UK alone has 807 of them.

The concept is simple: you bring your broken lamp, your grandmother’s coat, your wobbly chair. A volunteer sits with you, not to fix it for you but with you. Skills are shared. Stories are told. Objects get a second life. In Buffalo, New York, the Dare to Repair Cafes have diverted over 7,500 pounds of items from landfill and saved community members more than US$40,000 in replacement costs. A 2024 UCL study found that participation in repair activities also has measurable mental health benefits, from skill building to social inclusion.

This is not a small-scale lifestyle trend. It is a living, breathing infrastructure of the care economy. And it is spreading.

Source: Inside Climate News — The Rise of Repair Cafes

Buen Vivir connection: Connection is paramount. Repair culture restores our relationship with things and with each other. It asks us to value what we already have, and to connect with others to repair them instead of throwing them to landfill.

Why it matters: Every repaired toaster is a small act of resistance. Multiply it by 2,500 cafes in dozens of countries, and you have a genuine cultural shift, one that doesn’t need a policy or a corporation to lead it.

2. Fashion’s Hardest Recycling Problem Is Being Solved in France

plastics at the recycling center — Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Most of the clothes in your wardrobe are made from polycotton, which is a blend of polyester and cotton that, until very recently, was nearly impossible to recycle. Less than 1% of all textiles ever make it back into new fabric. The rest ends up in landfill, incinerated, or shredded into car insulation. A US company called Circ has developed a patented hydrothermal process that separates and recovers both the polyester and the cotton from polycotton blends, producing raw materials that are as good as new. They are now preparing to build the world’s first commercial-scale facility in Saint-Avold, France, with the capacity to process 70,000 metric tons of blended textiles a year.

This matters enormously. Polycotton makes up 77% of the global textile market. If this process scales, the economics of fast fashion begin to shift, waste becomes feedstock, and the throwaway logic of the industry starts to unravel.

Source: Textile World — Circ to Open World’s First Polycotton Recycling Plant

Buen Vivir connection: A circular material world honours the energy, water, and labour that went into making something. Clothes do not easily break down, and they deserve more than a landfill.

Why it matters: The fashion industry is the third most polluting on earth. A breakthrough in polycotton recycling won’t fix everything, but it addresses the very thing that has made textile circularity nearly impossible at scale.

3. Ghana Is Turning Waste Pickers Into Cooperatives — and It’s Working

woman in yellow t shirt carrying a plastic basin with water bottles on her head — Photo by David Iloba on Pexels.com

In Ghana, a project to build a national recycling system for plastic bottles is doing something other circular economy schemes often overlook: it is putting the people who already do this work at the centre. For years, informal waste pickers have been the invisible backbone of recycling across the Global South, quietly keeping millions of tonnes of material out of rivers and landfills with no safety gear, no stable income, and no formal recognition.

The rPET project is changing that. Waste pickers are being organised into cooperatives, provided with equipment, given fair and transparent pricing for the materials they collect, and connected to health insurance and pension contributions. The goal is to collect 900 million plastic bottles annually, not by building a corporate system over the top of informal workers, but by formalising and dignifying the system that already exists.

Source: The Business & Financial Times — From Waste Pickers to Entrepreneurs

Buen Vivir connection: The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). True circularity cannot be built on invisible labour. When we recognise and fairly compensate the people closest to the waste, we build a system that is just and ecological at the same time.

Why it matters: There are an estimated 15 to 20 million informal waste pickers worldwide. Models like this one show how a just circular economy can start not with technology, but with dignity.

4. Solar Panels Are Getting a Second Life Too

nature industry house roof — Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com

Solar power is one of the great hopes of the energy transition. But what happens to a panel when it reaches the end of its life? Until recently, most ended up in landfill. New chemical separation methods now recover up to 98% of the critical materials inside old panels including the silver and copper that make them work, turning a growing waste stream into a valuable source of materials for new panels.

A company called SOLARCYCLE, named to TIME’s list of America’s Top GreenTech Companies, is already processing nearly two million panels a year, and has more than 90 energy companies as recycling partners. By 2050, decommissioned solar panels could amount to 80 million metric tons worldwide. Getting ahead of that now means the clean energy does not create its own waste crisis on the other side.

Source: Earth911 — Circular Economy Startups to Watch in 2026

Buen Vivir connection: Environmental impacts are not just about what we generate it is about what we leave behind.

Why it matters: The renewable energy transition is only truly circular if the materials that make it possible can be recovered and reused. This closes a loop that urgently needed closing.

5. Kenya’s Plastic Champions League: Where Football Meets the Circular Economy

In Nairobi, Vincent Majoni has found an unexpected way to build recycling culture in his community: football. His Plastics Champions League combines community matches, neighbourhood clean-ups, and community gardens to show young people that the work of waste sorting is not shameful — it is essential, and it is worth celebrating.

Waste pickers linked to his initiative gain consistent income, leadership opportunities, and training in sorting and upcycling. The campaign reaches beyond the pickers themselves, shifting how whole communities perceive the work. “People begin to respect the work when they see the effort, the organisation, and the results,” Majoni says. It is a reminder that circular economy is not just a technical challenge. It is a cultural one — and sometimes the best tool is a football.

Source: Sustainable Packaging MEA — Kenya’s Hidden Recyclers

Buen Vivir connection: Wellbeing is communal. When we build systems that make people feel proud of the work they do for the earth, we create something that lasts far longer than any policy or programme.

Why it matters: Community-led circular economy models rooted in culture, dignity, and joy are the ones that actually stick. Kenya’s Plastics Champions League is proof that transformation does not always look the way you expect.

The circular economy is not a distant industrial dream. It is already alive in repair cafes, recycling cooperatives, football pitches, and fashion labs.

If this edition gave you something to think about, please share it.

Good Planet News 2025 Wrap-Up

It’s easy to get caught up in the world that was in 2025. This year has been fraught with catastrophe, war, climate disaster, and conflict. It’s even more important now to reflect on the positive developments for our planet and our communities in the past 12 months. This 2025 wrap-up doesn’t bring you individual news stories, but several round-ups of good planet news stories for 2025.

1) Conservation Wins: WWF Highlights Global Progress

What happened: A year-end review from WWF highlights major conservation successes in forests, seas, and freshwater ecosystems. It also showcases achievements in species protection. The review demonstrates collective gains from restoration and stewardship.

Why it’s hopeful: Stories like restored habitats and species thriving offer hope that long-term conservation efforts do pay off when communities and scientists work together.

Read the full story: World Wildlife Fund

2) Positive Environmental Stories from Around the World

What happened: A curated roundup of uplifting environmental developments. This includes renewable tech innovations and remarkable biodiversity news. This proves that positive change is happening globally.

Why it’s hopeful: Seeing diverse and creative solutions and wins across sectors is encouraging. It reinforces that progress isn’t one-dimensional. People everywhere are contributing to it.

Read the full story: euronews

3) Time’s Good News of the Year

What happened: The Antarctic hole is shrinking. Green turtles have reversed their extinct status. These are some of the positive science and climate stories highlighted by Time magazine from 2025. These stories spotlight breakthroughs and nature recovery updates. They also showcase innovation that provides reasons for optimism.

Why it’s hopeful: The power of the narrative. Coverage from a major global outlet helps bring positive momentum to the mainstream narrative. This balances distressing climate coverage with tangible progress.

Read the full story: TIME

4) Science & Tech Advances for the Planet

What happened: The Week outlined key environmental and climate science breakthroughs in 2025. These included advances in carbon tracking, green materials, energy tech, and ecosystem monitoring.

Why it’s hopeful: Technical innovation supports renewable energy and ecosystem resilience. It fuels long-term solutions beyond policy alone.

Read the full story: The Week

5) Historic Clean Energy Milestone: Renewables Outpace Coal

What happened: For the first time in history, renewable energy (mainly solar and wind) produced more electricity globally than coal in 2025. This event marked a symbolic and systemic shift in the global power mix.

Why it’s a big climate story: It’s a measurable global shift in how we power the world. This change is driven by technology, markets, and massive deployment of clean energy. It signals that in the energy system where most carbon comes from, cleaner sources are now leading.
Read the full story: Reuters

Hope, Connection & Climate Progress

From biodiversity rebounds to world-wide clean energy milestones, 2025 was a year of interdependence, regeneration, and shared purpose:

Nature heals when nurtured: Conservation milestones and biodiversity gains remind us that ecosystems can rebound when humans partner with nature.

Clean technology becomes common ground: Breakthroughs and energy shifts aren’t just technical; they represent communities moving toward shared prosperity and ecological stewardship.

Hope is collective: These stories highlight that meaningful climate progress is not isolated. It emerges from scientists, activists, local organisers, engineers, and everyday people working together.

Good Planet News, 6 November 2025

Edition: 6 November 2025
Theme: Respecting our Oceans, Restoring Balance, Regenerating Connection

Each of these stories embodies Buen Vivir: the understanding that socio-eco wellbeing arises when we live in harmony with all life. From Antarctic waters to the Amazong, people are re-imagining progress not as extraction, but as regeneration.

UK Retailer Ends Krill Sales for Antarctic Conservation

Holland & Barrett, a major UK health retailer, has stopped selling krill-based supplements to protect the Southern Ocean ecosystem. The move supports marine biodiversity by reducing harvest pressure on krill — the foundation of the Antarctic food web.
Source: Sea Shepherd Global – Positive Waves October 2025

Buen Vivir connection: Recognising the rights of ocean life to flourish, not merely to serve human markets.

Why it matters: Small consumer-market shifts can ripple outward to protect critical species and foster corporate accountability grounded in ecological ethics.

2. Wild Animals Officially Recognised as Critical Enablers of Climate Solutions

In a landmark move last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has officially recognised wild animals as essential allies for nature-based climate solutions. Thriving populations — from whales and fish that store carbon in the ocean to elephants and birds that regenerate forests — stabilise the planet’s systems.

This resolution sparks a significant turning point in international law, reframing wildlife not just passive victims of climate change, but as active participants, through seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem balance.

Source: Oceanographic Magazine

Buen Vivir connection: Affirms the interdependence of all life, recognising animals as holders of rights and co-creators of planetary balance.

Why it matters: Protecting animals becomes a pathway to restoring carbon cycles, regenerating ecosystems, and renewing our relationship with Earth.

3. Community-Led Ocean Protection Through “Soft Law”

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Researchers at the University of Exeter show that voluntary, community-based agreements can outperform rigid regulations in protecting marine ecosystems. By respecting local autonomy and cultural context, communities sustain conservation more naturally.

Source: Oceanographic Magazine

Buen Vivir connection: Harmony through collaboration, not domination.

Why it matters: Empowering coastal communities affirms that ecological wisdom lies not only in science, but in the lived experience of those most connected to the sea.

4. Brazil: Forest Protection and Local Prosperity Intertwined

At the Instituto Arapyaú, Renata Piazzon and partners are demonstrating that healthy forests and thriving local economies can coexist. Their projects link sustainable production, community wellbeing, and biodiversity.

Source: Mongabay – Brazil Can Protect Its Forests While Growing Its Economy

Buen Vivir connection: Mutual flourishing of people and ecosystems.

Why it matters: It shows how care for land and nature can generate enduring socio-eco wellbeing.

5. Boulder, Colorado: Urban Food Security Through Nature-Based Solutions

In Boulder, community members are collaborating with local Nature-Based Solutions teams to expand urban farms, restore pollinator corridors, and build climate resilience.
Source: City of Boulder

Buen Vivir connection: Food security re-roots the idea of nourishment in place, community, and reciprocity.

Why it matters: Demonstrates how cities can regenerate ecosystems while improving food access, transforming concrete into care.

Good Planet News, 15 October 2025

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Buen Vivir in Practice — Restoration, Innovation & Community Resilience

Buen Vivir teaches that ecological wellbeing and human dignity are intertwined. This week’s stories, from Australian rivers to Indian streets, Tanzanian hills to Toronto’s buried soils show how communities are regenerating life through care, knowledge, and reciprocity.

1. AI-Driven Coral Reseeding on the Great Barrier Reef (Australia)

Scientists have developed AI-powered coral re-seeding devices that autonomously identify and plant coral substrates across the reef, dramatically increasing restoration speed and accuracy.
Read more →

Buen Vivir connection: Reciprocity with ecosystems, technology as ally, holistic wellbeing.

Why it matters: Manual coral restoration is slow and resource-intensive. These autonomous tools accelerate recovery and extend human care to otherwise unreachable reef areas — a model for coexistence between technology and nature.

2. Noongar-Led Restoration of Collie River Pools (Australia)

The Danju Noongar Landcare group has restored two at-risk river pools in Western Australia’s Upper Collie River, reviving native fish and crustacean habitats while protecting culturally significant waters.
Read more →

Buen Vivir connection: Community stewardship, kinship with land and water, intergenerational care.

Why it matters: These river pools act as ecological refuges during dry spells. The project strengthens biodiversity, cultural continuity, and local stewardship. This is proof that restoration led by Traditional Owners brings enduring ecological and social health.

3. Ecological Entrepreneurs Regenerating Tanzania’s Landscapes

Three innovators from IUCN’s restoration incubation program are transforming degraded lands into sustainable enterprises, from seed banks to soil-health ventures, linking livelihoods and landscape renewal.
Read more →

Buen Vivir connection: Economy rooted in ecology, regeneration through creativity and cooperation.

Why it matters: When communities profit from restoration rather than exploitation, ecological healing becomes self-sustaining. These entrepreneurs show how local enterprise can scale regeneration and resilience from the ground up.

4. Rediscovering Life in 130-Year-Old Soil (Toronto, Canada)

Archaeologists uncovering Toronto’s old waterfront found living seeds, roots, and microorganisms in soil buried for over a century, a testament to nature’s persistence.
Read more →

Buen Vivir connection: Ecological memory, respect for the unseen, continuity across time.

Why it matters: The discovery shows how ecosystems retain latent vitality even after decades of disturbance, a humbling reminder that life endures and can be revived through mindful restoration.

5. Citizen-Led Urban Cooling & Eco-Routing (Pune, India)

Local volunteers in Pune are using open-data mapping tools to measure street-level heat, identify shaded routes, and promote community tree planting, creating cooler, more livable neighborhoods.
Read more →

Buen Vivir connection: Collective knowledge, urban resilience, everyday wellbeing.

Why it matters: As urban heat rises, bottom-up innovations like this protect vulnerable residents, democratise climate data, and show how adaptation can be citizen-driven, not top-down.