If there is any time to focus on the positive it is now, with the news this week that humankind faces the double threat of extinction from climate change and AI. In that was the promise that we can still steer the course of our own fate. Some recent positive advances give hope for doing so. So, here is a roundup of the latest good environmental news.
First up is a story close to my heart. If you follow my research, you will know that my interest in Buen Vivir grew from living and working with communities in Ecuador’s Intag Valley, which have battled threats to their social and environmental wellbeing for decades. Part of the struggle was captured in my book through interviews with key people in Cotacachi County (where Intag is located). So, this victory has moved me to tears, and I hope it is the start of some positive momentum for the Rights of Nature.
Rights of Nature upheld in Ecuador Court
Communities in Ecuador’s Intag Valley had a major win in March after more than 30 years of mining resistance in the region. On March 29, 2023, communities in the Intag Valley won a court case against mining companies Codelco and ENAM. The Imbabura Provincial Court ruled in favour of the Rights of Nature upheld in the Constitution since 2008 and revoked the companies’ mining licenses for the project. The win helps preserve the natural integrity of the Tropical Andes and upholds local communities’ constitutional right to consultation. The victory also expands the case law for the Rights of Nature and sets a precedent for future cases. It also demonstrates the willingness to uphold the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and rural communities in the face of extractivism demand.
2. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen by 68 percent
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell 68 percent in April compared to April 2022. One of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva presidential promises when taking office at the start of this year was to combat illegal deforestation, which rose significantly under former President Jair Bolsonaro.
3. Ecuador’s ‘debt for nature’ deal to help protect the Galápagos Islands
To Ecuador again, as the country has converted $1.6 billion (€1.5 billion) of debt into a loan to be used for conservation in the Galápagos Islands in the world’ biggest ‘debt for nature’ deal.
“The world’s biggest ocean-friendly debt swap is coming together in Ecuador to protect its unique natural resources,” says Pablo Arosemena Marriott, Minister of Economy and Finance.
4. Renewables to hit a major milestone
The renewable power sector is passing a series of important positive tipping points in 2023. Thinktank Ember’s fourth annual Global Electricity Review has found that greenhouse gas emissions from the global power sector are expected to fall for the first time because an expansion in renewable energies outstrips the growth in demand. The report analyses data from 78 countries representing 93% of global power supply. Not only that but experts predict that new solar and wind generation will become cheaper than existing fossil fuel generation.
5. Australia’s first Regenerative Food and Farming Map
Non-for-profit organisation Sustainable Table has developed Australia’s first Regenerative Food and Farming map. Regenerative agriculture helps mitigate the environmental impacts of farming and food systems. According to the Climate Council, Australian agriculture is responsible for around 13% of our greenhouse gas emissions each year. The map is a ‘first of its kind’. Taken from the website Sustainable Table state that the “map gives visibility across the industry, allows for connection and collaboration in ways never before possible, and catalyses the transformation of food and farming systems in Australia.” This also has public advantage “Connecting regenerative change makers, ethical funders and conscious humans to change Australia’s farming, food and fibre systems”. CEO of Sustainable Table Jade Miles said. “Until now there hasn’t been a national map or database of Australia’s regenerative food and farming industry…There is huge potential to learn from each other, leapfrog failures and grow the regenerative agriculture movement, and the map will play a really important role in facilitating this.” Agricultural change-makers and growers can add their businesses to the map for free by filling out the Australian Regenerative Food and Farming Map application: https://www.sustainabletable.org.au/map.
Our blue planet is a testament to the integral role of water to every living being on earth. Access to water not only satisfies our basic needs but our psychological needs too.
Over the summer I may have been a little quiet as I took time with my family. A large part of wellbeing is taking time to connect with our families, and ourselves and for me, the school holiday period is a good time to do that. We spent a lot of time being by the water, whether that be the ocean or the rivulet. The ambiance of water – blue space – has therapeutic effects on human health and wellbeing. The time spent by water was a timely reminder that we are connected to the liquid stuff in more ways than we realise.
Our blue planet is a testament to the integral role of water to every living being on earth. Access to water not only satisfies our basic needs but our psychological needs too. Our need for water can be categorised by Manfreed Max-Neef’s nine axiological needs for Human-Scale Development, that is: subsistence, protection, participation, identity, idleness, creation, and even affection, understanding and freedom; but which also corresponds to Maslow’s psychological needs mirrored in his Hierarchy of Needs such as the need for leisure time, culture and community. Oftentimes, water is only equated to the need for subsistence or survival.
Water is a communal concept. The only thing individual about water is the way its presence makes us feel, subjectively. Yet, even that has objective consequences because, numerous studies show that being connected to nature, particularly water, makes people feel part of something bigger than themselves, imparting a feeling of awe and transcendence. This feeling of being connected to something bigger helps develop the responsibility to protect the environment around us.
Given the overwhelming importance of water to life on earth, the principle of reciprocity is especially crucial. In other words, being cognizant of the society-nature continuum and conscious of the fact that what we take, we must also give back. The Socio-Eco Wellbeing that results from Buen Vivir, confirms transcendent values like our deep connection to water, highlighting the importance not only of human wellbeing but also environmental wellbeing.
The United Nations resolution 64/292 calling for access to safe water to be considered as a human right was passed in 2010 with the support of 122 countries. It states that “the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.” (UN CESC – General Comment 15, paragraph 2).
Although no one can deny the necessity of water as human, and the need for everyone, everywhere to be able to access clean, safe water, it has been argued that making it a human right only reinforces the mentality of human’s dominance over nature – that we must control it as a means to ensuring our own survival and livelihood, cementing if you like, the idea of water being a commodity. It should not be. Rather, it should be understood as an essential part of the earth’s lifecycle, of which we are also a part.
Our modern-day commodity-like dependence on water leads to pollution, drought, water scarcity, and consequently diseases and food insecurity. Notwithstanding our absolute need for clean, fresh water; shifting mindsets from water as a human right to the responsibility of humans to ensure the health and sustainability of water sources can help ensure the former. Of course, this would not be equitable without re-examining the structural causes as to why many communities go without safe drinking water, and sacred water environments destroyed, polluted, or even seized.
In neoliberal development, human rights and environmental protection are often in conflict with each other. In 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council affirmed that the human right to water is legally binding upon states. To guarantee water as a human right means first addressing the structural and systemic road bumps that see the misuse, overuse, and exploitation of water and water sources. A large part of this is due to industry consumption. Particularly in communities in the Global South which have had multinationals and/or governments misuse and pollute local water sources for production’s sake. Watercourses are protected internationally by the “no-harm” principle in international law. That may help with seeking reparations, but there is nothing concrete to prevent harm being done in the first place.
Harms to water sources create water stress, not only for humans but also for all living ecosystems that rely upon water for survival. The consequences are dire and cyclical. It affects food systems, livelihoods, even reactional activities. In short, it affects both human and ecological wellbeing and threatens our ability to satisfy both basic and psychological needs.
So, let’s put a spin on this. If we viewed water not as a right, but as a guarantor of both human and ecological wellbeing that must be protected and cared for to be utilized, would that change anything? Should it then not just be a question of society’s needs, but environmental ones too? The first step might be to also ask: what does water need to ensure its continual and safe replenishment?
Personifying ecological resources, for example, is a practice and worldview taken by Indigenous Peoples for generations, and it may help better ensure sustainability by changing the way we look at our natural resources. This practice has been ratified in law in a handful of cases where local jurisdictions uphold the Rights of the Nature, such as the constitutional amendments in Ecuador which recognise such rights, or the treaty ratified in New Zealand with the Māori iwi recognising the Whanganui River as a legal entity.
Complementing the right of water should therefore be the application of environmental personhood – providing water itself rights to exist and survive in good health. These two ideas need to harmonize each other because, without water, there is no life – human or otherwise. On the contrary, without humans, water will continue to flow and perhaps thrive, without the threats of overuse and pollution. Unfortunately, we humans cannot say the same about 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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 →
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.
Great Barrier Reef Cleanup 2025 (Australia) Communities along Queensland’s coastline are participating in beach & reef cleanups, removing marine debris and collecting data to inform future pollution reduction. Read more →
Buen Vivir connection: Reciprocity with ecosystems, local stewardship, holistic wellbeing. Why it matters: Marine debris degrades coral, harms wildlife, and inhibits reef recovery. Local clean-ups not only reduce degradation but empower communities with knowledge and agency over their seascapes.
Schmidt Sciences Launches Antarctic Drone Fleet Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is funding a fleet of autonomous surface drones to map ocean CO₂ and improve understanding of the Southern Ocean’s carbon cycle. Read more →
Buen Vivir connection: Knowledge as reciprocity, global commons care, scientific guardianship. Why it matters: The Southern Ocean plays a huge role in absorbing CO₂. Better data helps us understand climate feedbacks, improve climate models, and protect key carbon sinks.
Urban Climate Science Strengthening in Australia New research points out critical gaps in Australia’s urban climate modelling and observational systems and calls for local capacity building. Read more →
Buen Vivir connection: Local capacity, context-sensitive knowledge, community resilience. Why it matters: Most Australians live in cities. Without accurate urban climate models and monitoring, adaptation plans may fail. Strengthening this capacity helps societal resilience to heat, storms, and other extremes.
Bio-tar to Bio-carbon: Turning Waste into Carbon Solutions Scientists have found ways to transform bio-tar (a waste product) into a bio-carbon material that can help capture emissions and degrade pollutants. Read more →
Buen Vivir connection: Transforming waste into regenerative resource, ecological reciprocity, innovation for good. Why it matters: Many waste streams are overlooked. Turning bio-tar into a functional carbon-capturing material could reduce emissions, detoxify environments, and close material loops.
Coral & Mangrove Restoration Led by Pacific Communities In parts of the Pacific, local community science projects are growing corals and restoring mangroves, combining local ecological knowledge with regenerative practices. Read more →
Buen Vivir connection: Community-led restoration, plural ecological knowledge, cultural ties to sea. Why it matters: Coastal communities rely on healthy reefs & mangroves for food, storm protection, and identity. When they lead restoration, outcomes tend to be more durable, locally adapted, and ethically grounded.
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This week’s good news round-up on September 25, 2025, “Buen Vivir in Action” highlights global community projects promoting ecological balance and reciprocity. From Kolkata’s heritage restoration to Cuba’s microgreen initiative, these stories illustrate efforts in sustainability, cultural identity, and community resilience across diverse locales, emphasizing the vital connection between human dignity and ecological wellbeing.
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2025
Buen Vivir in Action — Community, Reciprocity, and Ecological Balance
No news is good news – besides this good news round-up bringing you a dose of positivity and hope.
Buen Vivir reminds us that ecological wellbeing and human dignity are inseparable. This week’s stories show how communities in all parts of the globe are co-creating futures of reciprocity and resilience, from Havana rooftops to Thai lakes, Australian bushlands to PNG rainforests
Community donations light up Raj Bhavan, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and more, sparking civic pride and ecological urban renewal. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir principles: Community-led, cultural identity, reciprocity with place. Why it matters: Heritage revival enhances urban ecological identity, strengthens community pride, and fosters stewardship of public spaces.
Photo: Times of India
2. Cuba’s Microgreen Revolution
A Havana start-up grows nutritious microgreens in shipping containers, training neighbors and creating new food pathways. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir princples: Food sovereignty, endogenous innovation, holistic wellbeing. Why it matters: In crisis, communities can seed local resilience — nutritious food, livelihoods, dignity.
3. April Salumei Rainforest Conservation (Papua New Guinea)
An innovative new five-year Sustainable Development Plan for the April Salumei Rainforest Community Conservation Project in Papua New Guinea has been developed to provide long-term community benefits. 600,000 hectares of rainforest preserved by landowner-driven conservation and sustainable development planning. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir principles: Holistic rights, ecological reciprocity, plural context. Why it matters: Avoids 22.8 million tonnes of CO₂, preserves habitat, and strengthens community voice in global climate finance.
4. Indigenous Fire Stewardship Revives Country (Australia)
First Nations fire practices are reviving habitats, reducing catastrophic bushfires, and strengthening cultural ties to land. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir : Knowledge sovereignty, harmony with nature, collectivewellbeing Why it matters: Indigenous fire practice reduces catastrophic bushfire risk, restores biodiversity, and reconnects people with Country.
Local communities restore 50 hectares of mangroves, forming a Mangrove Rehabilitation Club to sustain long-term care. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir: Community-driven, participation, reciprocity with ecosystems, shared wellbeing. Why it matters: Restored mangroves stabilize coastlines, nurture fish nurseries, and empower communities to govern local ecosystems.
🌊 Marereni, Kenya: A Community-Led Mangrove Revival
What happened In Marereni, Kilifi County, a collaborative effort between Seatrees, Community-Based Environmental Conservation (COBEC), and local communities has led to the restoration of over 640 hectares of mangrove forests. The project has engaged over 600 community members, predominantly women, in establishing and maintaining mangrove nurseries. Participants earn income from selling mangrove seedlings and engaging in restoration activities. The initiative has resulted in improved fish stocks and enhanced coastal resilience. 🔗 Read more →
Buen Vivir Principles:
Community-led & endogenous: Local communities are at the forefront of the restoration efforts, utilizing traditional knowledge and practices.
Holistic wellbeing: The project addresses ecological health, economic stability, and cultural values.
Reciprocity with nature: The restoration of mangroves enhances biodiversity and provides ecosystem services that benefit the community.
Why it matters This project exemplifies how community-led initiatives can effectively restore ecosystems while providing sustainable livelihoods and enhancing resilience to climate change.
🌿 Lamu County, Kenya: Integrating Restoration with Community Development
What happened The Lamu County Mangrove Restoration Initiative, led by Eden People+Planet, restored over 1,120 hectares of mangrove forests from 2020 to 2024. The project integrated mangrove restoration with inland forest protection and community development across multiple ecological zones. Innovative restoration techniques were developed, providing valuable foundations for future carbon-eligible mangrove projects in similar landscapes across the region. 🔗 Learn more →
Buen Vivir Principles
Holistic wellbeing: The project addressed ecological health, economic stability, and cultural values.
Alternative economies: The initiative promoted sustainable livelihoods through eco-friendly practices.
Plural/local context: Restoration techniques were tailored to the local ecological zones and community needs.
Why it matters This initiative demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating ecological restoration with community development, leading to sustainable and resilient ecosystems.
🌊 Gazi Bay, Kenya: Restoring Ecosystems and Livelihoods
What happened The Aga Khan Foundation, in partnership with the Kenya Forest Service, is restoring 226 hectares of degraded mangrove forests in Gazi Bay, Kwale County. The three-year project aims to rehabilitate vital ecosystems while fostering sustainable livelihoods. It aligns with AKF’s commitment to integrating environmental restoration with community development, ensuring long-term ecological health and economic stability. 🔗 Discover the project →
Buen Vivir Principles
Community-led & endogenous: Local communities are engaged in the restoration efforts, utilizing traditional knowledge and practices.
Holistic wellbeing: The project addresses ecological health, economic stability, and cultural values.
Reciprocity with nature: The restoration of mangroves enhances biodiversity and provides ecosystem services that benefit the community.
Why it matters This project highlights the importance of integrating environmental restoration with community development to build resilience and ensure sustainable livelihoods.
🌊 Kolkata’s Heritage Revival: A Community-Led Transformation
What happened Between November 2023 and September 2025, Kolkata, India has undergone a transformative heritage revival driven by a citizen-powered initiative named Kolkata Restorers. What started modestly with crowdfunding to light up the dome of Maniktala Market has grown into a vibrant movement revitalizing 94 historic buildings across the city. Through small donations—often Rs 500 to Rs 1,000—from individuals, families, and NRIs, residents have embraced preservation as a shared civic responsibility. Iconic landmarks like Raj Bhavan, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and New Market now glow at night as symbols of civic pride and historical continuity. The initiative fosters a “democracy of memory,” where even small contributions allow citizens to feel personally connected to Kolkata’s cultural narrative. By mirroring global heritage cities like Paris and Istanbul, this movement demonstrates how collective action can redefine urban pride and inspire hope. The Times of India
Buen Vivir Principles
Community-led & endogenous: Residents are at the forefront of the restoration efforts, utilizing traditional knowledge and practices.
Holistic wellbeing: The project addresses cultural preservation, community pride, and environmental sustainability.
Reciprocity with nature: The restoration of historic buildings enhances the city’s aesthetic value and fosters a deeper connection to the environment.
Why it matters This initiative exemplifies how community-led efforts can effectively restore cultural heritage while promoting environmental sustainability and fostering a sense of collective identity.
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games aimed to be the greenest ever, hosting a summit to accelerate sport’s contribution to sustainable development goals by reducing emissions and implementing carbon mitigation projects. Critics labeled the event a “greenwashing nightmare,” citing vague methods and limited accountability. Despite challenges, the event’s focus on pre-game carbon mitigation represents a significant paradigm shift for major sporting events globally.
Changing the Paradigm of Major Sports Events
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games promised to be the greenest in history. On the Eve of the games, French President Emmanual Macron and the French Development Agency hosted the first Sport for Sustainable Development Summit, which gathered Heads of State, the International Olympic Committee, and the World Health Organization to accelerate the contribution of sport to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The Olympic Games is one of the largest, most logistically complex global events. Host countries spend billions on new infrastructure, stadiums, athlete accommodation, Olympics venues, and upgrading transport. It is a mammoth undertaking, but it is also carbon intensive. Since Paris started planning for this year’s games in 2017, Paris 2024 aimed to be a game changer in the way that sports approaches its climate impacts.
The aim was to halve the emissions of this year’s games compared to the average of London 2012 and Rio 2016. There were two main goals: to reduce Games-related emissions and support carbon mitigation and capture projects. The former was the most significant. The organising committee pulled out all stops to comprehensively control and assess the entire carbon ecosystem of the event with both direct and indirect scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions from the carbon footprint from athletes and biodiversity impacts, to infrastructure, catering, waste, and even spectator travel.
The organising committee included a world-first Ecological Transformation Committee, setup to control, reduce, and reassess its carbon emissions throughout the run-up to the Games. The Ecological Transformation Committee was chaired by Gilles Boeuf and included nine experts across the areas of carbon impact, biodiversity, circular, economy, energy, catering, digital technology, temporary construction, innovation, and change management. The Committee was joined by representatives from Paris City Council, the French Ministry of Sport, the French Ministerial Delegation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (DIJOP), the Ile-de-France Region, the Seine-Saint-Denis Department, Métropole du Grand Paris, the National Olympic and Paralympic Committees, and the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), and a representative from the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Commission. This breadth of expertise gave strength to the objectives they were trying to achieve.
Have we been greenwashed?
The pure scale of any Olympic Games dictates that it will always have a colossal effect on climate and host communities. This has led Paris 2024 to be labelled a ‘greenwashing nightmare’ by many who argue that this event is awash with vague methodology and limited accountability. There seems to be a lack of transparency and third-party monitoring in these Games that only contributes to the image of the Olympic Games being an “Olympic sustainability smokescreen”, as dubbed by Christine O’Bonsawin, an Indigenous sport scholar and member of the Abenaki Nation at Odanak in Quebec. Because of this lack of transparency, climate and sustainability watchdogs argue that we cannot verify claims that Paris 2024 is carbon-neutral or climate positive.
Researchers contend that the International Olympics Committee is one of the biggest greenwashing institutions in the world. Past attempts to assess and compensate the massive environmental and ecological impacts of the Games have been said to perpetuate “carbon colonialism”—offloading emissions through uncertain projects in the Global South that mainly service the Global North.
While I tend to agree with the transformative limitations of unclear climate accounting methodologies and stoic adhesion to market fixes, changing the status quo, especially of a dominant global event and institution such as the Olympics is impossible to achieve overnight. All change has to start somewhere, and the mindset behind such change promises a great deal for future direction.
The difference between the climate approach to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and other previous major sporting events is that Paris 2024 sought to change the model of carbon assessment from post-games to a pre-game carbon mitigation model. Through this model, Paris 2024 undertook a holistic vision of offsetting emissions in a major carbon impact reduction target and strategy. This paradigm shift, flipping the mitigation hierarchy to avoiding and reducing emissions first rather than a pure offset and compensation strategy is highly significant.
Throughout modern history, the neoliberal approach to climate change has been more focused on offsets and carbon markets. It is a doctrine that believes in the power of commodities over conservation and that there are limits to environmentalism within the sphere of economic growth.
This ‘ARO’ – avoid, reduce, offset (last) – approach makes it difficult to skip over the typically harder and more expensive, bottom-of-the-pyramid mitigation priorities of avoid and reduce, which can happen when relying on a post-diem assessment that leaps straight to compensation as a first tactic.
What does this mean for other major sporting events?
Major sporting events are responsible for a whopping 50 to 60 billion tonnes of tCO2e globally every year. The most logical approach to reducing the climate impact of sport is to reduce the size and scale of these events. As with the Olympics, in their current formats, these events can never be truly sustainable and will always have a large environmental impact. However, avoiding them altogether is not black and white.
Sports – both taking part and being a spectator – has a proven social and economic benefit that goes beyond socio-economic, geographic, and cultural barriers. Sporting events strengthen social networks and build a sense of belonging for participants, fostering identity and building a sense of community character and cohesion for those involved. They can stimulate economic development for disadvantaged communities and inspire social change. Conversely, they can also be the root cause of human rights violations, slavery, unbridled nationalism, and massive-scale pollution.
To help address the entire carbon footprint of the Games, Paris 2024 declared that it developed an online tool, Climate Coach for Events for event organisers to understand and reduce the climate impact of major sporting events. This app is free for organisations to use and estimates the carbon footprint across ten categories including catering, accommodation, travel, infrastructure and energy, sports equipment, logistics, site preparation, promotional items, digital material, and waste; and provides a breakdown of the biggest source of emissions. In the same psychology of sports coaching, the app then provides a customised programme of over a hundred tangible measures that organisers can then implement in their planning to reduce their event’s carbon footprint.
Addressing climate impacts at the scale and complexity of something like the Olympics before the event demonstrates that it’s not too farfetched for other large sporting events to follow suit. Assessing the achievement of pre-emptive change rather than just rely on post-diem assessments to understand event impacts is a positive move.
Reinventing mega sporting events to realign them with international climate goals sounds like an impossible task. Of course, there is plenty more that could have always been done at the 2024 Olympics, by all – organisers, spectators, and athletes. The sheer scale of such events needs to be re-evaluated as a matter of urgency, but this event has opened pathways for thinking differently about the impacts and contributions of major sporting events, and other large events in general. Perhaps one of the greatest legacies of the Paris 2024 Olympics is that the opportunity to pioneer sustainable transformative thinking about major events proved not only possible, but even desirable.
In the ever-wise words of Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible until it is done”. No other thoughts resonate better with how we can address the world’s most challenging climate issues. The reinvention of future climate action in sport is on the horizon.
The ocean, she breathes life into the earth, into you, into me. The ocean, this ultimate vessel for the ‘Elixir of Life’ unto which we are all ultimately connected, needs us so that she may continue to sustain us. You see, this vast blue and us, we are inextricably interconnected.
The ocean covers the majority of the planet – 97 percent, in fact. The world’s four major oceans are interconnected making the vast blue at one with the earth. This vast amount of liquid water is what makes our planet unique and the primary contributor to life on Earth. Yet, we have lost respect for her and her significance, polluting 88 percent of her surface with our debris, with the vast majority of it sinking to the bottom of our precious marine ecosystems.
The ocean began her life three billion years ago and we may never fully understand the mysteries that have evolved since then. She is wise this old girl. While the earth may not look the same, her duty to birth and sustain life has remained constant.
Never one to keep still, she is always in movement. In a tangled cycle of heat and vapour, the ocean gives herself to the atmosphere and disguises herself as bright clouds that give us shade from the scorching sun, and rain that waters our crops and provides us with water to drink. The ebbs and flows of the ocean current allow life everywhere across the globe to perpetuate, to flourish and to reproduce. The sea floor is locked in a perpetual cycle of birth and destruction that shapes our earth and even influences our DNA.
The Enlightenment assumption that natural resources were simply property to be exploited is naïvely nonsensical – if we deplete and destroy nature, we ultimately damage ourselves. Our estuaries, salt marshes, mangrove forests, coral reefs, open and deep seas all depend on an ocean thriving and in good health.
For the world’s indigenous peoples, the ocean, like all forces of nature, is a living being, and must be respected, revered, and cared for. Beliefs anchor in facts: nature sustains us, guides us, gives us life and health. The ocean provides us with food, medicine, minerals, oxygen, and freshwater.
However, today we exercise our dominion over the sea and all of her creatures and organisms, and we are paying the price.
First civilizations had a transactional relationship with the ocean, riding the seas through ancient trade routes importing and exporting knowledge, tools, spices, minerals, and other riches, and expanding empires. The seas supported our livelihoods, helping society to become what it is today. Humanity has used the ocean against itself – the very reliance civilizations had on her for expansion and progress became the driving forces that are destroying her by impacting the earth’s climate.
In modern life, the threats of climate change and human destruction have forever changed the way our ocean and her ecosystems exist and evolve. Evolution is a slow process, usually, but with our consumerist and extractive mindsets we have taken so much of the earth’s riches and given it back in waste that it has caused mass extinctions in all life forms, not least in the ocean. If we continue the way we are, in the time to come all marine life from the deepest depths to the sandy shores could suffer one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of our planet from warming seas and changing currents.
Our polar regions are warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. The Arctic Ocean once glistened with snow and ice under a pale sun, atop with glaciers so large that humans had little knowledge of what went on in life underneath. Now plankton, scores of fish, walruses, whales and seals all are fighting to adapt to warming seas. Polar bears that completely depend on the ocean to survive are drowning, and starving with nowhere to go. It is a case of fight or perish. Through our actions though, the ocean has little say in how she changes. The ice that once gleamed in varying hues of pale blue and white protecting her from above is giving way to deep blues. As the darkest depths of the ocean reveal themselves to our polar regions, so does our future become obscure.
We humans are so intelligent that we have long studied and understood geological processes of the past, yet we are so far inept at changing the forces that will stop it from happening again. We write the history books, what is stopping us from editing them to allow for a legacy sequel?
The ocean is the most powerful force on earth – she is a mother, a killer, a healer, and a peacemaker – lest she have the power to rest in good health. As humans we have inherited the universal right to clean water because of its importance to sustaining life. Though, some interpret that as the right to exploit at all costs, that the ocean and its supported water forms are a commodity to fulfill our needs and desires first. As a living being, she deserves agency to pursue redress if it is damaged or destroyed.
The Rights of Nature is a movement that catalyzes the connection between us and the earth. The idea of giving rights to the ocean and all water sources is to protect them against destructive and exploitative human activity – that we may live in harmony with nature and not against it. It acknowledges the inherent intimate connection we have with her, how she has helped form this planet we call home, and that she may continue to endure and sustain us with her most important work flowing through life every day. It may reorient the way we live towards our responsibilities to nature. The ocean deserves her right to be recognised and respected.
If we retrieve reverence for our ocean, we can recover respect for ourselves and our future. Honouring the reciprocal relationship we have with Mother Ocean is key to hope for times to come. While climate change is obscuring the outlook for the future state of our planet, one thing is certain: our ocean is worth fighting for.
