We're really pleased to announce another charity partner, Smart Parks, who use open-source technology to track and protect wildlife around the world. By linking up low cost, low data sensors with satellites and long range ground networks, they're able to tag and track animals across vast areas, providing a crucial tool for wildlife rangers to protect against poaching. Check out some of their projects.
We're sending them €7,500 to develop and test their new sensor called the Elephant Edge, which has super low power and high-end satellite connectivity, and will be used to track orphaned elephants reintroduced back into the wild. They're working with WWF Zambia and Game Rangers International to carry out the first trial runs in Zambia's Kafue National Park in early 2023.
This donation will help with the development of the sensors, putting Smart Parks within striking distance of their funding goal. A big thank you to all of you for making it possible. We're looking forward to reporting back on this one.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
The fight against measles is one of humanity's greatest achievements of the 21st century. Despite a brief resurgence in 2019, and a fall in vaccination rates during the pandemic, between 2000 and 2021 the annual number of measles deaths fell from 761,000 to 128,000; saving an estimated 56 million lives. An astonishing feat that deserves far more attention. WHO
Singapore has eliminated rubella - the leading vaccine-preventable cause of birth defects worldwide. This follows Singapore's elimination of measles in 2018. Seven countries in the WHO's Western Pacific Region have now interrupted endemic transmission of the virus that causes rubella: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and Singapore. WHO
About 160,000 new HIV infections among children under five occurred last year, a dramatic 50% decline from 320,000 infections in 2010. Since the launch of a global plan in 2011 to prevent mother-to-child transmission programmes, 1.5 million deaths and 2.9 million HIV infections have been averted worldwide among pregnant women and children. UNICEF
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Cambodia's landmine removal program. Since 1992, over a million landmines and three million explosives have been removed, and 2,531 km2 has been cleared and made safe for the construction of homes, schools, farms and roads for nine million people. Deaths have fallen from 4,320 in 1996 to less than 100 in 2021. Phnom Penh Post
Millions of Alzheimer’s patients have been given hope after a new drug has been shown to slow memory decline by 27% over 18 months. It's the biggest breakthrough in a generation, marking what experts have called the 'beginning of the end' of Alzheimer’s and offering “real optimism that dementia can be beaten and one day even cured.” BBC
Sierra Leone is allocating almost a quarter of its entire budget to education as part of its ongoing effort to ensure every child in the country gets free schooling. Since 2018, enrolment rates have surged from 2.0 to 3.1 million students, and there's been a highly progressive shift in completion at every level of education. Guardian
Bangladesh has the lowest rate of infant and maternal mortality in south Asia. The maternal mortality rate has fallen from 269 per 100,000 live births in 2009 to 165 per 100,000 today, and child mortality has declined by 63% since the turn of the century. It's the eighth most populated country in the world - millions of lives have been saved. TBS
France has moved a step closer to becoming the first country to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right, after lawmakers approved a resolution in the lower house to guarantee access to “the right to voluntarily end a pregnancy”. Four in five people in France, from across the political spectrum, want abortion rights to be better protected under the constitution. Guardian
The roads of 22 of the world's major cities have become a lot safer in the last decade. Following a combined 2010 pledge, road fatalities and serious injuries have fallen by an average of 4% a year, with a particularly noticeable decline during the pandemic. ITF
A rigorous new study from Stanford has found no meaningful association between the age at which kids receive their first smartphones and their wellbeing, as measured by grades, sleep habits and depression symptoms. In short - all kids have phones and no, it doesn't make them depressed. Naturally, not headline news.
For the first time since the early 90s, wealth inequality is falling in America. Since December 2020, the wealth of the top income percentiles has fallen significantly, while the wealth of the bottom 50% has risen by 26%. Wealth share under the current administration has also shifted to the benefit of bottom 50%. Real Time Inequality
Canada's overall poverty rate fell from 14.5% in 2015 to 10.3% in 2019, and 6.4% in 2020. This means that Canada has met both its interim target of reducing poverty by 20% by 2020 (relative to 2015 levels) and of reducing poverty by 50% by 2030 - ten years ahead of time. National Advisory Council on Poverty
Russia is losing a war to a country a quarter its size, Iran is experiencing massive protests, and China is struggling with a lockdown dilemma and a sputtering economy. The United States has record low unemployment, inflation is coming down and election deniers lost the midterms. Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand are all economically resilient, politically stable. Liberalism on its last legs, huh?
We know this sounds crazy, but what if everything... is going to be okay?
Presented without comment
The only home we've ever known
The Global Mangrove Alliance launched a new initiative at COP27 to restore and protect an additional 15 million hectares of mangroves globally by 2030. It will build on good momentum - globally, net mangrove deforestation has essentially flatlined, and 42% of the world’s mangroves are protected, an increase of 17% since 2012. Conservation
'The Bengal Water Machine' is a nature-based solution in Bangladesh that relies on the country's 16 million smallholders pumping up groundwater, rivalling the storage capacity of the world’s large dams. It's enabled the country's farmers to make it world’s fourth highest producer of rice, drastically improving food security and resilience to climate change. Sci Dev
Israel and Jordan are teaming up to save their shared waterway, the Jordan River. Efforts will focus on increasing treatment facilities, upgrading sewer systems and promoting sustainable agriculture to restore water supply and at least 50% of lost biodiversity. AP
After a 50 year absence, swift foxes have returned to the grasslands of Fort Belknap in Montana. Three years into the recovery program, 130 foxes have been released into the wild and are already reproducing, a critical milestone for a self-sustaining population. Local tribes have worked tirelessly for decades to bring indigenous wildlife back to the area. Defenders
An ambitious plan to save Louisiana’s coastal communities and ecosystems will divert sediment and water from the Mississippi into the Barataria Basin. The $20 billion project is the largest coastal restoration project in the US, and expected to create over 6,200 acres of land in its first decade. Settlement money from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill will foot the bill. Nola
Thanks to conservation efforts in China, a number of endangered species are recovering. The Yangtze finless porpoise population has reached nearly 100 while the population of milu deer has expanded from 64 in 1990 to around 2,500 today. Sightings of Shennongjia golden monkeys are also increasing. China.org
The European Commission just approved €380 million of funding for 168 new biodiversity, circular economy, climate adaptation and clean energy projects across the continent. The biggest chunk has been reserved for 27 nature and biodiversity projects that will support the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the proposed Nature Restoration Law.
Cities around the world are installing artificial islands brimming with grasses and sedges to clean up their waterways. An acre of floating wetland can absorb pollution from 7-15 acres of urban development while creating a refuge for wildlife. Baltimore was one of the first to trial the invention and the project has been so successful they plan to expand the islands to 10,000 square feet in 2024. Yale360
The 19th meeting of CITES has produced new trade regulations for over 600 animal and plant species, including new protection for sharks, glass frogs, turtles, songbirds, and tropical timber species. The most significant development was the protection of requiem and hammerhead sharks which account for 95% of the global fin trade. Mongabay
Abu Dhabi’s single-use plastic policy has reduced the use of single-use plastic bags in retail stores by 87 million, the equivalent of half a million bags a day since launching in June. The ban was implemented to address the 11 billion plastic bags used in the Emirates each year, which is almost four times the global average. The National
Number of the week
One of the greatest public health achievements of the 21st century
The estimated number of human lives saved between 2000 and 2021 as a result of measles vaccination campaigns around the world. Annual deaths from measles have fallen from 761,000 to 128,000 during this period.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
After peaking in 2014, investment in oil and gas in Britain has plummeted by three-quarters to £3.7 billion last year, and jobs have fallen by half. By contrast, investment in offshore wind last year was £6.7 billion, and jobs are booming, with many who honed their skills on offshore oil platforms making the switch. NYT
“This industry is the future, isn’t it?"
China’s wind turbines are going to get a whole lot cheaper next year. One of the country's top four turbine makers says export prices will drop by up to 20% per kilowatt in 2023, as as newer units become more efficient and other technological advances are made. Imagine being a fossil gas executive and seeing that news? Bloomberg
At least $25.7 billion of clean-energy factories are now in the works in the United States. Most of these projects (and the jobs that come with them) are in red states. Dalton, Georgia for example, is now home to the biggest solar panel factory in the Western Hemisphere. Conservatives might not believe in climate change, but they do believe in good blue collar jobs. Bloomberg
There will be at least 8 GW of utility-scale batteries online in the United States by the end of 2022, up from less than 1 GW as recently as 2019. Meanwhile, overall grid-scale wind, solar, and battery capacity has grown nearly 25X in the last decade and a half, from under 9 GW in 2005 to over 220 GW today. Welcome to the revolution.
A few more graphs on the clean energy story in the US. The country will add a near-record 26 GW of clean power in 2022 while retiring 13 GW of coal.
For the third year running, wind, solar, and batteries will account for roughly 80% of new capacity...
… meaning that sun, wind and water will generate 22% of US electricity this year, more than coal at 20% and nuclear at 19%. The day they said would never come has arrived: clean has beaten coal, and gas is next. Scientific American
After years of trying to slow down the energy transition, utilities in the US are now joining forces to speed it up. Their new stance is driven (wait for it) "less by evolving ideology than the changing economics of renewable energy." Surprise surprise. Money turns out to be a better motivator than doing the right thing. NYT
Barclays, one of Europe’s biggest coal financiers, said its analysis of the IRA has led it to commit to wind down its funding for coal in the US five years earlier than planned. The bank now expects to phase out its financing of thermal coal power by 2030. Bloomberg
A court in Belgrade has ordered state-owned energy company EPS to cut the sulphur dioxide emitted by its coal plants after experts proved the practice is causing excess deaths from cardiovascular diseases. The ruling signals a radical shift in the protection of public health and the environment in Serbia. RERI
Caterpillar just successfully demonstrated its first battery electric large mining truck. Fully loaded, the truck achieved a top speed of 60 km/h, then travelled one kilometer up a 10% grade at 12 km/h, before coming back down the hill again, regenerating that energy via braking back into the battery. Batteries News
Electric scooters in France are not a fad. In 2021, four years after they first appeared, 900,000 were sold, up by 42% compared to 2020. "We can't just dismiss a versatile means of transport that helps people get out of the car and sells almost a million units a year." Le Monde
In China, 31% of all cars sold last month were battery EVs or plugin hybrids. If electrification continues at this pace, the plugin share will be 45% a year from now, and battery EVs will be one third of the market. Nobody predicted anything close to this. Astonishing. Cleantechnica
Indistinguishable from magic
Spinlaunch is one of the world's most exciting engineering projects - a devilishly simple yet incredibly technical idea to launch rockets into space using kinetic energy generated by an enormous centrifuge. They've made a lot of progress, successfully testing a prototype that's a third of the size of the final version. Now comes the hard part. Big Think
A quantum computer has been used to simulate a wormhole for the first time. In a first-of-its-kind, 'quantum gravity experiment on a chip,' the wormhole emerged like a hologram out of qubits stored in tiny superconducting circuits, providing evidence for a sweeping hypothesis about how quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two pillars of fundamental physics, fit together. Quanta
For all the talk of an autonomous vehicle winter, it's still pretty mind-blowing that Waymo is operating a fully driverless, commercial service in downtown Phoenix. It's also designing a new robo-taxi from the bottom up. "Vehicles can become a place to entertain friends, a movable office for meetings, a room for kids to study in, or a lounge to kick back and catch some ZZZs." Clean Technica
Google’s AI algorithm for screening for breast cancer, shown in a 2020 to perform better than human radiologists, will now be part of commercial mammograms around the world. The technology has just been licensed to a medical company that provides breast cancer detection services to 7,500 health care facilities globally. Time
A new form of gene therapy for haemophilia B has just been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The treatment replaces a dysfunctional gene that leaves people unable to control their bleeding. It’s expected to cost $3.5 million per patient - still less costly over the long run than the current standard of care, which requires frequent, expensive transfusions. Gizmodo
Scientists in Tel Aviv have invented a new way to destroy cancerous tumours via ultrasound and nanotechnology. "Our new technology makes it possible to inject nanobubbles into the bloodstream, which then congregate around the cancerous tumour. After that, using a low-frequency ultrasound, we explode the nanobubbles, and thereby the tumour.” Simple right? TAU
This is not plant-based salmon, nor is it wild or farmed. It’s cultivated: grown from real Coho salmon cells in a brewery-like system, harvested, and then grown on 3D, plant-derived scaffolds to recreate the texture of natural fish fillets. The white banding (which is not just fat in natural salmon) is a product of how the salmon cells are grown within the scaffolds. Apparently it tastes amazing.
The information highway is still super
Not quite sure how to describe this essay by philosopher Justin Smith. A screed against consumerism? A celebration of sobriety? A rumination on the contradictions of middle age? None of those quite do it justice. "It is surely a blessing to live long enough to learn to stop searching in vain for sources of transcendence in the common substances of this world, however rarefied they are made, however spirit-like, by the long art of men." Fabulous in every respect.
Science journalist Erica Gies says that our domineering approach to water ignores the ways that hydrological systems interact with rocks, soil, plants, microbes and animals – including ourselves. The 'us first' mentality isn't working, an observation that should be obvious to anyone looking at what's happening around the world. Perhaps it's time to start asking a simple question: what does water want? It may sound a bit mystical, even radical. In fact, it’s a practical and proven path to creating a better world. Psyche
Wondering what to buy your loved ones for Christmas? How about the ultimate gift of self-knowledge, a DNA test. Razib Kahn is one of the foremost geneticists in the world, and says there has never been a better time to get your whole genome sequence or genotype. In this post, he takes you through the trade-offs to decide what product is right for you or your loved ones, as well as a bit of the history and the science behind them.
Humankind
Tree Hugger
Meet Vadana Shiva, a 70 year old physicist turned ecofeminist in India who has dedicated her life to protecting the world’s biodiversity, and increasing the participation of women in conservation, who she believes are the custodians of earth-health.
Vadana was born in Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her father was a forestry official and her mother a farmer, so she grew up spending as much time outdoors as she did in school. Her love of nature led her to physics degree followed by a PhD scholarship in Canada. Before she left overseas, Vadana decided to visit her favourite childhood haunts in a nearby oak forest, only to find it had been cleared for commercial apple orchards. She felt “like I had just been amputated.”
While recounting her horror to friend, a local teaseller overheard the conversation and assured Vanada that no more forests would be lost because of the Chipko, a group of local women who were literally hugging trees to protect them from commercial loggers. The Chipko’s mission sparked a calling in Vadana and she used her scholarship money to return home from Canada every holiday to volunteer. For Vadana the forest had always been a place of beauty but working with the women of Chipko, she learned it was also a powerful source of livelihood and knowledge.
Vadana left her formal scientific work in 1982 to set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed. Inspired by the Chipko, she started building a movement to empower more women to protect their land and worked to bridge the gap between indigenous and scientific knowledge. A few years later, when she became concerned about the rise of monoculture food producers Vadana expanded her mission to protect her country’s agricultural biodiversity.
In 1991 she launched Navdanya, which in Hindi means 'nine seeds.' The program supports small farmers in rescuing endangered crops and plants and makes them available through direct marketing. Over the past two decades Navdanya has helped two million farmers, set up 150 seed banks across India and saved 4,000 rice varieties and 31 varieties of wheat along with pulses, vegetables, and medicinal plants.
For Vadana, feminism and environmentalism are inseparable and both necessary drivers to create an abundant and sustainable future. “We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.”
That's it for this edition, hope you enjoyed it.
We're taking a break next week in order to work on our traditional end of year list. The plan is to go through the more than 1,200 good news stories we've reported in 2022, and choose our favourite 99. So no newsletter next week, but please keep an eye out for those 99 stories, dropping on the 16th December.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the team
