299: Green Islam

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Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's edition, we're pretty excited about this one.

We're kicking things off with a new giving partner, the Te-Kworo Foundation, a local charity in northern Uganda that provides education, boarding and safe maternal care to young mothers, many of whom were victims of Joseph Kony’s terrorist Lord’s Resistance Army. This organisation is doing incredible work: their three boarding schools include childcare and health services, allowing young mothers to continue their education and break the cycle of poverty.

We found out about them through Lexi, a contact from one of our previous partners, who reached out to let us know that the foundation was facing a critical crossroads. In February 2025, over 1,000 students enrolled—200 more than expected—unexpectedly increasing costs and stretching resources. As Lexi said in her email, “We cannot turn these girls away. For many, our school is their only path to education and a future beyond poverty, but welcoming them means we must find a way to meet their basic needs.” 

Right now, they need more bunk beds for the boarding schools. The new students are currently sleeping on mats, which in Uganda’s damp climate often become soaked, leaving the girls cold, uncomfortable, and frequently ill. Thanks to the support of our paid members, we are sending them $12,000 AUD to purchase, deliver, and install 100 handmade metal beds which will ensure the students' physical well-being, and help uphold high standards of care.

How can you help:
If you’d like to further support the Te-Kworo Foundation, you can give to them directly, and they have options for you to choose your impact across education, maternal health and urgent needs.

This week's top stories

CERN prepares to ship antimatter—yes, actual antimatter—across Europe. Until now, antimatter research has been confined to a few labs, and its transport was considered impossible. That’s about to change. CERN is preparing to ship tiny quantities of antihydrogen to research institutes across Europe. Why does this matter? Antimatter is central to some of physics’ biggest unsolved questions—like why the universe exists at all. Sharing it could democratise access to fundamental experiments, and increase our understanding of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter that created the cosmos. Ars Technica

China added 105 GW of solar in the first four months of the year—more in 120 days, than the total installed capacity to date of nearly every other country on Earth. Meanwhile, India added more renewable capacity in the past year than coal, gas, and nuclear combined, with solar alone accounting for 70% of all new electricity generation, and wind regaining pace after years of policy bottlenecks.

In Indonesia, Islamic leaders are increasingly promoting environmental stewardship as a religious obligation. Known as 'Green Islam,' the aim is to instil Indonesia's 200 million Muslims with a sense of ecological responsibility. The Indonesian Ulema Council has issued seven environmental fatwas in the past decade, and during renovations in 2020, Jakarta's Istiqlal Mosque, the country's most important religious centre, installed solar panels, water recycling systems, energy-efficient lighting and better ventilation. Christian Science Monitor 🎁

Vatican City has joined the 100% renewables club. The Vatican has become the world’s latest state to be powered entirely by renewables, with solar installations now supplying all electricity (thanks, Pope Francis!). It joins a growing group that includes Iceland, Bhutan, and Ethiopia. Clean Technica

Global commitments to fight neglected tropical diseases have reached new highs, with 28 billion units of medicine pledged—up from 19 billion in late 2024. Novartis alone has nearly doubled its five-year R&D investment to $490 million, targeting malaria, leishmaniasis, and dengue. The surge follows expanded backing for the Kigali Declaration, now endorsed by 84 governments and organisations. $441 million in new funding has been committed since September 2024, taking total pledges past $1.8 billion. Uniting to Combat NTDs

We're making poverty history:

• In Bhutan, a joint Government-World Bank report has found that poverty declined from 28% in 2017 to 11.6% in 2022, with the country edging ever closer to eradicating extreme poverty. These successes are largely attributed to increased economic growth and agricultural productivity, COVID-19 relief programs, and remittances.
• In Georgia (the country, not the US state), the National Statistics Office has published data revealing a 9.4% drop in the national poverty rate in 2024, “the first time we’ve seen across-the-board improvements in both urban and rural areas, and in every age group.” 
• In Morocco, the overall Multidimensional Poverty Index has been nearly cut in half as a result of stunning declines across all regions. The proportion of the population experiencing poverty fell from 11.9% to 6.8% between 2014 and 2024, equivalent to 1.5 million fewer people living in poverty. 
• And Jamaica has announced its lowest rate of poverty recorded since poverty rates were first measured in 1989. In 2023, the national poverty rate dropped from 16.7% in 2021 to 8.2% to 2023, while the extreme poverty rate fell from 5.8% to 2.8% during this time.

We’re getting closer to recreating life’s first step. For decades, scientists have tried to understand how life emerged from lifeless chemistry. Now, synthetic chemists have created molecules that can self-replicate under conditions in labs that mimic early Earth—demonstrating a plausible pathway for how the first biological systems may have formed. New Scientist 🗄️

A German court just melted one of Big Oil’s key climate defences. Germany’s top civil court has dismissed a lawsuit by Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya against energy giant RWE, but confirmed that private companies can be held liable for their share of climate damages. The court ruled the flood risk to Lliuya’s property wasn’t imminent, but upheld the core idea of corporate accountability for emissions. Legal experts say it could fundamentally shift who pays for climate damages—from taxpayers, to polluters. The Conversation

On that note, Scotland is moving to criminalise environmental vandalism. The Scottish Parliament's 'Ecocide Bill' proposes up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals and unlimited fines for corporations that cause severe environmental damage. The legislation aims to hold corporate leaders accountable for actions like oil spills and deforestation, and if passed, would make Scotland a global leader in environmental protection. The Guardian

And in 2016, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) made headlines by deploying a 30 metre “CUT CONFLICT PALM OIL” banner off PepsiCo’s iconic Manhattan-facing billboard. How'd that work out? Pretty well. RAN's now using PepsiCo resources to restore the Leuser rainforest, damaged by palm oil harvest, in a model of corporate accountability they hope to one day scale. TLDR: lots of activists and sustainability teams turning greenwashing into the real thing. RAN

Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovenia have all ratified the High Seas Treaty, joining France and Spain, and bringing the total number of ratifications to 28. This coordinated move marks significant progress toward the 60 ratifications needed for the treaty to become binding international law, and came just days before the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, where even more countries are expected to join the list. Oceanographic

CAR-T therapy doubles remission time in blood cancer patients. For years, multiple myeloma was an incurable blood cancer with few good options. That may be changing. A new study shows that CAR-T therapy—where a patient’s immune cells are reprogrammed to attack tumours—can double survival in those with advanced cases. Some patients have remained cancer-free for over four years. What makes this so significant isn’t just the survival curve, but the method: custom-built treatments are based on the patient's own cells, rather than one-size-fits-all drugs. Doctors now say CAR-T could become standard for a broader range of cancers. NYT 🎁

Some wins for LGBTQ+ rights around the world: An Italian court has ruled that both women in a lesbian couple are legal mothers of a child conceived via IVF and a non-binary person in Brazil has been granted official documents with a neutral gender marker for the first time in the country’s history.

And finally --

You know how one of the forever-complaints against renewables is that they can’t respond to fluctuating energy needs? It used to be an old saw even among environmentalists that we’d always need a little coal or oil, to be dropped like fat on the fire when the grid needed sudden generation to meet surprise demand. Except it turns out old-fashioned hydropower can serve that purpose, and in fact people have known that for ages. In Wales, twin gravity-powered hydro plants Ffestiniog and Dinorwig have been providing on-the-spot electricity during power surges for 62 and 41 years respectively. Guardian

Dinorwig or Mynydd Gwefru, as it is known locally, can be called upon to generate electricity within 75 seconds by releasing 325,000 litres of water per second down a cavernous 500-metre vertical tunnel. The water crashes into six turbines, each weighing about 500 tonnes, which generate high-volume blasts of renewable power on demand.

Now with wind and solar regularly generating surplus power to pump those gallons of water higher, both Ffestiniog and the 'much-loved' Dinorwig are being refurbished so they can keep on keeping the lights on... without any gas, oil or coal.