What went right this week: the good news that matters

The Colombian capital Bogota has been crowned one of this year’s Earthshot Prize winners, following the city’s ambitious – and successful – efforts to cut air pollution. 

Bogota (main picture) has laid the biggest cycle network in Latin America, deployed one of the world’s largest electric bus fleets, and greened swathes of the city. These efforts have reportedly helped cut air pollution by 24% since 2018 – an achievement acknowledged by the Earthshot Prize. 

Launched in 2020 by Prince William, the award showcases solutions to environmental problems and helps their creators scale up by awarding them £1m each. The latest winners were announced at a star-studded event in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, ahead of the Cop30 climate conference. 

The other victors were: re.green, a project that’s restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest (pictured); The High Seas Treaty, a global agreement to protect international waters; Lagos Fashion Week, which is making sustainable clothing cool; and Friendship, an initiative to help vulnerable Bangladeshi communities prepare for natural disasters. 

“Their work is the proof we need that progress is possible,” said Prince William. “Their stories are the inspiration that gives us courage. There’s a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world.”

Image: Paltiel de Oliveira

The number of polio cases globally has plummeted by more than 99% in just 35 years, new data from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests. 

Some 350,000 children per year were left paralysed by polio in the eighties – a figure that now stands at around 50, according to the WHO, which attributed the fall to the mass rollout of polio vaccines. 

Despite the good news, immunisation rates are falling in some regions, including Europe. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, a ban on house-to-house immunisation has resulted in more than one million children not receiving a vaccine. 

Welcoming the data, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged nations to “finish the job”. “Decades ago, the world overcame geopolitical and geographic barriers to end smallpox,” he said. “Let’s do the same for polio.”

Image: Bennett Tobias

Major improvements in maternity care globally have led to a sharp fall in the number of women dying during childbirth. 

That’s according to an international study, which said there had been a 41% reduction in the maternal mortality rate between between 2000 and 2023. Improved access to contraceptives was another big factor, the study found. 

Commenting on the research, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that more needed to be done to ensure that more women had access to better maternity care. 

“Access to contraception and quality maternity care are not just health interventions – they are fundamental to saving lives and advancing gender equality,” said Pascale Allotey, WHO director. “We must ensure that every woman, everywhere, has the means to plan her family and access the care she needs for preventing unintended pregnancy and for a safe pregnancy and childbirth.”

Image: Camylla Battani

For the first time, human heart cells have been “coaxed” into regenerating themselves, a “breakthrough” that could one day help millions of people with damaged hearts. 

Unlike other organs, the human heart is not able to repair itself from injuries, including those sustained during a heart attack. However, that might be about to change. This week, scientists said they had found a way of reactivating a gene that creates new heart cells but turns off after birth.

The research was led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, US. It comes a decade after experts at the institution regenerated the hearts of pigs. 

“Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, yet adult human heart muscle cells stop diving after birth,” said Dr Hina Chaudhry, Icahn’s director of cardiovascular regenerative medicine. 

“Our work was the first to show that we can regenerate the porcine heart after injury, and now we’ve advanced the field by demonstrating that even middle–aged adult human heart cells – long believed incapable of division – can be coaxed back into making new, functional cells. 

“This shifts the paradigm from managing symptoms to actually repairing the human heart.”

Image: Kenny Eliason

For the first time, homeless people in the UK will be able to open bank accounts as part of a broader scheme to boost financial inclusivity. 

The UK’s big five banks – Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays, Nationwide and Santander – will join HSBC in waiving the need for people to have a fixed address to open a bank account.

The ‘breaking the cycle’ programme will end the catch-22 situation that many homeless people find themselves in, whereby they need an address to open a bank account, and a bank account to apply for rental accommodation. 

The initiate is part of a wider scheme that will provide access to financial education for those at risk of being left behind and help domestic abuse survivors to rebuild their credit scores.  

“This plan is about opening doors,” said Lucy Rigby, the government’s economic secretary to the treasury. “No one should be locked out of the chance to build a better future.” 

The homelessness charity Shelter piloted the ‘breaking the cycle’ programme with HSBC bank, helping some 7,000 people experiencing homelessness or housing difficulties to open an account. The charity’s Lauren Thompson said the rollout of the scheme would “support people to regain control, build financial resilience, and rebuild their lives.”

Image: iStock

Australia is producing so much solar power that it’s going to start giving it away to its citizens during the day, the government announced this week. 

According to official data, some 4m households in Australia – almost a half of all homes – have rooftop solar arrays, which collectively generate more electricity than the country’s coal-fired power stations. Often, more electricity is produced than needed.

However, under the government’s ‘solar sharer’ plan, energy companies will be forced to offer free electricity to customers for three hours in the middle of the day. The scheme will enable renters and people who live in flats to benefit from the solar revolution, while de-incentivising electricity use at night, when coal and gas provide most of the electricity.

Tim Buckley, director of the think-tank Climate Energy Finance, told the Financial Times that the plan “guts coal even faster and makes gas less relevant”. 

Not everyone will benefit initially, though. The ‘solar sharer’ scheme will be available only to people in New South Wales, South Australia, and in southeastern Queensland from July 2026, with more regions set to follow in 2027. 

“We want to see the benefits of renewable energy flow to all, even those without solar panels and batteries,”  said energy minister Chris Bowen.

Image: Dan Freeman

The Maldives is set to become the first nation to stop an entire generation from buying tobacco, the world’s leading cause of preventable death. 

Under plans announced on Thursday, young people born after January 2007 will not legally be allowed to buy cigarettes or other nicotine products.

The move has been welcomed by health campaigners, but critics claim that it will create a black market for cigarettes and limit people’s freedom of choice. 

The UK is pressing ahead with similar legislation, while New Zealand’s much-publicised plan to pass a generational smoking ban was scrapped in 2023.

Image: Serey Kim

A paint that cools buildings while harvesting water from thin air has been unveiled by scientists at the University of Sydney, Australia. 

In tests, the nanoengineered polymer, which reflects sunlight, was shown to cool buildings by up to 6C inside, potentially reducing the need for energy-intensive air conditioning systems. 

“This technology not only advances the science of cool roof coatings but also opens the door to sustainable, low-cost and decentralised sources of fresh water – a critical need in the face of climate change and growing water scarcity,” said the university’s Prof Chiara Neto. 

“While humid conditions are ideal [for the paint], dew can form even in arid and semi-arid regions where night-time humidity rises. It’s not about replacing rainfall but supplementing it – providing water where and when other sources become limited.”

Read more: How cool is that? New white paint ‘more powerful’ than air con

Image: Ian Talmacs

A new arts project is pairing photographers and poets with farmers, fishers and food growers to tell powerful stories of regeneration. 

We Feed The UK and an accompanying book profile 10 people who are working with nature to cultivate food. The Gaia Foundation, the charity behind the project, gave a nod to Nobel prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine in the book’s foreword.

“[Prigogine] said that ‘when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order’. The stories in this book are such ‘islands of coherence’”.

Read some of those stories here.

Image: Arpita Shah
Main image: iStock