Monthly Good News Roundup for January! 🎉🩵
Long time no see! 👋🏽 January flew by — but let’s not gloss over some of its good news headlines! Let’s wrap up the first month of 2026 with five good news stories from January! 🎉✨
1. ☀️ Cheap solar power is changing lives and economies across Africa!
With Chinese solar panels becoming increasingly affordable, solar panel usage has been increasing rapidly among businesses and families in countries like South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Chad. Across the continent, solar imports from China rose 50% over the first 10 months of 2025!
🔗 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/climate/solar-south-africa-china.html?smid=url-share
2. 🏳️⚧️ Anti-trans provisions have been removed from federal funding bills in the U.S.!
A series of anti-LGBTQ+ measures have been slashed, which would have implemented limitations for federal funding for gender-affirming care, college trans athletes, and support measures for trans youth in K-12 schools. That’s not all that succeeded with this bill — it also included increased funding for HIV/AIDS programs and initiatives!
The bill is "strikingly clean."
3. 🫎 A project to reintroduce elk to the UK is moving forward!
Once a native species in the UK and a keystone species in UK wetlands, they became extinct 3,000 years ago due to hunting — the project, which has now secured £15,000 of funding, aims to start feasibility studies into the species’ return, a significant step towards reintroduction! With other reintroduction projects having proved successful — beavers, as an example, having returned successfully to the country for the first time in 400 years — wildlife experts aim to see the elks’ return bring similar benefits to the local environment!
Work to assess the feasibility of bringing the species back to the UK is under way.
4. 🌴 Indonesia plans to fine palm oil companies and miners operating illegally in forests!
Identifying $8.5 billion in potential fines that the government could collect, the country’s forestry task force has increasingly cracked down on plantations and mines in forest areas. As a disturbance to the palm oil industry, the task force has already seized over 9.8 million acres or 4.1 million hectares of illegal plantations and mines — an area about the size of the Netherlands!
🔗 https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/indonesia-plans-fine-palm-oil-growers-miners-85-billion-forest-encroachment-2025-12-24/
5. 🏔️ A vast 133,000 hectares (328,000 acres) of Chilean Patagonia have been preserved after local fundraising!
Home to 11% of the last remaining alerce forests on Earth, the wild valley was purchased thanks to a successful grassroots campaign led by the NGO Puelo Patagonia, protecting the ecosystem from logging, damming, and development. Over 380 times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park and 800 times as big as London’s Regent’s Park, the area’s wildlife, waters, and flora (some among the world’s oldest trees!) are now conserved for generations to come! (This story is technically from December – but any good news is good news, right? 😅)
Exclusive: Ancient forests and turquoise rivers of the Cochamó Valley protected from logging, damming and development
