Here we are again. March is coming to an end and we’re almost at Easter. More importantly, we’re almost at Eurovision. No one can feel sad when Eurovision exists.

Anyway, if you’re new here: Monthly Good News is a series in which we wrap up as much good news from the month as I can find before I run out of steam. This month’s list is long. And like always, hyperlinked, so you can go read more about these really cool and excellent things and bring more joy to your life.

Because the world doesn’t suck. You may think it does, but it doesn’t. If people were terrible and nothing was going to get better, Brendan Fraser wouldn’t have won an Oscar at the Academy Awards, now would he?

So sit back, relax, get yourself a drink and maybe your favourite blanket, and feel a little better about the world you live in.

• For the first time, the proportion of women in boardroom roles at listed British firms has risen above 40%
• A record number of women launched a business in the UK last year
• A report forecast solar to be the world’s leading source of electricity by 2027
• A river in Lewes, England, could be the country’s first to be granted the legal right to good health
• Nokia launches a smartphone with entirely replaceable and fixable parts
• A report says that cyclists now outnumber motorists at peak times in central London
• A historic pledge to safeguard the world’s oceans has been agreed by nearly 200 UN member states that will make 30% of the oceans outside national boundaries into protected waters
• The annual Our Ocean Conference also raised $20 billion for expanding marine protection and improving biodiversity corridors
• NASA appoints its first female science chief
• UK coal demand fell during 2022 to its lowest level in nearly three centuries
• UK government announces a £600m school sports package to level the playing field for girls
• American history was made in the new $6.3bn (£5.3bn) clean-up package announced by the US government, their largest investment in industrial decarbonisation yet
• In Australia, Scientists have uncovered a ‘natural battery’ enzyme that could prove to be the holy grail of clean energy: electricity from thin air
• The US government agrees to reinstate restrictions on logging and road building in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest.
• Albania gets Europe’s first wild river national park
• Dancing became a form of protest in Iran; an act deemed illegal in public by the oppressive state
• South Korean protesters succeed in making government rethink plans to extend the maximum hours in the work week to 69 hours
• Meanwhile, the UK’s pilot of the 4-day work week is a hit
• Excess heat from a data centre used to heat a swimming pool in Devon, England
• During the 2022/23 winter, renewables generated more electricity than gas in the UK
• $120 million has been donated to help make steel production more eco-friendly
• Switzerland are rolling out solar panels on the unused space down the centre of train tracks; if they work, they will be able to power millions of homes
• New floating wind turbine prototype which is more compatible with the sea and has a lower carbon footprint than previous models produced its first KWh of energy
• Ecosia, the eco-friendly search engine, has now planted more than 170 million trees since its founding in 2009. The search engine uses ad revenue to plant trees, is transparent with their financials and tree-planting receipts, and doesn’t sell users’ data to trackers or advertisers.
• 600-acre abandoned airport in Athens, Greece, is being turned into a thriving, coastal green space.
• 2023’s World Happiness Report has noted a global “surge in benevolence”
• A study has revealed that since Scotland instated a minimum price on alcohol, there has been a 13% reduction in alcohol-related deaths
• A study by Kings College London has discovered that the UK is one of the most socially progressive nations in the world

There! Don’t you feel better now? Don’t you feel a little calmer? A little less like the world is an inherently terrible place where only bad things happen?

Yeah. That’s what I thought. Also, beavers are probably going to be in London by 2030 because of how many we have in Kent. Just picture a little beaver going sightseeing, walking beside the River Thames, visiting the London Eye. You can’t feel negative emotions while thinking about beavers in the big city.

By Bethany Climpson, Sustainability Engagement Assistant