This year has been daunting for environmentalists, for reasons ranging from rising global temperatures and devastating extreme weather to largely underwhelming outcomes from climate negotiations. But even as sustainability professionals and activists are feeling the weight of the losses and odds stacked against them, most know that giving up on climate action and environmental protection is not an option.
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There are also still wins on the environmental front worth celebrating in 2024. While some may not have dominated the global discourse on climate like the COP29 summit, each was a material step forward in the fight against climate change. Some might offer hope that humanity and nature are not doomed as we sometimes think.
Here’s a recount of events this year that lifted our spirits and are helping us enter 2025 with optimism:
World court hears landmark climate case
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently presiding over what has been dubbed the world’s largest environmental court case on the legal obligations countries have towards global warming. Pacific island nation Vanuatu is leading the effort, saying the behaviour of some countries today has worsened climate change and threatened the existence of vulnerable nations.
Over 100 countries are making their cases and proceedings will continue until 12 December, before the court is expected to issue an “advisory opinion” next year. The ruling will not be legally binding but could form the basis of future lawsuits against heavily polluting countries. Such lawsuits, which have mostly been initiated by advocacy groups and individuals, have ballooned over the years, reaching a peak of over 250 in 2021, according to UK thinktank Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Vanuatu has long been rallying for support from other countries for this effort, although some including petrostate Saudi Arabia have said at the ICJ that any international obligations are already covered by existing UN programmes. Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate envoy, told the court that the proceedings “may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity”.
South Korea court raps national climate plan
Meanwhile, advocates in South Korea scored a landmark win, with the country’s constitutional court faulting the government over the lack of legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets in the coming two decades. This is the first time in Asia where a court has ruled parts of a national climate plan unconstitutional.
Policymakers will now have until early-2026 to come up with firmer decarbonisation targets for that period to better protect the rights of future generations. But the court rejected claims that South Korea’s near-term target, to slash planet-warming gases by 40 percent by 2030 from 2018 levels, was similarly insufficient.
The case against the government was filed by local environmental group Youth 4 Climate Action in 2020, and included several youths as plaintiffs. Advocates hope the ruling will set a precedent for similar cases in Asia, after similar wins in Germany and the United Kingdom.
New largest coral discovered
An oblong patch in the shallow waters off the Solomon Islands, visible from space, was thought to be just another boulder until a dive team decided to take a closer look in October. The structure, which measures roughly 32 by 34 metres (roughly the size of two basketbal courts), was found to contain billions of polyps, or identical coral-forming organisms. Together they make up a coral about three times larger than the current record holder.
A diver from National Geographic Pristine Seas measures the world’s largest coral colony in the SolomonIslands. Photo: Manu San Félix/ National Geographic Pristine Seas.
The team that made the discovery on a National Geographic conservation trip estimated the superorganism to be between 300 to 500 years old, and in excellent health. The finding comes on the heels of severe coral bleaching in the nearby Great Barrier Reef earlier this year, caused by particularly warm ocean waters. Scientists have said that corals will be virtually wiped out if global warming reaches 2°C, up from nearly 1.5°C today.
Experts hope the latest find shows that corals are more resilient than previously thought and will spur greater conservation efforts for something that is not yet a lost cause.
Thailand tiger numbers rebound
After years of population decline, tigers are clawing their way back to health in Thailand. Motion-trigger cameras snapped photos of 94 individual tigers in 2023 across a Thai forest range, up from under 60 in 2018 and even fewer in the years prior.
Increased government patrols against poachers since the 2000s was key to this recovery, said scientists who published their findings in September. Their long-term study was conducted in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex bordering Myanmar, an area where tigers are hunted for the illicit trade of their body parts for sale in China.
Tigers have lost large tracts of natural habitats in China and Southeast Asia in recent decades. The apex predator is believed to be locally extinct in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia are still home to small populations of the big cats.
Back in 2022, countries agreed to protect 30 per cent of the world’s natural areas by 2030 to stem biodiversity loss. Developing countries say they need much more money from richer states to contribute to the effort, but negotiations on this front have been slow.
Renewables power on
New green power capacity is expected to continue rising this year to over 650 gigawatts (GW), one-fifth higher than the record-breaking amount of 565GW in 2023. Over 95 per cent of this year’s new capacity will be solar and wind installations, a sizable majority of them in China, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts.
Growth has been boosted by both favourable government policies and the falling costs of solar and wind power. Together, the IEA thinks total clean energy capacity can increase 2.7 times by 2030 from 2022 levels – just shy of a goal to triple renewables, which countries committed to last year. Key roadblocks to clear include electricity grid upgrades, boosting finance, and speeding up the permitting process for new projects, it said.
The IEA has pushed hard for the world to adopt the pledge to triple renewables capacity by 2030 to some 11,000GW, saying that the goal ensures sufficient future energy demand can be met by clean energy to keep global warming in check. As it stands, while renewable capacity is growing fast, so is the use of fossil fuels, as more people become wealthier and consume more resources. Climate-induced extreme weather could further pile pressure on low-carbon power sources – for instance, droughts could require taking hydropower offline and heatwaves could drastically increase electricity demand for cooling.
Mexico picks a climate-science president
The re-election of climate sceptic Donald Trump grabbed headlines in recent weeks, adding to worries that those in power are turning away from tackling global warming. But the US’s southern neighbour Mexico charted a different path this year, picking environmental advocate and energy engineer Claudia Sheinbaum as its president in a landslide victory.
Claudia Sheinbaum during Mexico’s presidential elections in June 2024. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ EneasMx.
The 62-year-old, who was formerly a United Nations climate report author, campaigned on a promise to scale up renewables and take climate change more seriously than her long-time predecessor. Mexico is the only country among the G20 group of industrialised nations to not have a net-zero target. Some observers doubt if Sheinbaum, also Mexico’s first female president, can enact significant changes during her tenure given entrenched fossil fuel interests within senior leadership circles and her own middling record as the former Mexico City mayor.
Sheinbaum’s election adds to a mosaicked picture in the Americas, with climate disbelievers heading up Argentina and soon the US while proponents of climate action now lead Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Brazil will host the next global climate summit, COP30, in 2025.
Coal pioneer UK ditches pollutive fuel
The United Kingdom, the world’s first country to build a coal-fired power station for public utility, closed its last coal-fired power plant this year, marking a symbolic moment in the world’s shaky transition towards cleaner forms of energy. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station near the city of Nottingham, which shut for good in September, had a capacity of 2GW. The country’s first coal plant, used from 1882 to 1886, powered a central London generator that was 22,000 times smaller.
Coal is the most carbon-intensive form of fossil fuel and there have been many high-profile commitments in recent years to ditch it for renewables or natural gas. However, the abundance of coal and its low cost mean that many developing nations still rely on the dirty fuel to power their economic growth. Power stations are also on average younger in newly industrialising nations, so closing them early would cost more.
The UK is part of a consortium of wealthy nations and investors which have agreed to finance the swap-out of coal plants for renewables in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. Over US$40 billion has been pledged to these Just Energy Transition partnerships overall, although project development and funding have both been bugged by delays.
Ozone recovery better than expected
Few environmentalists have their attention on the gaping ozone hole at the Earth’s south pole today, what with runaway carbon dioxide and methane levels to worry about.
Fortunately, the ozone hole is recovering well. Scientists say refrigerant gasses causing the hole are dissipating from the air sooner than anticipated, after they were phased out in the 1990s. Some of these gases have an atmospheric shelf-life of hundreds of years, which had sparked initial fears of a drawn-out environmental catastrophe. The ozone layer blocks harmful radiation from the sun that can damage cells and cause cancer.
The ozone layer is still expected to take till the 2060s to recover to its original state but this year’s gap is the seventh smallest since recovery began in 1992 (the ozone hole shrinks and expands in an annual cycle; its maximum extent is usually gauged for measurements).
The ban on ozone-depleting industrial gases, through the Montreal Protocol in 1987, takes a similar form to the global climate agreements being pursued today, so its success inspires hope that such cooperation is still possible in the face of other greenhouse gas emissions that trigger global warming.
Humanist, ecological fiction win big
Beyond facts and figures, themes of planetary well-being and social justice have been increasingly recognised in the literary world. South Korean author Han Kang won the Nobel prize in literature this year for her novel The Vegetarian, while Orbital by British writer Samantha Harvey won the latest iteration of the prestigious Booker prize.
The Vegetarian, published 2007, lent a voice to the internal turmoils South Korean women face from patriarchy and harsh societal norms. Meanwhile, last year’s Orbital gives readers a peek into the thoughts of fictional astronauts on board the international space station – such as their initial despair at how human activity is ruining what looks like a pristine Earth from their portholes, and how their view slowly morphs from one of beauty to the sum of human wants and politicking.
These themes may well fit into the zeitgeist of 2024, as the awards affirm the legitimacy of social and environmental anxieties present in the authors’ work. Perhaps in doing so, they provide space for reflection, courage, hope and healing come 2025.
Did you enjoy these stories? Let us know what we should be writing about in 2025 by sending your comments to news@eco-business.com. This story is part of our Year in Review series.
