Thread by @DrAlakbarov

Some good news stories you probably didn’t hear about last year:

* Rwanda became the first low income country to provide universal eye care to all of its citizens

* London fashion week will no longer use animal fur in its shows

* Ethiopia and Eritrea made peace following a 20-year conflict

* An international agreement banned commercial fishing in the Arctic

* The world's first electrified road opened in Sweden

* Global numbers of critically endangered mountain gorillas are now above 1,000

* 70% of the world's population is reducing their meat consumption, or ditching meat altogether

* In the UK, half of the cheapest deals are now green tariffs

* Pakistan’s new government pledged to plant 10bn trees over five years

* The EU banned bee-harming insecticides

* The Belize Great Barrier Reef was removed from the UNESCO list of threatened world heritage sites

* Colombia created the world's largest tropical rainforest national park

* In Germany, share of MPs with migrant backgrounds has risen from 3% to 9% in the last two elections.

* Ivory demand has dropped by almost half, and poaching rates are falling in places like Kenya.

* The population of wild tigers in Nepal was found to have nearly doubled in the last 9 years

* Deforestation in Indonesia fell by 60%, as a result of a ban on clearing peatlands

* The UN said that the ozone hole would be fully healed over the Arctic and the northern hemisphere by the 2030s, and in the rest of the world by 2060.

* In California, the world’s smallest fox (The Santa Cruz Island fox) was removed from the Endangered Species List.

* In 2018, 140 nations agreed to begin negotiations on a historic “Paris Agreement for the Ocean,” the first-ever international treaty to stop overfishing and protect life in the high seas.

* In Niger, local farmers have planted more than 200 million trees in the last 3 decades

* Mexico said its population of wild jaguars, the largest feline in the Americas, grew by 20% in the past eight years

* The Seychelles created a new 130,000 square kilometre marine reserve in the Indian Ocean

* Chile created nine marine reserves

* France revealed a sharp fall in daily smokers

* Cigarette use among US citizens dropped to its lowest level since 1965

* India registered a 22% decline in maternal deaths since 2013

* Ghana became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate trachoma

* The WHO revealed that teenage drinking has declined across Europe. The country with the largest decline? The UK

* Since 2010, global HIV/AIDS infection rates have fallen by 16% in adults and by 35% for children. Most countries are now on track to eliminate infections by 2030.

* Malaysia became the first country in the Western Pacific to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis

* South Africa, home to the world’s largest population of people living with HIV, revealed a 44% decline in new infections since 2012.

* In Kenya, worm-related diseases have fallen from 33.4% in 2012 to 3% today

* Russians are drinking and smoking less than at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union, with tobacco use down by 20% since 2009, and alcohol consumption down by 20% since 2012

* Tanzania revealed that in the last ten years, it has reduced the malaria death rate by 50% in adults and 53% in children

* The WHO certified Paraguay as having eliminated malaria, the first country in the Americas to be granted this status since Cuba in 1973.

* In the last two decades, FGM has fallen from 57.7% to 14.1% in north Africa, from 73.6% to 25.4% in west Africa, and from 71.4% to 8% in east Africa

* Morocco passed a landmark law that criminalises violence against women, and imposes harsh penalties on perpetrators

* New Zealand became the second country in the world (after the Philippines) to pass legislation granting victims of domestic violence 10 days paid leave

* Scotland became the first nation in the world to guarantee free sanitary products to all students

* Canada became the second country in the world to legalise marijuana

* Tunisia became the first Arab nation to pass a law giving women and men equal inheritance

* Nepal became the 54th country in the world, to pass a law banning corporal punishment for children

* Global suicide rates have dropped by 38% since 1994

* India continued the largest sanitation building spree of all time. More than 80 million toilets are estimated to have been built since 2014.

* The first time since electrical service was started (1882), less than a billion of the world’s population are left in darkness.

* Bangladesh reduced its child mortality rate by 78% since 1990

* Respiratory disease death rates in China have fallen by 70% since 1990

* The share of black men in poverty in the US fell from 41% in 1960 to 18% in 2018

* Repsol became the first major fossil fuels producer to say it would no longer be seeking new growth for oil and gas

* Ireland became the world’s first country to divest from fossil fuels

* Global deaths from state based conflicts have declined for the third year in a row

* Herat, Afghanistan’s deadliest province for landmines, was declared free of explosive devices. Nearly 80% of the country is now mine free.

* Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2012. Murders have decreased by half since then, more than any other nation

* The number of reported crimes in Germany has fallen by 10%, to the lowest level in 30 years.

* The European Parliament passed a full ban on single-use plastics, estimated to make up over 70% of marine litter.

* At least 32 countries around the world now have plastic bag bans in place — and nearly half are in Africa.

* Cancer deaths have dropped by 25% in the US since 1991, saving more than two million lives. Breast cancer deaths have fallen by 39%

* Leprosy is now easily treatable. The number of worldwide cases has dropped by 97% since 1985. The disease is now likely to eradicated by 2020.

* A trial found that, a tiny clip (Mitraclip) inserted in the heart of those with severe heart failure vastly reduced mortality rates and drastically improved patients’ quality of life.

* The world’s first totally plastic-free shopping aisle opened in a Netherlands supermarket

* Sweden looks set to meet its renewable energy targets for 2030 in 2018 – beating its own goal by 12 years

* A drug that can alleviate or cure coeliac symptoms could be available as early as 2021

* A supercolony of 1.5 million Adélie penguins was discovered near Antarctica

* Metallica has donated 250,000 Euros to a Romanian association building the country's first children's hospital.