Global temperatures rose and extreme weather ramped up, but there were also some significant breakthroughs for the climate this year. Here are seven quiet wins that may have gone under your radar in 2024.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It’s been another tough year for the climate and nature. From\u00a0the 1.5C threshold set to be breached for a full year<\/a>\u00a0for the first time, to the\u00a0disappointment of vulnerable nations<\/a>\u00a0at this year’s UN climate summit, it can feel like the challenge is overwhelming. Then there’s the extreme weather increasingly impacting both\u00a0poor nations<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0rich countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But this year also saw some extraordinary breakthroughs for climate and nature. In case you missed them, we have rounded up some of the biggest wins for our planet from the past year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The end of coal in the UK\u2026<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The UK closed its\u00a0last coal-fired power plant in<\/a>\u00a02024. It was a symbolic moment as the UK was the first country in the world to use coal for public power generation and the fossil fuel was the lifeblood of the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On 30 September, the turbines at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in Nottinghamshire fell silent and\u00a0its chimneys stopped belching out fumes<\/a>. The site will now undergo\u00a0a two-year decommissioning and demolition<\/a>\u00a0process. It is unclear what the site will become after that, but one proposal is to turn it into a battery storage site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This has already been done in West Yorkshire, at the decommissioned power plant Ferrybridge C, which has a storage capacity of 150MW, enough to power 250,000 homes. As countries aim to rapidly decarbonise their economies, many former fossil fuel power plants are proving to be promising sites for industrial-scale batteries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Read more about the UK coal plant that became a giant battery in\u00a0this story by Michael Marshall<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2026and a global surge in green power<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Renewable energy sources\u00a0are growing rapidly around the world<\/a>. In the US,\u00a0wind energy generation hit a record in April<\/a>, exceeding coal-fired generation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the world to add 5,500 GW of renewable energy capacity between now and 2030 and to grow\u00a0global renewable capacity 2.7 times<\/a>\u00a0compared to 2022, slightly falling short of a UN goal to triple capacity by 2030. By the end of this decade, renewable energy sources are set to meet almost half of all electricity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The lion’s share of this growth comes from just one country: China. By 2030, China is forecast to make up at least half of the world’s cumulative renewable electricity capacity, according to the IEA. Read about China’s “bullet<\/a>\u00a0train for power” designed to cope with this growing renewable capacity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA,\u00a0noted at a press conference<\/a>\u00a0that the world’s “massive growth in renewables” was mainly driven by economics rather than government policies, as renewables \u2013 especially solar \u2013 were the cheapest option in almost every country in the world. The major expansion was a “beautiful story”, he said, which he could sum up in two words: “China” and “solar”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The rivers, mountains, waves and whales given legal personhood<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Back in 2021, the Ecuadorian government issued a landmark ruling stating that mining in its Los Cedros cloud forest violated the rights of nature. Another ruling in Ecuador stated that\u00a0pollution had violated the rights of the Mach\u00e1ngara River<\/a>\u00a0that runs through the capital, Quito.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This year, a report was published which found that such rulings can indeed\u00a0help protect endangered ecosystems<\/a>. Read more about Los Cedros legal personhood in\u00a0this article by Becca Warner<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beyond Ecuador, a growing number of natural features and spaces were granted legal personhood in 2024. In New Zealand, the peaks of Egmont National Park \u2013 renamed Te Papakura o Taranaki \u2013 were recognised as\u00a0ancestral mountains and jointly became a legal person<\/a>, known as Te K\u0101hui Tupua.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Brazil, part of the ocean was given legal personhood \u2013 with the coastal city of Linhares recognising its waves as living beings, granting them the right to existence, regeneration and restoration<\/a>. Meanwhile, a new treaty formed by Pacific Indigenous leaders saw\u00a0whales and dolphins officially recognised as<\/a>\u00a0“legal persons”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “A case filed to protect whales from cross-ocean shipping may rely on an individual claiming to be harmed because her ability to whale watch has been diminished,” says Jacqueline Gallant, a lawyer working in climate change, biodiversity and rights. “If whales themselves were recognised as legal subjects, the case could more accurately focus on the harms to the whales themselves as opposed to the individual claiming an ancillary harm in order for the court to hear the claim.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gallant, who works for the Earth Rights Research and Action programme at New York University School of Law, says they are pushing the boundaries of legal imagination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Legal personhood provides the understanding that nature and living non-human beings should be understood as subjects [as opposed to objects] \u2013 with intrinsic value and interests and needs of their own,” she says.<\/p>\n New ocean protections for the Azores<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The North Atlantic saw a new marine protected area (MPA) announced by the Azores. When established, it will be the largest in the region, spanning 30% of the sea around the Portuguese archipelago. Half of the 111,000 sq miles (287,000 sq km) protected area will be “fully protected”, with no fishing or other natural resource extraction, according to the initiative behind the MPA. The other half will be “highly protected”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The area contains<\/a>\u00a0nine hydrothermal vents, 28 species of marine mammals and 560 species of fish, among many others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n MPAs can be highly effective in protecting biodiversity if their restrictions are adequately enforced. Overall, just 2.8% of the world’s oceans are effectively protected and only 8.3% are conserved, according to a report by\u00a0Bloomberg Philanthropies Ocean Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Read about\u00a0how MPAs and other large-scale protections can boost biodiversity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Amazon deforestation reaches nine-year low<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to a nine-year low in 2024, falling by more than 30% in the 12 months to July, according to\u00a0data released by Brazil’s national space research institute<\/a>, INPE. Roughly 2,428 sq miles (6,288 sq km) of the rainforest were destroyed, an area larger than the size of the US state of Delaware. While this area is still vast, it is the lowest annual loss since 2015. Deforestation fell despite the fact that\u00a0fires in the Brazilian Amazon increased almost 18-fold<\/a>\u00a0during the same time period following\u00a0a historic drought<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The development comes almost two years after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office and pledged to end deforestation by 2030<\/a>\u00a0and crack down on illegal logging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Conservation really can make a difference to biodiversity<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A major review of conservation initiatives this year found that more often than not\u00a0they are effective in slowing or reversing biodiversity loss<\/a>. \u00a0The scientists reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures across the world, including several historic trials, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases.<\/p>\n One example of this is the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, which\u00a0worked in Kazakhstan<\/a>\u00a0with local partners and other international organisations to save the critically endangered Saiga Antelope in the Golden Steppe grassland from extinction. The project used careful, science-based monitoring, tagging and habitat protection and restoration to ensure the best recovery for the Saiga Antelope, which numbered just 20,000 in 2003. Today, 2.86 million of the antelope roam the Golden Steppe, and it has been moved from “critically endangered” to “near threatened” status on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indigenous-led efforts replenish skies and rivers<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In California, wildlife has benefited from decades-long drives by the Native American Yurok Tribe to replenish animals on tribal territories. In 2024, this culminated in salmon returning to the Klamath River.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After a 100-year hiatus, the fish were spotted in Oregon’s Klamath River basin, following an historic dam removal<\/a>\u00a0further downstream in the California stretch of the Klamath. In August, the final of four dams were removed \u2013 in what was America’s biggest dam removal project \u2013 following pressure from environmentalists and tribes. Read about\u00a0the return of salmon to the river in Lucy Sherriff’s story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tribal members expected salmon to take months to return to the upper stretches of the river, as their numbers had been decimated by poor river health caused by the dam blocking natural water flow. But in October biologists sighted the fish in Oregon tributaries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “What’s surprising is the sheer number of fish that are back, and the geographic range,” said Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe. “I couldn’t believe they’d been spotted in Oregon. It was incredible news to hear \u2013 it was mind boggling. When I heard, I was like ‘wait, already?!’. They’ve exceeded any expectations anyone had.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/p0kbxwn0.jpg-1024x576.webp\")
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