The most encouraging environmental trends of 2024

Let’s face it, [environmental] news these days is incredibly depressing. The good news highlights that tend to pop up around this time of year are generally very small-scale, localized success stories, such as a slowdown in deforestation or a tiny increase in the population of an endangered species in a particular area, or a reduction in a country’s coal use.

These steps are certainly worth celebrating, but they seem pretty insignificant when considering the broader picture. For example, biodiversity loss is still accelerating, and global greenhouse gas emissions are still reaching new highs every year. Even coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, is still reaching record-level usage on a global scale. While deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest rate since 2018 thanks to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking over the presidency in 2022 in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro’s disastrous legacy, forest loss is up in many other parts of the world, and remains at a worryingly high level globally.

Nevertheless, even though most environmental success stories are still just drops in an ocean of devastating long-term trends, there are a few big positive developments that are globally significant and seemingly here to stay. Let’s take a look at the most encouraging environmental trends of 2024.

1) The growth in renewable energy

The increasing use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar is widely seen as unstoppable due to their improving cost-effectiveness. According to the Energy Institute, renewables made up 14.6 percent of total primary energy consumption in 2023, which is 0.4 percent higher than the previous year. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global renewable energy capacity will grow 2.7-fold by 2030 compared with its 2022 level, getting close to the COP28 goal of tripling it within that timeframe.

China is expected to account for 60 percent of this green energy expansion, but the country is by no means a green poster child — over the past decade, China was responsible for more than 90 percent of the global growth in coal demand and around two-thirds of the growth in global oil demand. Indeed, while global renewable energy demand is increasing, it is still being outpaced by the growth in fossil fuel demand. Another important caveat is that renewable energy does not come without cost to the environment — these include destructive mining operations for minerals used in batteries, such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt.

To avert catastrophic climate change, however, we absolutely need to accelerate the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure. Ideally, this must go hand-in-hand with a transition to more sustainable economic systems so that gains from reduced fossil fuel use do not get canceled out by consumption growth.

2) Increasing international cooperation

This year saw several major international environmental conferences, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) COP29 in Azerbaijan, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (UN CBD) COP16 in Colombia, and two meetings by the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, in Canada and South Korea, intended to finalize a global treaty to end plastic pollution.

While none of these conferences secured the required commitments and action to avoid dangerous climate change, halt biodiversity loss, or end plastic pollution, they helped move the needle in the right direction and set the stage for further important meetings.

Even though kicking the can down the road is not the ideal outcome, the fact that close to 200 vastly different nations are now taking these issues seriously enough to gather every year for lengthy and often grueling negotiations offers a ray of hope. The main challenge is now to convince the most resistant delegations (usually major oil-producing countries) that ensuring a livable future for humanity is more important than short-term profits.

3) Increasing protected areas

Governments are setting aside more protected areas. In December 2022, at the UN CBD’s COP15, nations agreed to protect 30 percent of land and sea areas by 2030. A joint report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published this October reveals that 17.6 percent of land and 8.4 percent of the ocean are now within documented protected and conserved areas — an increase of under 0.5 percent for each realm since 2020, equating to more than twice the size of Colombia.

It is great that protected areas are increasing, but this expansion is far off track to meet the “30-by-30” goal. The report also points out that many areas that should be conservation priorities currently do not fall within any protections, and that there is a lack of data on how effectively existing protected areas are managed.

4) Declining fertility rates

Arguably the most significantly beneficial long-term trend is the slowdown of global population growth driven by declining fertility rates (the average number of births per woman). Population and consumption growth are the root drivers of all our environmental problems. With consumption rates still increasing rapidly, largely due to decreasing poverty in developing countries, adding fewer people to our overburdened planet is essential (alongside slashing overconsumption in high-income nations).

Even better, the drop in fertility rates is itself driven by the fact that more women are gaining agency over their bodies and lives. When women can access modern contraception and education, they tend to choose smaller families. Still, progress on gender equality is nowhere near fast enough, and more than 250 million women and counting have an unmet need for modern family planning. As a result, girls and women around the world continue to suffer, and some areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, still have very high fertility rates.

The latest UN population projections forecast a global population peak of 10.3 billion in 2084 — around two billion more people than there are today. This is especially concerning in light of the fastest growing areas also experiencing the worst impacts of the climate crisis. We need to do a lot more to accelerate the hugely positive declining fertility trend, starting by enabling more women and girls to access education and the full spectrum of reproductive health services.

What’s next for 2025?

2025 will not kick off in the way we would have wished in light of the disastrous incoming US presidential administration, but Population Connection will continue our fight for a more sustainable future. The four trends outlined in this blog post give us hope that a better world is within reach if we just mobilize enough support. If you aren’t a member yet, please consider joining us today. Not only will you help us continue our fight, you will also support our amazing Global Partners around the world who are working on the ground to improve access to family planning, empower women and girls, and protect nature.