Good News! A Grandmother's Listening Ear, Faster Relief for Postpartum depression, A Push to Criminalize Ecocide and more

Reviving Forests After Wildfires

As a biology student at the University of Victoria, Bryce Jones took a summer job planting trees in B.C. and Alberta. Now an entrepreneur, he’s found a faster way to get the job done. In 2019, Jones co-founded the Toronto-based Flash Forest, which uses drones to help replant forests after wildfires.

The tech is more needed than ever, as climate change’s longer summers and rising temperatures dry forests out. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive on record. As of September, there were more than 6,000 recorded fires—a 21 per cent increase from the average over the last 10 years.

Staff on the ground equip the drones with the start-up’s proprietary seed pods, containing locally-sourced tree seed, minerals, nutrients and helpful bacteria and fungi. From the air, the pods are ejected over burned-out sites, so they can plant a biodiverse range of trees in target areas, including in remote spots.

The start-up has already planted 1.5 million trees and aims to hit 5.5 million by mid-2024—and 1 billion worldwide by 2030. (The company plans to expand into the United States this spring.) People often feel that there is little they can do to fight climate change, Jones says, “but you have more power than you think. We need to take this into our own hands.”

Iraq Eliminates Trachoma

Trachoma is no longer endemic in Iraq as of mid-2023, thanks to a national programme, established in 2012, that used screenings at clinics and schools to reduce transmission of the disease. Trachoma is a contagious bacterial infection, most common in young children. Complications from repeat infections, which often occur in crowded households, can cause irreversible blindness. It’s the top cause of preventable blindness around the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the WHO, 1.9 million people globally have a visual impairment due to trachoma. It remains a public health problem in 42 countries. Iraq is the 18th country to end trachoma endemicity; others include China, Morocco and Mexico.

From Waste To Art

Reducing waste requires some creativity. Just ask Kenya-based non-profit Ocean Sole, which is turning discarded flip-flops into colourful art. The non-profit employs dozens of people to collect flip-flops left along the country’s beaches and waterways. Then local artisans turn them into playful sculptures (think penguins, pineapples and giraffes), some of which are available for sale on the non-profit’s website.The group also provides meals, education and healthcare to its employees and their families. Meanwhile, 10 to 15 per cent of Ocean Sole’s revenue goes into national education programs, conservation efforts and beach cleanups. 

Climate Change Enters British Sign Language

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have added 200 new signs related to climate change and the environment to British Sign Language (BSL), including ‘greenhouse gases’, ‘smog’ and ‘carbon footprint’. The new terms are part of a larger project to build a BSL glossary for academic subjects like math and science. The glossary now has nearly 3,000 terms, most of which are new.

Before these signs were published in the glossary (which is available for free online) in mid-2023, BSL users had to spell out these terms letter by letter. Audrey Cameron, project coordinator, told the BBC that the goal is to empower deaf people to fully participate in conversations about climate change. And since BSL is a visual language, the signs also give communicators a deeper understanding of the concepts being conveyed, something that’s particularly useful for children.

A Grandmother’s Listening Ear

community Good mental health care is hard to find. A 2022 report from the World Health Organization found that, globally, most health and social systems do not provide the support people need. The situation is even more dire in low-income countries like Zimbabwe.

In 2006, Harare-based psychiatrist Dr Dixon Chibanda began training older women, known as ‘grandmothers’, to provide free basic talk therapy, often meeting with their clients on unintimi-dating park benches they call ‘friendship benches’.

“People feel more comfortable opening up with the grandmothers,” says Charmaine Chitiyo, programmes manager for Friendship Bench, which books these encounters. “It feels less formal.” Studies back up her observation: A 2016 trial published in JAMA showed that in Zimbabwe, the friendship-bench approach was more effective than professional care at alleviating the symptoms of conditions like depression and anxiety. After a series of one-on-one sessions, clients are invited to join an ongoing support group.

Having served roughly 4,00,000 people so far, Friendship Bench is expanding its reach, with branches already in Malawi, Zanzibar and New York City. “Our hope is to have a network of ‘grandmothers’ all over the globe,” says Chitiyo.

From Plant Waste to Fabric

Every year, up to 300 million trees are felled to make fabrics like rayon, made from the cellulose in wood pulp. However, it’s not just trees that contain cellulose: most other plants do, too. Knowing this, some companies are using plant-based waste to make rayon.

For instance, a Swedish company called Renewcell is selling a cellulose pulp called Circulose, produced from worn-out jeans and other discarded cotton garments. Fabrics made from this pulp are going into clothing sold by leading global brands like H&M and Levi’s.

Other companies are experimenting with producing fabrics from other types of plant-based waste, like fallen leaves and food scraps. All these approaches use far less energy and water than it takes to produce traditional rayon—and no trees need to be cut down, either.

A Push to Criminalize Ecocide

Ever since the Vietnam War, activists have decried ‘ecocide’—knowingly causing widespread or long-term environmental damage that is severe and clearly excessive compared to any social or economic benefits it may bring. Thirteen countries, most recently France in 2021, have criminalized ecocide or similar offences. Over a dozen others have shown an interest in making ecocide an international crime.Making ecocide a crime would threaten decision-makers with jail time, a much stronger incentive than fines or legal damages for halting practices such as trawling or taking careless risks that lead to oil spills. 

Faster Relief for PPD

Postpartum depression (PPD) affects an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of mothers. In rare cases, it can become life-threateningly severe. Thankfully, PPD is treatable with existing medications, but the relief takes time. Now, a pill that recently gained approval in the United States promises faster-acting relief.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of common antidepressants, are already prescribed for PPD. But they can take weeks to start taking effect, whereas the new medication, called Zurzuvae (zuranolone), can start helping in as few as three days. As the first oral medication made specifically for PPD, Zurzuvae represents a new approach that may eventually receive approval outside of the US.