Have you ever heard directly from anyone who actually lives in Gaza? In our screen-glazed world most of us have spent the last few years forming opinions about what’s happening there based on the reporting and explanations of other people, letting pixels, posts and headlines handle the heuristics. No judgement, that’s just how it is, it’s how we’ve all been consuming the news. Very few of us have the time, inclination or opportunity to speak to real people on the ground.
So when we were introduced to Tala and Farah Mousa, two teenage sisters from Gaza, we knew straight away we wanted to get them onto the podcast. They’ve started a project called Build Hope, turning the rubble they’re surrounded by into reusable bricks to help rebuild their community. Maybe you’ve got some strong feelings about who’s responsible for all that rubble, but after speaking to them, it was obvious they don’t get that luxury. They just have to survive, and try fix what’s broken.
You can listen to the episode over here, wherever you get your podcasts.
Build Hope is our next charity partner too.
Next week we are sending Tala and Farah $20,000. That’s possible because of you, our paying members (thank you). The money will go directly to them, to their parents’ bank account, no facilitation fees, no middlemen, and will double a donation from the Earth Prize.
If you’d like to add to our donation you can do so right here. It’s tax deductible if you’re in the United States and Australia.
Ok let’s get into it.
Two great green walls are pushing deserts back on opposite sides of the world.
In 1978, China started its Three-North Shelterbelt Program to hold back the expansion of the Gobi desert. In 1981, tree planting was made a legal civic duty (right up there with paying taxes) and work units, schools and factories set about organising mass tree planting days. What got planted? Willow and poplar. Fast-growing, poorly suited to the climate, water hungry. Local groundwater got drawn down. Nearby crops suffered. Pests destroyed the saplings. The trees that were planted got counted while survival rates were ignored; when that wasn’t enough, the numbers were faked.
Failure, right? Except, people learned. Mixed plots replaced monocultures with more suitable, climate-adapted trees and the government started paying local farmers to keep plantings in arid areas alive. The now-famous straw checkerboard technique was widely adopted, and the deserts started being pushed back. Fast forward to today, and China’s desertified land has shrunk by around 10% since 2000, and severely desertified lands have decreased by more than 40%. A cumulative 320,000 km² has been restored, equivalent to the size of Italy. It’s the greatest land restoration project of all time and we’re still waiting to see someone write about it in the New York Times.
In 2007, the African Union announced that Africa would build a Great Green Wall to hold back the Sahara. Predictable failures soon after. Unsuitable trees planted in the wrong places, local residents unconsulted, lots of publicity about plantings with no one invested in the saplings’ ultimate survival. Years later, satellite images show sparse or no cover in places where lots of trees were planted. The same verdict: the project has been an abject failure.
Except, maybe not.
Like in China, people have been learning, mostly smallholders who’ve been doing the ▶work on the ground. Niger’s farmers have shown, since the 1980s, that many degraded landscapes are less dead than they look. Root systems from felled trees survive underground: prune the shoots that come up, protect them from grazing, and you get an ‘underground forest’ back at very little cost. Lessons are being exchanged with China, indigenous zaï pits and demi-lunes are catching scarce rainwater, tree species are being picked that provide shade as well as food or fodder, and farmers getting land tenure.
What’s happening now isn’t as photogenic as a tree-planting day, but slowly, in its own way, it appears to be working.
Syria is also planting trees, restoring forest cover lost to war and wildfire, and so far they’ve avoided Africa and China’s biggest early mistakes: they’re replanting mostly native, climate-adapted trees that locals like and find useful (bay laurel, carob, olive, stone pine), and are trying to tackle the fuel poverty that drove much of the illegal logging in the first place - permitting legal wood harvesting and providing locals with subsidised firewood from forest thinning.
There are ways the program could be stronger: actual land tenure, long-term plans to protect new plantings, stronger measures against fuel poverty. And forest fires are still burning through the same zones being replanted. Still, Syria’s stepping in the right direction, and starting with native species and local buy-in is a better starting point than either of the bigger green walls managed. NoonPost / KaramShaar / TRT
The world is closing in on trachoma, the leading infectious cause of blindness. Seven more countries have eliminated it in the past year, including Egypt, Australia and El Salvador, taking the total to 32. The number of people needing antibiotics and hygiene programmes has halved in a decade, from 190 million in 2016 to 92 million in 2026, and the associated painful, blinding eyelid deformity has fallen from 2.8 million cases to 1.2 million. WHO
👆 29 countries left to go, including Ethiopia, which carries two-thirds of the remaining burden.
The best-selling car of all time is going electric. The Toyota Corolla (57 million sold in 60 years, more than any car in history) will launch on a new platform built for battery power. A fortnight ago we shared that Toyota’s chair, Akio Toyoda, felt lonely defending the combustion engine. He now admits to “a considerable sense of crisis” as Chinese makers and Tesla pull ahead. Electrek
Thailand is opening up its electricity market, which is good news for clean energy. New rules let businesses buy renewable power directly from generators through third-party grid access, add a 1,500 MW community-solar programme and cut household tariffs. It’s the first slice of a US$6 billion transition plan covering rooftop solar and a switch to electric buses, tuk-tuks and delivery vans. Reuters
**The world’s first giant anteater reintroduction appears to be succeeding: **more than 200 giant anteaters now live free in Argentina’s Iberá wetlands, from a stock of 110 orphaned animals that Rewilding Argentina began releasing in 2007. By the mid-20th century, giant anteaters, locally called yurumí, had disappeared from the region, due to poaching, fires and habitat destruction: the reintroduced anteaters from the 2000s are now self-sustaining and have started attracting wildlife tourists. Noticias
**Everything is terrible and the worst and also the Amazon rainforest just saw its lowest fire year on record, and deforestation has hit a ten-year low. **MapBiomas counted 31,000 km² burned in 2025, down from 158,000 km² in 2024 and the smallest area since records began in 1985. Meanwhile, satellite data from the space agency INPE shows only 1,295 km² cleared in the first half of 2026, a 38% drop year-on-year. BBC / Mongabay
A 258-spider race found the world’s fastest spider. The jungle huntsman spider of Queensland, Australia, is officially the world’s fastest spider, sprinting 3.59 metres per second, faster than the average human jogger. A mixed German-English team of researchers tested 258 spider species by making them run across a gridded surface while cameras clocked them. Some ran willingly. Others required some gentle coaxing with a paintbrush. Tarantulas, notoriously lazy, required compressed air. Hunting spiders ran faster than web-building spiders, and longer legs generally meant faster running, but there were exceptions: the orange goblin spider, which weighs 0.1 milligrams, moves at over 20 centimetres per second. VICE
Hungarian state television stopped broadcasting, and then apologised for lying. On the 8th of July 2026, M1 and the Kossuth radio station suspended news output as the government began dismantling the propaganda apparatus that Viktor Orbán built over 16 years. The screen carried a plain white-on-black message:
Public media must not lie. We apologise for having done exactly that for many years! Public media is now being transformed so that in future it will be independent and credible. News service is temporarily suspended. Stay with us!
Africa is smashing all the solar records. The continent installed more grid-connected solar in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025, and with projects under construction the year could finish at triple the previous record. That’s just official figures too - they don’t account for all the panels going up on roofs, mines and farms. African Energy
**Offshore wind is now competitive with fossil gas and cheaper than new coal, **according to an analysis of 247 projects across 18 countries. New projects in 2026 are landing at US$40–50 per MWh, as turbines scale to 18MW and purpose-built installation ships drive costs down. CleanTechnica
Micronesia’s scattered islands are a challenge to internet providers, and only 2% of the country was online in 2014. Now that number’s hit nearly 40%, thanks to 1,500 kilometres of fibre-optic cables laid and laws that broke a stifling telecom monopoly. Entry-level fixed broadband prices have dropped by 99%, from $65 to $0.78 per Mbps per month, while mobile broadband prices fell by 96%, from $705 to $30 per Mbps per month. World Bank
Global hunger fell for a third year running in 2025. The United Nations puts 645 million people below the hunger line, 7.8% of the world, down from 8.6% in 2022 and 14 million fewer than in 2024. Asia and Latin America drove the gains; Africa, home to 309 million hungry people, is only just beginning to stabilise. WFP
The work that lies ahead over the years to 2030 is immense. However, a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building.
The Philippines just made school meals universal and free for its youngest pupils. President Marcos launched a nationwide expansion covering every kindergarten and Grade 1 learner, plus undernourished children up to Grade 6, with 26 billion pesos committed for at least 180 school days. A quarter of Filipino under-fives are stunted. Produce will be bought from local farmers under a new agriculture-education agreement.
Endometriosis takes nine years to diagnose. That’s about to change. NICE has approved two tests for the NHS in England and Wales: a saliva test reading microRNA markers, and a gut-sensor test returning results in 45 minutes, sparing women the keyhole surgery currently needed to confirm a disease affecting one in ten. The wider field is moving the same way, with menstrual blood, long discarded as waste, now yielding endometriosis biomarker panels and an FDA-cleared pad that tracks diabetes. The Guardian / Reasons to be Cheerful
The first new tuberculosis vaccine in a century is heading for mass production. India’s Serum Institute will manufacture M72/AS01E under an agreement with the Gates Medical Research Institute, investing more than $100 million ahead of approval. TB still kills 1.23 million people a year. WHO estimates a vaccine with this efficacy profile could prevent 76 million cases and save 8.5 million lives over 25 years. Reuters
Australia is winning two prevention fights at once. Daily smoking has fallen to a record low of 5.6% of people aged over 14, down from 8.3% in 2022–23 and within sight of the 5% national target. Cervical cancer incidence hit its lowest recorded rate, and by 2035 is projected to fall to 4.2 cases per 100,000, effectively elimination. The caveat: incidence among women aged 30–44 rose 41% over two decades. AIHW / Australasian Leisure
Graduation rates at America’s tribal schools have climbed from half to four-fifths. Across the 183 Bureau of Indian Education schools, on-time graduation rose from just over 50% in 2015 to a record 79% in 2025. Some of that is better counting, since schools used to log transfers as dropouts. But the rest is real, driven by trade and career training: at Chief Leschi in Washington, rates went from 53% to 87% after the school stopped treating the trades as second best. AP
Uganda has started the countdown to the end of its Ebola outbreak. The last confirmed patient tested negative twice and was discharged on 16 July, starting the 42-day clock. The outbreak, declared on 15 May, infected 20 people and killed two, wi…
