From the headlines, it looked like 2014 was a bad year, and much of the bad news concerned the planet itself. Both greenhouse gas concentrations and — according to preliminary numbers — global temperatures reached record highs. Former environment leader Australia seems to have reversed course. Illegal wildlife trade has killed record numbers of elephants, rhinos and other species while jeopardizing human security.

As any good doctor or engineer will tell you, we do have to talk about problems as the first step to finding solutions. Still, most of the news we hear seems to dwell on the bad. So was there any good news in 2014?

It turns out the year did bring some good news for the planet. The impacts of these individual achievements have been enormous. Still more important are the trends they represent.