From progress for gender equality in Latin America, to anti-poaching efforts in Africa, to how video games are helping save the planet, this is this week’s edition of 5 Good News in 5 Minutes:

1. Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council (Consejo Coordinador Empresarial) signs six commitments to promote gender equality

On Wednesday, Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council (CCE for its name in Spanish) promised to promote, institutionalize, and verify the necessary actions to establish gender equality in its businesses and to also increase women’s participation in decision making.

Through the UN Women’s campaign HeForShe, the CCE signed six different pledges that will help the organization pursue a future where women play a larger role in Mexico’s economy. According to national statistics, only 45% of women who worked participated in the economic sector, as opposed to 80% of men.

The actions that the CCE is aiming to promote can be divided into six different commitments:

• Promote women’s participation in the working bodies and mechanisms of businesses;
• Advance in the mainstreaming of gender equality;
• Create awareness about gender equality and inclusion and its positive impact on organizational culture;
• Promote the use and keeping of self-diagnostic implements within the CCE;
• Take the necessary steps to eradicate gender violence in the workplace;
• Support improvements in corporate inclusion policies in Mexico.

Source: Forbes México

2. Kenya’s elephant numbers have more than doubled in the last 30 years

According to Kenya’s tourism minister Najib Balala, elephant numbers in the country have more than doubled between 1989 and 2018, largely thanks to anti-poaching efforts in the East African nation.

In 1989, Kenya had around 16,000 elephants, a number that rose to over 34,000 by 2018. Balala told reporters that they “have managed to tame poaching in this country.” As of today, the number of elephants poached in Kenya in 2020 stands at 7, down from 34 in 2019 and 80 in 2018. In past years, poaching had surged in Kenya and neighboring countries on account of gangs killing elephants and rhinos to meet Asian demand for ivory and horns.

On top of being inhumane and illegal, poaching was also negatively affecting tourism, a major foreign exchange earner for Kenya. Since 2016, the government has set tougher penalties, including longer jail sentences and bigger fines for anyone convicted of poaching or trafficking wildlife trophies.

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

3. UN Environment Programme (UNEP) uses video games to save the planet

In 2019, the UNEP launched an initiative titled Playing for the Planet Alliance, whose objective is to “harness the power of gaming to encourage action on climate change”, reaching over 970 million players since. Game companies that choose to join the alliance make varying commitments, from reducing their emissions to raising awareness about environmental troubles through their games.

The alliance currently has 25 members. Earlier this year, 11 mobile game companies competed to introduce a sustainable element to one of their games in a Green Game Jam hosted by Playing for the Planet. Companies partnering with the UNEP have added dozens of features to their games, such as alterations to story lines so they include a climate factor, asking gamers to make personal commitments like meatless Mondays or biking to work, pledges that have gamers switch from incandescent lightbulbs to LEDs, and much more.

Around 2.6 billion people play video games globally, and the video game industry makes about $140 billion in yearly revenues, much more than Hollywood, Bollywood, and music sales combined. The combined amount of people who watched others play video games on YouTube or Twitch in 2017 is more than the combined audience of HBO, Netflix, and ESPN. The UNEP is looking for ways to channel a fraction of this attention and revenue towards the planet, creating a groundbreaking impact on the real world.

Source: United Nations Environmental Programme

4. Cameroon shuts down logging plans that threatened rare apes

A government decree signed in July would have allowed timber extraction across 264 square miles (nearly half) of Cameroon’s Ebo forest, however the latest decree completely overturned these logging plans. Without providing a specific reason, the office of Cameroon’s Prime Minister Joseph Ngute said that President Paul Biya had instructed him to reverse the order; Biya also delayed plans to reclassify 65,000 hectares of Ebo, a move that would have opened up the area to loggers.

Cameroon’s Ebo forest is home to a small-scale population of gorillas that could possibly be a new subspecies, to tool-wielding chimpanzees known for cracking nuts, and to the endangered, cat-sized Goliath Frog. Ebo is also the ancestral home of over 40 local communities.

Greenpeace Africa, conservationists, researchers, and local groups urged the Cameroonian government on numerous occasions to suspend logging plans in Ebo. Greenpeace Africa has said that “the fate of Ebo forest – the communities dependent on it and the wildlife that live in it – still remains unclear.”

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

5. New study offers hope for improvement in breast cancer treatment

The British Medical Journal recently published a positive new study on breast cancer treatments; the study observed and documented the progress of 2,298 women with early-stage breast cancer in order to monitor the effectiveness of certain treatments.

According to this analysis, women who have breast cancer and receive a single dose of radiotherapy immediately after surgery have the same benefits as patients who endure weeks of draining treatment.

After having their lump removed, those who took part in the study received a single shot of targeted intraoperative radiotherapy, a treatment that is increasingly being used to combat breast cancer. 8 out of 10 women who got this shot didn’t need further radiotherapy, freeing them from weeks of exhaustive treatment in the hospital.

Source: British Medical Journal

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