Opinion | Amid the bad news of 2025, science cooperation has been a beacon of hope

Looking back on 2025, we may be justified in calling it an annus horribilis for the world. There seems to be no end to the bad news: the war in Ukraine, the destruction of Gaza, the terror attack in Australia and the significant economic and political setbacks faced by many nations in Asia and across the world.

All these paint a rather grim picture. However, there is more than a glimmer of hope on the horizon. International science cooperation has strengthened significantly this year, in spite of the seemingly worsening geopolitics.

In April, after three long years of intense negotiations, World Health Organization (WHO) member states adopted a historic agreement on better preparing the world for future pandemics. The agreement promises a stronger, more coordinated pandemic response by strengthening disease surveillance and improving more equitable, global access to vaccines and other drugs.

In a world that is constantly looking for new drugs because old antibiotics are growing ineffective amid increasing antimicrobial resistance, December witnessed two important breakthroughs. The US Food and Drug Administration approved two new drugs, zoliflodacin and gepotidacin, for use in treating uncomplicated urogenital gonorrhoea.

Gonorrhoea, a sexually transmitted disease affecting millions of people around the world, has developed resistance to nearly every antibiotic ever used against it. Some strains are now extensively drug-resistant, making the once easily curable bacterial disease a dangerous killer. According to WHO estimates, there were 82.4 million new infections among adults aged 15 to 49 years in 2020. This year’s breakthrough represents the first completely new treatment option in the last 30 years.

This has also been a red-letter year for renewable energy. The journal Science named the worldwide surge in solar and wind energy and battery technology its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. It noted how renewable energy has surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide and the particularly rapid adoption of these affordable technologies in Africa and South Asia.