Gavin Haines
Gavin Haines is an editor and reporter at Positive News, specialising in environmental reporting and solutions-focused journalism that tracks how people and policies drive progress across society. His coverage is distinguished by a consistent focus on what is working, curating concrete examples of climate, energy, health and social advances instead of dwelling on failure or abstract hope.
What went right: weekly progress roundups
A central strand of Haines’ work is a recurring series of weekly roundups under the banner “What went right this week,” where he selects and explains a handful of positive developments from around the world. Recent instalments have carried taglines spanning environment, energy, health, conservation, culture and society, signalling a broad brief that he filters through a progress lens. He uses this format to stitch together stories that might otherwise be isolated, giving readers a clear sense of momentum across multiple fields.
Within these roundups, Haines highlights specific environmental and climate-related milestones, such as electric vehicles outselling petrol cars in the UK against the backdrop of debates over zero-emissions mandates.
He picks out conservation stories like efforts to reconnect Europe’s rivers and profiles policy leadership in places described as “eco leader Estonia,” treating each as part of a wider pattern of ecological recovery and reform. Health breakthroughs, including personalised mRNA cancer jabs entering trials and being hailed as among the most exciting developments in modern cancer therapy, sit alongside these environmental stories, reinforcing his interest in systemic progress rather than single-issue wins.
At the end of each year, Haines extends the weekly concept into an annual synthesis, as in his feature on “What went right in 2024,” where he selects the top good news stories and revisits them with fuller context. That piece re-examines medical, environmental and social advances, turning the year’s reporting into a clear narrative about how change has unfolded over time.
Environment and solutions across infrastructure and policy
Although the weekly series is a cornerstone, Haines’ environmental reporting also appears in standalone features that link climate risk, infrastructure and public policy to practical solutions. His portfolio includes work on ideas such as “sponge cities” designed to reduce the risk of flooding disasters, showing his interest in built-environment responses to climate impacts.
He explores places characterised as cities “where the future has already arrived,” using them as case studies in how urban planning and innovation can address environmental and social challenges.
Haines also follows the politics and public sentiment around infrastructure, as in his coverage of how “people power” saved England’s railway ticket offices, framing transport decisions as climate, accessibility and community issues rather than administrative detail. In his weekly Positive News roundups, he returns to similar themes when covering clean energy transitions, urban air quality improvements and shifts in mobility such as the rise of electric vehicles.
Across these pieces, he treats environmental stories as questions of systems and behaviour, emphasising policies, technologies and civic action that show a route to improvement.
Travel, place and green journeys
Travel writing is another defining strand of Haines’ work, and he often approaches journeys through an environmental and cultural lens. At Positive News he has written about rail travel in Europe, including features on new train trips that offer fresh ways to explore the continent. On his own portfolio, he highlights recent pieces on plane-spotting hotspots, notable bed-and-breakfasts, unusual hotels described as the world’s “deepest,” and postcards from cities such as Paris and places dubbed the “nimby capital of England.”
These stories mix observation, reported detail and a sense of place, showing how people encounter landscapes, transport and urban change in their everyday travels.
Beyond pure travel, Haines’ broader feature work ranges from investigations and interviews to pieces on subjects as varied as psychedelics and new Icelandic religions, indicating a curiosity about how people seek meaning and experience in different settings. He also writes about psychological and experiential themes, such as “five ways to bring more awe into your life,” bringing a human dimension to his coverage of environment and movement. This combination of environmental awareness, cultural reporting and practical travel detail positions him as a writer who can connect green journeys and climate-conscious choices to the lived texture of places.
Constructive journalism and rebalancing the news
Haines explicitly aligns his work with solutions journalism and has described his specialism as environmental reporting and solutions-focused storytelling.
His role at Positive News includes editing and commissioning as well as writing, which gives him a hand in shaping the outlet’s wider focus on people and places driving progress in challenging times. In a feature arguing that “it’s time to break the bad news bias,” he addresses how traditional news cycles foreground crises and conflict, and makes the case for giving more space to stories of constructive change.
Across his portfolio, this philosophy is visible in the recurring emphasis on practical advances, from climate resilience measures and clean transport to medical innovation and civic campaigns. He tends to foreground actors and mechanisms - scientists, local communities, policymakers, entrepreneurs - rather than abstract trends, making progress tangible and attributable. For stories that touch on the environment, climate and social impact, Haines brings a combination of editorial discipline and narrative clarity that keeps the focus on real-world outcomes and credible pathways forward.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.