Ideas from the speakers
There is no doubt that climate change and similar systems issues are long-term challenges that must be addressed by means of an intergenerational approach. The speakers on this panel spanned not only a variety of disciplines and roles within the educational system, but also worked across generations, enabling a fruitful discussion on the value of education that is not only interdisciplinary, but also intergenerational.
Traditional education involves educational inputs and teaching and expects outputs from students, while the focus of planetary health education is more long-term and aims to ensure schools prepare the next generation to lead the transition. One speaker kicked off the discussion with a novel perspective, considering education in economic terms, in which it can be classified as a scarce good. Economists tend to think about goods in terms of who benefits, with private benefits going directly to the individual involved and external benefits to broader society. The current system prioritises the private benefit, but tends to ignore that strong education results in broader societal benefits. The speaker highlighted their organisation’s interest in addressing what they describe to be this ‘market failure’ by focusing on understanding how learning actually happens and working on improving collective capacity for planetary health education. A current model described involves collecting successful solutions through a global open call and disseminating these through a broader network. Among the learnings from conducting such an initiative, one speaker mentioned the challenge that more than half of education-related organisations are non-profits and a significant fraction of submitted solutions originated from government entities. This in and of itself may not seem like a challenge, but the speaker noted that public entities tend historically to be less capable of innovation, and given that sales-based models consisted of only 3% of submissions, there is an organisational concern that current options for planetary health education lean too significantly on grant and philanthropic funding. They thus argued that there is a need for a business case for systems thinking and planetary health education in order to make it broader-reaching and more impactful.
Another speaker shared insights into how embedding planetary health education can look in educational institutions and spoke about an alliance spreading planetary youth through regional hubs with education-related priorities. A key point was that the field is moving from discrete courses to educational ecosystems, embedding planetary health within existing courses and providing resources to incorporate the concepts deemed important into a wide variety of courses, especially those not directly related to climate or planetary health. The larger goal of this initiative involves catalysing solutions through growing community and developing open toolkits and shared textbooks for broader use. The speaker emphasised that, given our global context today, building an understanding of planetary health must be at the forefront of everyone’s thinking, regardless of the specific field an individual is working in.
A business leader and entrepreneur presented on the importance of building skills that are geared towards addressing current challenges, contrasting how during the industrial era education systems were designed to optimise the extraction economy, whereas now, in the Anthropocene, education must prioritise granting individuals the skills to redesign energy, food and industry to sustain civilisation. The speaker spoke of an apprenticeship model that had gained traction, with three young students leading a group of professionals to develop a blueprint for a renewable energy and bioeconomy park in East Africa as a case study for what this new model of hands-on, systems-based education might look like.
The final speaker offered a unique perspective from an educational institution offering programming geared towards mid-career business professionals to equip them with the necessary planetary health skills in their professions. They noted a concerning trend in declining numbers of students enrolling in their programme in recent years, and also observed that out of a significant number of applicants, only one mentioned sustainability in their interview. This was presented as evidence suggesting that the skills conferred by planetary health education may not be sufficiently valued in the current political climate. It was noted that this may in part be due to market barriers that make addressing broad sustainability challenges difficult, leading to a retraction of global and corporate commitments.
Overall, it was noted that the potential of education to deliver is significant, with major potential for contributions to institutional capability (both in building capacity and attracting private capital), supporting and shaping sectors, value chains or regional transition plans, as well as galvanising social support for action and enabling collaboration between institutions that are well informed on relevant topics, thus improving the potential for a positive impact.
Insights from the audience
Rich interventions from each of the speakers were followed by time for group discussion, often in collaboration with the speakers, to share ideas and brainstorm potential ways of better integrating planetary health education into existing educational frameworks. Among several surprising overarching themes of discussion were the pervasiveness of challenges in distributing planetary health education across educational levels, from high school through college level and into mid-career and professional stages. Informative discussions also led to an understanding that education on this topic has garnered a ‘woke’ connotation, and that moving beyond or breaking free of this narrative is critical to appealing to a broader audience. Furthermore, there is not only the belief that our economic system is equipped to tackle the present challenges being faced (according to data from an early 2003 survey shared by one of the speakers), but also the recognition that systemic change is necessary. Planetary health education is arguably one of the most powerful ways of implementing this type of change, helping not only to build trust across stakeholders, but also to ensure that both the current and next generation are equipped to handle these challenges.
