A seas turtle swims under the water.

Tools Foundational Documents

The Planetary Health Education Framework

Faerron Guzmán, C., Potter, T., Planetary Health Alliance


About the Planetary Health Education Framework


This framework aims to guide the education of global citizens, practitioners, and professionals interested in understanding and addressing the complex Planetary Health challenges of our world today. The framework also seeks to inspire all peoples across the globe to create, restore, steward, and conserve healthy ecosystems for a thriving human civilization. We envisage that the framework will contribute to positive outcomes for the biosphere, overcoming the Planetary Health challenges before us.

The Planetary Health Education framework considers five foundational domains that we as a group believe comprise the essence of Planetary Health knowledge, values, and practice: 

  1. Interconnection within Nature
  2. The Anthropocene and health
  3. Equity and social justice
  4. Movement building and systems change
  5. Systems thinking and complexity

The framework can be understood as a common foundational language that serves as the cornerstone for diverse education strategies. To ground the framework in action, each domain includes suggested process outcomes and key Planetary Health themes and concepts. The work intends to move beyond thematic areas of interest or a prescriptive list of competencies towards the recognition of the diverse inquiries (i.e., the why/affective, the what/representation, the how/strategic) that can shape Planetary Health Education.