Earth may persist without humanity, but human survival and well-being depend on a healthy planet and natural systems. This asymmetry highlights a fundamental challenge: humans are part of nature and depend on its systems, yet human activities can also disrupt them. Our growing capacity to understand these relationships offers an opportunity and a responsibility to pursue solutions that support the flourishing of ecosystems alongside human health. Forest fires illustrate this interdependence through their potential consequences for ecosystems and communities, although these impacts were not directly assessed in the present study. Within this planetary health context, this study examines how deviations from climatological reference values are associated with forest fire burned-area classes, in three Greek regions. Specifically, we analyzed temperature, wind speed, and humidity at forest fire onset in Attica and Crete (2011–2025) and in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (2022–2025), comparing observations with region-specific climatological reference periods. Duration patterns were examined descriptively, while six machine-learning methods were evaluated for classifying burned-area outcomes, with incidents of at least 5 ha assigned to the larger burned-area class. Adam, GenClass, and FC2 achieved similar mean classification errors across the regional datasets (12.12–12.18%), whereas L-BFGS and RBF performed slightly worse, and NEAT showed a substantially higher error. These results indicate comparable performance among the three leading methods for the available data; they do not demonstrate causal relationships or operational forecasting capability. The meteorological associations identified may contribute to understanding forest fire risk and could serve as one input to future integrated approaches to preparedness and environmental management. Further validation, together with ecological, health, and social data, is needed to assess their wider relevance to planetary health and community resilience.
Planetary health requires food-system transformations that reduce waste and resource pressure while safeguarding human, animal, and ecosystem well-being. Upcycled pet food may support circular resource use, but its contribution depends partly on whether pet owners trust and adopt such products without compromising animal nutrition and safety. This study extends the theory of planned behavior to examine how upcycled label trust shapes feeding intentions and whether these pathways differ by pet type. Data from 463 pet owners in Taiwan were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling, multi-group analysis, and importance–performance map analysis. Upcycled label trust was positively associated with intention directly and indirectly through attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Dog owners exhibited stronger trust-to-cognition pathways, whereas perceived behavioral control was more strongly associated with intention among cat owners. Upcycled label trust was the most important construct for both groups. The study contributes to planetary-health and food-system-transition research by showing that material upcycling alone is insufficient: credible information, social legitimacy, feasible access, and species-appropriate nutrition are needed for circular practices to become socially adoptable.
Green chemistry education is essential for preparing future science teachers to address environmental sustainability and planetary health challenges. This cross-sectional study examined student-reported Green Chemistry Implementation Capability (GCIC) and its associations with sustainability-related competencies among 640 pre-service natural science teachers from 40 classes across eight departments at a Peruvian university. GCIC was conceptualized as a second-order construct comprising six dimensions: strategic planning, sustainable laboratory practice, systems thinking integration, circular economy education, environmental decision-making integration, and transformative sustainability pedagogy. Bayesian latent-variable modeling and separate hierarchical analyses were employed to examine measurement properties, structural associations, and contextual variation. The measurement model supported the multidimensional GCIC framework. Variance decomposition attributed 63.1% of Environmental Sustainability Perception variation to students, 23.4% to classes, and 13.5% to departments. Positive structural associations linked GCIC with Systems Thinking Competency, Environmental Literacy, Sustainability Self-Efficacy, and Environmental Sustainability Perception. The reconstructed sequential indirect association was 0.150, while the total model-implied association was 0.360. Findings highlight the relevance of multidimensional green chemistry education and contextual heterogeneity for sustainability-oriented teacher preparation. However, the cross-sectional, self-reported, single-university design limits causal interpretation and generalizability, warranting longitudinal and multi-institutional validation.
Although South Africa has achieved near-universal grid electrification, many connected households experience inadequate, unreliable, and unaffordable energy. This review asks why energy poverty persists despite improved access, a question at the intersection of social inequality, human health, and environmental sustainability, the core concerns of planetary health. Drawing on 143 sources (peer-reviewed studies, reports, and theses) from a structured search of Scopus and Google Scholar (1994–2026) and citation tracking, the review examines conceptual foundations, drivers, and disparities of household energy poverty by income, gender, location, and province; its associations with welfare, health, education, livelihoods, and the environment; and South Africa’s policy responses. Building on South African reviews that addressed measurement within the Just Energy Transition or focused on rural households, it makes three contributions: it covers urban, peri-urban, informal, and rural settings; it proposes a conceptual framework linking structural drivers, household energy conditions, well-being and environmental outcomes, and policy responses through multidimensional energy poverty, energy justice, and planetary health; and it appraises where the evidence is consistent, mixed, or limited. Evidence of the persistence and unequal distribution of energy poverty after connection is consistent, whereas evidence of its consequences is weaker. Energy transitions are not driven by electrification or decarbonization alone but by household energy well-being: whether households can obtain adequate, affordable, reliable, and safe energy that supports health and livelihoods while reducing environmental harm. Limitations include purposive source selection and mostly cross-sectional evidence; most reported relationships should therefore be read as associations rather than demonstrated causal effects.
