Learning to live within limits: Reimagining education for a circular and healthy planet
Yousif ELTAEB
Abstract. Although planetary health issues are incrementally increasing, research has shown that health professionals lack the required awareness and skills to deal with them. To address that issue, we are presenting a human-centered framed to integrate circulatory and planetary thinking teaching, assessment, and routine institutional operations in accordance with ICCAS 2025 and Materials Research Proceedings. The proposed CIRCLE framework defines six key competencies including Circulatory literacy, Interdependence, Resilience and risk, Care and ethics, Leadership and collaboration, and finally Evidence and evaluation. Each competence is linked to an authentic workplace assessment tool using multilevel evaluation approaches. To turn our climate commitment policy into measurable actions, we recommend having a sequential timeline with Policy at the start followed by Program, Course, and finally Campus. Looking at successful experiences from around the globe shows that the establishment of national ecosystems which are supported by policies are more likely to enable such hubs to potentiate the adoption of such initiatives. Following that process we can generate a blueprint which could guide the graduates of health professions to deal with the issues of reducing waste and emission, health protection, and community resilience.
Keywords
Circular Education, Climate Action, Planetary Health, Learning Outcomes, Evaluation
Published online 6/20/2026, 5 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Yousif ELTAEB, Learning to live within limits: Reimagining education for a circular and healthy planet, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 67, pp 909-913, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904176-123
The article was published as article 123 of the book Climate Action and Sustainability
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
References
[1] IPCC, Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report (AR6).
[2] The Lancet Countdown, 2024 Global Report on Health and Climate Change.
[3] UNESCO, Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap, 2020.
[4] UNESCO, Greening Education Partnership (materials, 2022–2025).
[5] European Commission, Circular Economy Action Plan, 2020.
[6] Joint Research Centre, GreenComp: European Sustainability Competence Framework, 2022.
[7] World Health Organization, Operational Framework for Climate Resilient, Low Carbon Health Systems, 2023.
[8] Planetary Health Report Card Collaboration, Overview, 2022.
