Challenges — Journal of Planetary Health

The optimistic approach to science and progress that is associated with positivism is questioned as we face up to the environmental consequences of an industrial civilization that compromises the sustainable basis of our continued survival. As planetary boundaries are crossed and our opportunities to continue our current consumerist lifestyles are diminished, we have to face the systemic risk of civilizational collapse. Building resilience against systemic risk means that we need to stop privatizing gains and socializing risks and as communities we need to start taking accountability for the declining planetary health that is caused by the prevailing economic systems. This requires ‘deep adaptation’, and in this paper, it is explained what this means for the sciences. Knowledge development should be useful in the context of a simpler society that is in direct interaction with its environment, rather than for the development of new technology that necessitates an industrial civilization to maintain it. The relevance of research should be guided by the question whether the research benefits Indigenous communities that are currently living on the margins of industrialized society as an approximation of how people will survive after the potential collapse of industrial supply chains. An overview over current research programs suggests that we should prioritize research fields such as low-energy technology, sustainable agriculture, holistic healthcare, biodiversity and medicine, ecosystem services and management, psychology for human well-being and cognitive development, and sociology of collaboration and institution-building.

Climate usually brings to mind air, temperature, and precipitation [...]

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.