Challenges — Journal of Planetary Health

Planetary health depends partly on reducing the scale and impacts of material extraction, yet headline circular-economy indicators can reward different processes. This study asks whether the circular material use rate (CMUR), which describes the share of material use supplied by recirculated materials, and resource productivity (RP), which describes economic output per unit of domestic material consumption (DMC), provide interchangeable signals across the EU-27. Official Eurostat observations for 2010 and 2024 were analysed using Pearson and Spearman correlations, Fisher-z and non-parametric bootstrap confidence intervals, exact common-component decompositions, leave-one-country-out tests, and separate analyses of endpoint-change magnitudes and directions. In 2024, CMUR and RP were positively associated (Pearson r = 0.685, 95% Fisher-z CI 0.412–0.845; Spearman ρ = 0.638). The DMC-variance term numerically equalled 63.0% of the observed transformed sample covariance, with wide bootstrap uncertainty (37.5–192.9%) but a narrower leave-one-country-out range (53.4–77.0%). By contrast, the association between 2010–2024 endpoint-change magnitudes was weak and imprecisely estimated (r = 0.163, 95% CI −0.231–0.511). Directional agreement was high descriptively: all 22 countries with higher CMURs also had higher RP, while four had lower CMURs but higher RP, and one declined on both measures. The indicators therefore illuminate complementary dimensions rather than a single transition pathway. For planetary health assessment, circularity and efficiency should be interpreted with absolute and consumption-based material pressure indicators; neither CMUR nor RP directly measures health outcomes or ecological sufficiency.

A growing number of jurisdictions have granted rights to nature. Scholarship on these frameworks has been mainly legal and philosophical and has rarely asked whether legal recognition improves the condition of ecosystems. This paper takes up that question from a planetary health perspective, which treats ecosystem health as nested within the health of the Earth system as a whole. It is a reflexive discussion piece rather than a systematic review, because the available literature is too limited and heterogeneous to support formal synthesis. Cases from Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, New Zealand, Spain, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands are examined. The studies reviewed report mainly intermediate outcomes: court rulings, restoration obligations, coordination between agencies, and composite performance indices. Direct indicators of ecosystem structure, functioning, and resilience are largely absent. Five recurring mechanisms are identified: legal empowerment, a shift in how the living world is valued, guardianship institutions, integration across governance sectors, and precautionary decision-making. The evidence supports conclusions about institutional change; it does not yet support conclusions about ecological recovery.

As the 2030 deadline approaches with most Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets off-track, the global development community faces a critical choice: continue with technocratic indicator-focused implementation or embrace the fundamental transformation the SDGs originally promised. This paper argues that the convergence of planetary health, the wellbeing economy, and systems thinking offers a pathway to restore the SDGs’ transformative potential through community-governed, power-redistributive approaches. Much of current SDG implementation has become a technocratic exercise that obscures power dynamics, ignores Indigenous knowledge systems, and perpetuates growth-oriented economic logic that conflicts with planetary boundaries. This approach treats symptoms rather than root causes while maintaining consultation models that create an illusion of community engagement without redistributing decision-making authority. The wellbeing economy movement and planetary health framework offer complementary lenses for recalibration: the wellbeing economy challenges GDP-focused development by prioritizing collective flourishing within ecological limits, while planetary health reframes development within Earth’s life-support systems. However, translating these frameworks into concrete policy mechanisms requires systems thinking that includes explicit power analysis and centers relational accountability to communities most affected by current systemic failures. A post-2030 agenda must resist fixing the SDGs through more indicators and instead institutionalize community governance, redistribute decision-making power, and co-create implementation tools that communities own and adapt. This requires breaking silos between health, environmental, and economic sectors, while centering Indigenous voices as leaders rather than beneficiaries. The convergence of crises demands courage to chart a new path guided by community wisdom, planetary boundaries, and relational accountability; one that restores not only ecosystems but decision-making power to those who understand that health, economy, and ecology are inseparable.