Pathways
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Pathways to Planetary Health conducts research and convenes leaders. Our in-person roundtables, symposia, and retreats gather visionaries in key fields from around the world and all walks of life.
2025 Pathways Report: Learning with the Land - Re-Imagining Education in Mi’kma’ki
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In partnership with the Ulnooweg Education Centre and supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, this 2024 project led by Pathways to Planetary Health explored Indigenous approaches to education rooted in land, language, intergenerational relationships, and cultural pedagogy. Through an immersive ocean-based education program, the team integrated Western marine science with cultural traditions such as storytelling, ceremony, and Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) to improve educational outcomes and well-being for Mi’kmaw youth. This engaged research project affirmed that culturally grounded, nature-based learning environments foster belonging, curiosity, and resilience while offering lessons in how to improve mainstream education systems. The project also contributed to a growing movement to center Indigenous ways of knowing in education, ecological stewardship, and planetary health. Read Full Report |
2025 Pathways Report: Developing the field - Earth Awareness
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In 2025, Pathways to Planetary Health produced a report exploring trends in the development of an emergent social field of Earth awareness. By applying ancient wisdom to modern sustainability efforts, Earth awareness practices can help communities learn about the environment while developing deep, meaningful, ongoing relationships with Earth. A full report of findings and a brief overview describe obstacles and opportunities to developing the field, along with analysis of the relationships among traditions, intentions, sources of inspiration, and centers of practice. |
2024 Pathways Retreat: Conscious Food Systems as a Pathway to Planetary Health
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In 2024, Pathways to Planetary Health hosted a retreat on “Conscious Food Systems as a Pathway to Planetary Health” in partnership with the UNDP-convened Conscious Food Systems Alliance. Over 75 participants came together to deepen collective capacity to address the underlying worldviews at the heart of current social, environmental, and food-related predicaments. We gathered before Climate Week NYC ’24 and the UN Summit of the Future to transform how we mindfully step into these important occasions and to create a compassionate world. Click here to read the summary report with participant biographies. |
2024 Pathways Gatherings: Bioregional Roundtable and Retreat with Tribal Nations
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2023 Pathways Symposium: The Commons and the Common Good
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The 2023 Pathways Symposium focused on “The Commons and the Common Good.” This event gathered a diverse group of 80 thought leaders, including scientists, Indigenous teachers, public sector leaders, impact investors, researchers, and on-the-ground change makers. The Symposium sought to define the ways in which the concepts of the commons and the common good could provide coherent grounding and mutuality amidst disruptive times marked by climate change, biodiversity loss, injustice, and racism. Read the 2023 Symposium summary report here. |
2020 Pathways Symposium: Ethics in the Age of the Anthropocene
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A 2020 Pathways Symposium was held to focus on “Ethics in the Age of the Anthropocene.” It was conceived as a search for a contemporary ethics of the common good, shared well-being, and societal mutuality. It assembled more than 50 leading practitioners of applied ecology, conservation, impact investing, and sustainable business together with scientists, ethicists, journalists, meditation teachers, Indigenous Elders, philosophers, physicians, researchers, students, theologians, and writers. Click hereto read the 2020 Symposium proceedings. |
2018 Pathways Symposium: Ecological Civilization
| In 2018, we held the first Pathways Symposium on Ecological Civilization, exploring new ethical frameworks for planetary health and defining the four pathways that guide the initiative today. |
Pathways to Planetary Health Director Stephen Posner regularly contributes to publications and technical reports at the forefront of biodiversity, climate change, and planetary health:
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- Stephen is currently a co-author of United by Nature, the first ever national-scale Nature Assessment for the U.S., and co-lead on a related transdisciplinary research effort on defining nature.
- Stephen co-authored a May 2025 article “Frogs, Coalitions, and Mining: Transformative insights for planetary health and Earth system law from Ecuador’s struggle to enforce Nature’s rights” in Earth System Governance.
- Recent studies of boundary spanning and knowledge brokering include a review of what we know and research needs in Environmental Science & Policy and a study of key attributes for effective knowledge brokering at the interface of environmental science and management, published in Sustainability Science.
- Ongoing contributions to the field of natural capital accounting include a co-authored publication titled “Leveraging natural capital accounting to support businesses with nature-related risk assessments and disclosures” published by The Royal Society.
- Stephen co-led an effort between the University of Vermont and Duke University to assess biodiversity and carbon storage dynamics on public and private lands and waters in the United States, summarized in this research report.