Climate Change, Disasters, and Recovery: Introduction to Community Planning for Resilience

The impacts of climate change in the form of more frequent and severe disasters around the world have finally begun to take the spotlight, and we are being forced to think critically about how we prepare ourselves and our communities for more sustainable futures. Everyone has a role to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change. This workshop is designed to introduce students to the avenues by which they can make an impact in combating the climate crisis, both personally in their communities and professionally in the future.

We take a system approach in evaluating climate change, past disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, and preparedness for future events. Students work in groups to create preparedness plans for live case studies to be presented to Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. They also participate in an exercise in which they adopt stakeholder profiles of their choosing in a simulation of disaster response and recovery.

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School, Columbia University has curated and modified workshop materials for high school level students based on years of fieldwork and academic research on topics of climate change, economic and housing recovery, children in crisis, mental health and disasters, among other essential themes. This introductory course has no prerequisite knowledge or previous coursework in the discipline required.