Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

4 STUDENT EXERCISES [To be completed prior to reading assigned articles] (1) Based on your current understanding of the concept, define “resilience.” Using diagrams, words, or sentences, describe your understanding. (2) Choose a newsworthy, climate-related event and place from the past few years (ex., Camp Fire in Paradise, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, heat wave in Europe). Using your working definition, identify characteristics that play a role in climate resilience and quality of life in those communities (ex., housing, access to recovery support, infrastructure, income equality, relocation). Please complete these exercises before reading additional assigned material. Try to articulate your position on this topic before you are influenced by other writers. You will revisit your responses at the end of this course to see how they change. FOR INSTRUCTORS: CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES (1) Ask individual students to share the newsworthy event that they selected for Exercise 2, and share a little bit about it with the class. Alternatively, if most students have selected similar events, you may choose to form small groups for discussion. (2) Bring a few news articles from recent years to add to the students’ discussion. Rather than focusing on specific past events, these should highlight future conditions and possible adaptations. Examples: - New York Times, 2019, “As Phoenix Heats Up, the Night Comes Alive” - NPR, 2019, “Building For An Uncertain Future: Miami Residents Adapt To The Changing Climate” - National Geographic, 2019, “Massive 8,000-mile ‘Dead Zone’ could be One of the Gulf’s Largest” - Chicago Tribune, 2018, “Federal Climate Change Report Paints Grim Picture for Midwest” - CNN, 2019, “California Wildfires Burn 500% more Land because of Climate Change”