Building Society's Capacity for Climate Change and Health through Interdisciplinary Training, Education, and Workforce Development

Continued progress on climate change into the future will depend on ensuring a climate-smart citizenry and a next-generation American workforce of city planners, community leaders, engineers, and entrepreneurs who understand the urgent climate change challenge and are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and training to seek and implement solutions. As the 2013 Climate Science is Core to Science Education Policy Statement of the American Meteorological Society states “it falls on educators and policy makers to provide an environment, from elementary through graduate school, that exposes students to the nature and meaning of science as well as the rich cache of scientific knowledge.” Climate change is bringing economic and environmental challenges as well as opportunities, and citizens who have an understanding of climate science will be better prepared to respond to both. There is a need to build capacity for better decision making in a context of climate change, starting in elementary school and continuing through all levels of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. NOAA, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and our partners have collaborated for years on formal and informal education for climate literacy. The growing awareness of the health implications of climate change poses both a challenge for educators as well as new opportunities. Challenges involve the problems of trans-disciplinary curricula and the lack of adequate support for teachers to take on new areas of expertise. Education systems can develop citizens who have the ability to facilitate and communicate research and practice, manage collaborative processes to allow for imaginative analysis and solutions, develop sustainable technologies to reduce climate risks, and build tools for decision-making in an internationally interdependent world. In this talk, we will explore why it is important to bring the subjects of climate change and health into classrooms to build human capacity for improved decisions and interdisciplinary thinking. Additionally, we will explore resources and strategies to incorporate climate depending on the grade level, course topics and instructional method. Yet no matter the pedagogic setting, using a climate literacy-based approach can provide a sound foundation to build learners' understanding of these topics.