2025 Preprints

Pathways for enhancing capacity in adult climate literacy within US emergency management

DeVincenzo, Joshua L.

This paper addresses the pathways for future training and education for emergency managers in the U.S. to engage with climate literacy drawing from the study Enhancing Capacity in Adult Climate Literacy: Investigating Sustainability Mindsets in the U.S. Emergency Management Profession. Findings will be presented based on a collective case study that was conducted to understand how climate change education can meet the learning needs of emergency management professionals who must prepare for, and adapt to, the impacts of climate change on communities throughout the United States. In this paper, the definition of “climate change” centers on anthropogenic climate change and, more specifically, the impact of human activities on the atmosphere's chemical composition. The exploratory collective case study involved six (N = 6) certified emergency management (CEM) professionals currently practicing in the U.S. as the study’s key informants (KIs). In addition to the information collected from the six KIs, a survey was distributed to a larger sample (N = 56) to collect broader information from additional emergency managers to amplify and contrast the data collected from the KI interviews.