U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

The Coastal Resilience Center of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus is funded by the Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence with a mission focused on education of the community by transferring state-of-practice knowledge through formal and informal learning experiences to help the community understand coastal infrastructure hazard prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. Training courses for Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands are programmed and announced monthly.

Many communities struggle with how to prepare for hazards. It can be difficult to talk about vulnerability to hazards, and it can be even more difficult to keep people engaged and motivated to take action. This training provides insights into how and why people respond to risk, and helps participants develop new skills to better connect with a variety of audiences. Understanding and connecting with an audience’s diverse values and concerns can lead to a higher level of community engagement and can help motivate action to reduce risk. You will learn how to recognize differing values, and identify how and why people perceive and respond to risks the way they do; apply social science and risk communication principles when faced with challenging questions; respond to difficult questions with more confidence; and develop an effective risk communication strategy that incorporates relevant and proven principles.

This course provides tools to design and implement productive meetings. Participants will learn basic facilitation skills and techniques for dealing with disruptive behaviors. Class time is provided to practice using tools and skills to plan and facilitate meetings that accomplish objectives while minimizing conflict. Participants at every level are welcome, since the new skills will be useful even when attending, but not running, a meeting. You will learn how to facilitate meetings effectively, use appropriate process tools and techniques to reach the meeting objectives, and identify disruptive behaviors in group processes and practice strategies to deal with them.

Whether beginning a new effort or trying to keep people motivated to better prepare for future hazards, applying risk communication principles will lead to more effective results. This self-guided module introduces seven best practices, numerous techniques, and examples to help you improve your communication efforts. Knowledge checks and a final quiz are included to help you retain what you learn. One hour of certification maintenance credits for this course has been approved by the American Institute of Certified Planners.

The United Nations Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations joined in 2017 to launch an online course on climate change and agriculture. The six-week course in partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research featured leading global experts on climate change, finance, agriculture, and communications. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) happened in parallel with the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany. The learning materials are now presented as part of the joint effort between all parties involved in the MOOC.

The Climate Learning Network's eLearning program is designed to help Extension professionals, professional crop advisors, and professional foresters incorporate climate change into their existing program areas and become climate literate. Many modules offer Continuing Education Credits from the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and Certified Crop Advisors (CCA). Modules topics include basic climate science, communication, climate variability, vulnerability assessments, agricultural adaptation practices, and resilient land management.

This workshop process—developed through The Nature Conservancy's Coastal Resilience network (coastalresilience.org)—fosters collaboration with and among community stakeholders to advance education, planning, and ultimately implementation of priority resilience actions. The freely downloadable Workshop Guide provides instructions on how to lead your community towards resilience, illustrating the essentials of the process as well as “before” and “after” workshop steps to help ensure that immediate goals, outcomes, and strategic direction are realized within your community. Also available from the website are workshop support materials, including a risk matrix, invitation language, community survey questions, and suggestions for participant affiliations.

Climate change interpretation can occur in many venues and formats. This modular self-study curriculum was designed by the National Park Service's Interpretive Development Program to hone knowledge and skills for interpreting climate change, and can be completed at the user's own time and pace. There are several ways to engage with the material—either in-depth with each of the study guides, or accessing information as and when needed. The training includes four modules: (1) Introduction to Interpreting Climate Change; (2) Knowledge of the Resource Issue; (3) Knowledge of the Audience; and (4) Appropriate Techniques and Strategies. Each module contains a Study Guide that provides activities, questions, and links to additional resources, as well as a Learning Companion, the content document developed by a subject matter team.

This site offers 13 recorded presentations from the 29 July–2 August, 2013 offering of the Climate Variability and Change Virtual Course (CVCVC). This five-day live facilitated online course provided an extensive background on a range of climate variability and change topics with an emphasis on developing communication skills for challenging climate topics. The topics covered in this course, while aimed primarily at NOAA operational climate services delivery staff will also be helpful for others who already possess a basic level of understanding of climate science.