Climate Change and Schools: Environmental Hazards and Resiliency

Abstract

The changing climate is creating additional challenges in maintaining a healthy school environment in the United States (U.S.) where over 50 million people, mostly children, spend approximately a third of their waking hours. Chronic low prioritization of funds and resources to support environmental health in schools and lack of clear regulatory oversight in the U.S. undergird the new risks from climate change. We illustrate the extent of risk and the variation in vulnerability by geographic region, in the context of sparse systematically collected and comparable data particularly about school infrastructure. Additionally, we frame different resilience building initiatives, focusing on interventions that target root causes, or social determinants of health. Disaster response and recovery are also framed as resilience building efforts. Examples from U.S. Federal Region 2 (New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and nationally are used to illustrate these concepts. We conclude that better surveillance, more research, and increased federal and state oversight of environmental factors in schools (specific to climate risks) is necessary, as exposures result in short- and long term negative health effects and climate change risks will increase over time.

Learning About Systemic Resilience From Studies of Student Resilience

“…Increasingly, school resilience also denotes the capacity of a school to protect staff and students from physical harm. For instance, awareness of the harmful effects of specific pollutants (e.g., lead) has meant that the construction and upkeep of schools purposefully avoids student and staff exposure to pollutants (e.g., preferences for lead-free paint; Sheffield, Uijttewaal, Stewart, & Galvez, 2017). Also, in the face of the growing incidence of disasters, resilient schools are those schools that are designed, or adapted, to withstand disaster (Gedey et al, 2018).…”

“…Understanding that co-occurring human and nonhuman systems co-facilitate human resilience means that future studies of human resilience, including student resilience, will require multidisciplinary research teams and a transdisciplinary appetite to drive these studies. For instance, Sheffield et al (2017) have contended that schools' capacity to protect and enable students transcends "the instruction, relationships, and other significant experiences that occur in school" to also encompass "building infrastructure, grounds, neighborhood and surroundings" (p. 1). Similarly, Sun and Stewart (2008) have argued that enabling physical and social contexts-also at schools-are key to the promotion of resilience.…”

Identification of Measurement Variables for Understanding Vulnerability to Education Inequality in Developing Countries: A Conceptual Article

“…A vast of literature discussed environmental risk factors in diverse ways. While some focused on health-related risks (Story et al, 2009), others concentrated on school physical and environmental (SPE) risks (Anilan, 2014;Goldman, 1995;Sheffield et al, 2017). Likewise, multiple environmental indicators were made available by World Health Organization (WHO, 2004) in its information series on school health, documents 2.…”

Climate Adaptation Investment and the Community Reinvestment Act

“…While the evaluation of this proposition does not serve as an official interpretation of the CRA, it is intended to provide understanding to banks and banking regulators who seek to develop additional pathways for investing in communities in the face of climate change. 1 Whether it is shocks from extreme weather or the ongoing stress of environmental exposure, climate change impacts exacerbate existing vulnerabilities associated with affordable housing (Shearer, et al 2016;Pattison and Kawall 2018); household wealth and savings (Stadelmann, et al 2015;Park, et al 2018); economic mobility (Colten, et al 2018); education attainment (Randell and Gray 2016;Sheffield, et al 2017); public health (Watts, et al 2015;Watts, et al 2018); transportation accessibility (Prillwitz 2017); and, the cohesiveness of social capital (Aldrich and Meyer 2015) and community institutions (Eakin, et al 2016). The range of impacts in each of these aspects of social welfare reflects the diversity of challenges facing community development.…”