Educating for post-disaster sustainability efforts

Urgent sustainability problems call for accelerated and transformational change. Disasters can provide opportunities for accelerating such change towards sustainability by eliminating the impediments of “normal times,” but only if a new breed of change agents is able to seize these opportunities. However, current educational programs in sustainability and disaster risk management insufficiently prepare change agents for this challenging task. Recent reforms of curricula, institutional innovations, and actual experience from such change agents could be used to help design curricula that train students in seeing and seizing post-disaster opportunities for change towards sustainability. Linking sustainability education and disaster risk management education might be a co-benefit in the future.