Natural climate-change-related crises: a systematic review of organizational and community preparedness and resilience

Climate change has intensified the frequency and severity of natural disasters, presenting profound challenges to the resilience of communities and organizations. While preparedness and resilience interventions aim to mitigate the impact of these crises by fostering adaptive capacities, the local conditions, diversity, and educational dimensions of such interventions remain underexplored in the literature. This preregistered qualitative systematic review aimed to (a) identify and categorize organizational and community-based preparedness and resilience interventions addressing natural climate change-related crises; (b) map the reported effectiveness of these interventions in enhancing preparedness and resilience; and (c) explore the role of empowering education in strengthening resilience at both the community and organizational levels.

Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we systematically searched, screened, and mapped quantitative and qualitative primary studies on preparedness and resilience interventions. We included studies addressing natural hazards in community or organizational settings. A total of 2,356 records were screened, and 57 studies met the inclusion criteria.

The thematic synthesis revealed that described interventions often rely on local conditions, community participation, and place-based education. Empowering education increased preparedness, particularly among youth. However, many interventions are short-term, reactive, and lack structural support or codesign.

The reviewed studies support inclusive, context‑sensitive, and sustained approaches to resilience. Across this literature, resilience of communities and organizations facing climate‑related natural hazards is portrayed as emerging from local conditions, social participation, and learning processes rather than from stand‑alone interventions.