February 26, 2026
Leadership in the anthropocene: the experience of the Rio Grande do Sul socio-environmental tragedy of 2024
Júlio de Azambuja Borges; Carlos Eduardo de Lima
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This work analyzes the perceptions and practices of leaders affected by the 2024 Rio Grande do Sul socio-environmental tragedy, investigating whether the extreme climate event caused changes in leaders’ and organizations’ understanding and action regarding the climate crisis. It questions whether leaders emerged different, which skills were crucial during the crisis, and which should be developed for mitigation and adaptation. The hypothesis is that direct experience of an extreme event generates more transformative impacts than theoretical knowledge, driving a reassessment of priorities and management practices.
The growing intensification of extreme weather events underpins this analysis. In May 2024, Rio Grande do Sul was hit by a socio-environmental disaster, when a combination of meteorological factors, aggravated by El Niño and climate change, resulted in torrential rains (ClimaMeter, 2024). The floods affected approximately 2.3 million people, with a toll of 183 dead and 27 missing (Civil Defense, 2024), and caused collapses in critical energy, water, telecommunications, and logistics infrastructures. The event exposed the vulnerability of one of the country’s most developed regions to the impacts of the Anthropocene.
The concept of the Anthropocene designates a new geological era characterized by the dominant influence of human activity on the global ecosystem (Harari, 2016), in which humanity has become the main force of planetary transformation, generating consequences that threaten the foundations of life (Wulf, 2021). The term encompasses causes, such as the emission of greenhouse gases, and consequences, such as climate change, configuring what Latour (2020) calls the New Climate Regime. In this reality, the function of leadership, understood as the process of influencing followers to achieve goals (Turano and Cavazotte, 2016), acquires a new and urgent dimension.
The leadership drove the development model whose side effects are now manifesting, placing on them the responsibility for mitigating the causes and adapting to the consequences of climate change. The intersection between the Anthropocene crisis and leadership practice, little explored in people management, constitutes the core of this research. The development of a new leadership profile is imperative, with a broad socio-environmental understanding and a set of skills that can be called “climate” (André, 2020). These “climate leaders” are managers who recognize the centrality of the climate crisis to the sustainability of their organizations and society. The ability to understand planetary dynamics and influence people towards necessary transformations becomes a fundamental competence. This study investigates whether the experience of the 2024 flood in Rio Grande do Sul acted as a catalyst for this new awareness and leadership practice.
To investigate a recent and exploratory topic, a quantitative approach with qualitative elements was adopted (Piovesan and Temporini, 1995). The main instrument was a structured questionnaire (survey) on Google Forms, distributed virtually, mainly via WhatsApp, ensuring anonymity. Perceptions were measured using the Likert scale, which allows for the quantification of attitudes and facilitates statistical analysis (da Costa Júnior et al., 2024). The target audience was leaders of organizations in Rio Grande do Sul affected by the floods, without distinction of hierarchical level. Data collection occurred between March 22 and 31, 2025, with a total sample of 106 participants.
The questionnaire was structured into thematic axes. The first qualified the sample, confirming the research requirements and characterizing the leadership level and the sector of activity, based on classifications from IBGE (2021) and the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2025). The second and main axis investigated leaders’ personal understanding of climate change, comparing the pre and post-flood scenario, based on theoretical references (André, 2020; Turano and Cavazotte, 2016; Park, 2024). The third explored leaders’ perception of their organizations’ performance, also in comparative analysis, referencing studies on corporate response to calamities (Carbonari and Van Deursen, 2024). The last axis contained two open-ended questions to qualitatively capture the leadership skills mobilized and those considered essential for the future, aligning with competencies discussed by the WEF (2025). Data analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel, using simple and pivot tables. Submission to the Research Ethics Committee was waived, according to the Ethical Guidance Form, due to the anonymous nature of the collection.
For the analysis, key concepts are defined. Climate change refers to long-term shifts in the state of the climate (IEA, 2021), manifested by gradual alterations, such as the increase in average temperature (EPE, 2023), or by extreme weather events, such as the 2024 floods. Climate mitigation refers to human actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2023; MMA, 2025), while climate resilience is the capacity of a system to anticipate, absorb, and recover from impacts, adapting to the new reality (EPE, 2023). Of the 106 initial respondents, 78 met the criteria of being leaders in impacted organizations, forming the final sample for analysis.
The characterization of the sample revealed a predominance of leaders in strategic and tactical positions: 28.2% identifying themselves as Directors or C-level and another 28.2% as Managers. Coordinators represented 21.8% and Supervisors 11.5%, indicating that 56.4% of respondents held senior management positions. Sectoral diversity was broad, with representation from 17 out of the 27 listed sectors, the most significant being Energy and Utilities (37.2%), Manufacturing Industry (10.3%), and a set of sectors such as Agriculture, Education, and Non-profit Organizations, each with 6.4%. This distribution reflects, in part, the productive characteristics of the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre.
Before the 2024 flood, awareness and preparedness were low. Only 14.1% of managers considered climate change a critical factor for decision-making, while 39.8% saw it as a moderate risk, but without direct actions. A group of 17.9% of leaders showed skepticism. Consequently, 46.2% of leaders felt little or no preparedness to act in extreme climate events, and only 15.3% considered themselves well or excellently prepared. The data indicate that, before the disaster, most underestimated the risks and did not feel capable. The experience of the event was overwhelming: 91% of leaders were personally impacted, and 100% reported that people close to them were affected, mainly by the lack of basic services such as water (61.5%) and energy (47.4%), and by the need to work remotely (51.3%).
The disaster caused a transformative shift. Following the flood, 92.4% of leaders reported changing their actions to prevent climate change, with 37.2% reporting a “very large” or “complete” shift. Similarly, 91% reported changes in their actions to increase adaptation and resilience, with 41% indicating a “very large” or “complete” change. These figures confirm the study’s central hypothesis: direct experience with an extreme climate event served as a powerful catalyst for a shift in mindset and practice, driving increased attention to both mitigation and adaptation.
Leaders’ perception of their organizations followed a similar trend, albeit with less intensity. Before the flood, 41.1% of managers stated that their organizations never discussed the topic of climate change or only did so occasionally. Only 11.5% of companies addressed the issue strategically. Organizations were severely impacted, with 74.4% reporting employee departures and 67.9% having to implement or expand remote work. After the event, the organizational change was notable: 85.9% of leaders perceived some alteration in their companies’ actions to mitigate environmental impacts, and 84.6% noticed changes focused on adaptation and resilience. However, the magnitude of change was smaller than the individual one: only 24.4% of organizations changed “a lot” or “completely” in mitigation, and 25.6% in adaptation. This difference suggests that institutional transformation is slower and more complex.
The analysis of leadership skills, based on open-ended responses, revealed a consistent set of competencies. The five most cited skills, both for management during the crisis and for facing future events, were the same: 1) Resilience/adaptability/flexibility/agility; 2) Empathy and active listening; 3) Communication; 4) Decision-making (quick and under pressure); and 5) Organization/planning/prioritization. The first two stood out, exceeding 10% of mentions in both questions. These findings converge with the report The Future of Jobs Report 2025 (WEF, 2025), which positions “Resilience, flexibility and agility” and “Empathy and active listening” as central skills for the future of work.
An important nuance emerged in the comparison between present and future skills. The competence “technical/ESG/mitigation knowledge” was little cited for the 2024 crisis (0.4%), but appeared among the ten most important for the future (4.6%). This aligns with the trend identified by the WEF (2025); “environmental stewardship” emerges as one of the fastest-growing skills in importance by 2030. It is clear that, while the immediate response to disasters requires resilience and empathy, preparation for the future of the Anthropocene demands a deepening of technical knowledge and a strategic commitment to sustainability.
Based on the synthesis of results and literature, the concept of “climate leadership” is proposed as an integrated set of six interdependent competencies to navigate the Anthropocene: 1) Climate literacy, the fundamental scientific knowledge about climate change; 2) Communication, the ability to translate this knowledge into engagement, with empathy and active listening; 3) Resilience, the agility to adapt to disruptive scenarios; 4) Decision-making readiness, the courage to act quickly in scenarios of uncertainty; 5) Planning, the incorporation of the climate variable into strategy, risk, and business continuity plans; and 6) Climate engagement, the translation of awareness into concrete and continuous mitigation and adaptation actions.
In conclusion, the research demonstrated that the 2024 socio-environmental tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul served as a turning point, profoundly altering the perception and practice of leaders and organizations. The direct experience of the disaster validated the hypothesis that experiential impact is a more potent catalyst for change than abstract knowledge. The crisis exposed vulnerabilities, but also mobilized a set of leadership skills focused on resilience and empathy, while also signaling the need for more strategic and technical competencies for the future. The notion of climate leadership emerges as a conceptual tool to systematize and disseminate the lessons learned, offering a path for managers to act more effectively in building a sustainable future. It is concluded that the objective was achieved: it was demonstrated that the direct experience of the extreme climate event of 2024 in Rio Grande do Sul caused significant changes in the understanding and action of leaders and organizations regarding the climate situation.
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