A new paper from the Harvard Law School Disability Project says people with disabilities need to be included in climate change planning, policies, and response and efforts to address loss and damage.
Published in The Lancet Planetary Health, “A Personal View” challenges researchers and policymakers to better understand the needs of the large and diverse population of people with disabilities around the world. People with disabilities are disproportionately affected by climate change and are two to four times more likely to die from natural disasters than people without disabilities. Yet they are systematically ignored in climate negotiations, national climate action, and policy. With 2023 set to be the warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the need for disability-inclusive climate action is more urgent than ever.
Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods and severe droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, affecting all continents. Climate change threatens the rights to life, health, food, water, personal mobility and cultural life of over one billion people with disabilities. Yet the majority of parties to the Paris Agreement have not mentioned people with disabilities in their nationally determined contributions or climate adaptation policies. “Countries that exclude people with disabilities from climate change adaptation and mitigation are failing their obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other international treaties,” said Michael Ashley Stein (Class of 1988), visiting professor at Harvard Law School.
In a new personal piece, Stein, along with Penelope J. S. Stein, senior fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Disability Project, and members of the Global Disability Climate Justice Working Group, urge scientists and policymakers to include people with disabilities in planning for and adapting to climate-related issues, from local to international levels. Their paper, published April 3 in the leading journal Lancet Planetary Health, offers guidance for accelerating disability-inclusive climate action and calls on researchers to explore disability-inclusive climate solutions that meaningfully center the experiences and knowledge of people with disabilities.
In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Michael Ashley Stein discussed how climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and responses fail people with disabilities, and what a new vision for disability-inclusive climate action could look like.
Credit: Martha Stewart
Harvard Law Today: I understand that the idea for this paper grew out of a workshop held by the Disability Project at Harvard Law School. Can you tell me more about that?
Michael Stein: In response to the under-representation of people with disabilities in climate action and research, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and University College London’s Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative provided significant funding for a workshop of 30 global experts. The workshop was highly diverse, bringing together academic experts working on climate change, global health, sustainable development, public health, environmental justice, humanitarian action, gender, mental health, law, and disability. The workshop included leaders of disability organizations, disability practitioners and researchers, and representatives from low- and middle-income countries, small island nations, and indigenous peoples with disabilities.
The paper sets out international recommendations, including the endorsement of disability advocacy groups in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, offers key recommendations for governments to take forward, and lays out a blueprint for research priorities that will appeal to people who are working on climate change but have not considered the link to disability. We encourage researchers and practitioners to pursue these ideas in collaboration, led by people with disabilities and their representative organisations, to provide guiding principles for climate research and action.
HLT: Why has disability climate justice been a focus area for the Harvard Law School Disability Project?
Stein: Climate change, humanity’s greatest challenge, disproportionately impacts marginalized groups, including people with disabilities. The unequal impacts of climate change on people with disabilities stem from ableism and discrimination. People with disabilities, who are largely excluded from the socio-economic benefits of colonialism and capitalism, are disproportionately affected by the damage caused by climate change. Furthermore, intersectional discrimination means that minority groups suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change. Yet climate change negotiations, national climate change commitments, and responses at both the global and domestic levels have failed to adequately address structural discrimination through concrete disability-specific measures.
Comprised of the broader disability community, including individuals with physical, intellectual, and mental disabilities, the disability climate justice framework recognizes that experiences of climate harm are affected by multiple identity discrimination based on race, gender, age, and other categories.
Today’s climate policies, if they mention people with disabilities at all, include them as a vulnerable group and fall short of the human rights demanded by the international disability movement. As countries update these instruments, they have the opportunity to adopt climate plans and policies that incorporate concrete disability rights-based measures.
According to a WMO report, global average temperatures in 2023 will be 1.45±0.12°C higher than pre-industrial levels, highlighting the need for rapid climate action to limit the long-term global temperature increase to well below 1.5°C. At a time when climate action is so urgent, it would be extremely unwise to exclude the world’s largest minority from climate action.
For 20 years, the Harvard Law School Disability Project has worked in more than 40 countries to help people with disabilities advocate for themselves, be included in policy making, and have their voices heard.
HLT: How are people with disabilities disproportionately affected by climate change?
Stein: Discrimination, institutional and socio-economic barriers amplify the adverse impacts of climate change on people with disabilities, affecting their health, water and food security and livelihoods. A 2022 analysis of heatwave deaths in Australia from 2001 to 2018 found that 89% of those who died had one or more disabilities, highlighting the existential importance of heatwave research and response.
People with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the climate emergency, for example, due to lack of access to shelter, transportation, health care, and medical equipment. In 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, causing many deaths, thousands of evacuations, power outages, and an estimated $90 billion in damages. According to researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, roughly one-third of the reported deaths were due to delayed or interrupted medical care. This failure was felt most keenly by people with disabilities, who make up roughly one-third of Puerto Rico’s adult population, who were left without access to life-saving medicines and electricity for their medical needs, among other damages.
Identity characteristics such as race, gender and age can also increase the climate harms experienced by people with disabilities, yet analysis of climate impacts felt by people with disabilities is currently hindered by the exclusion of disability from climate research and policymaking, and ultimately from data and climate responses.
HLT: Your work frequently touches on the intersectionality of disability, for example, how other identities like race, gender, class, etc. can interact with disability and create further injustice. Why?
Stein: An intersectional approach is essential to understanding and developing responses to climate impacts that are compounded by intersecting forms of oppression. This means not seeing harms as silos that occur in parallel, but seeing how multiple identities interact to amplify climate impacts. Intersectionality should remind us of the importance of working together as a broader climate justice movement aligned with LGBTQ+ and racial justice movements. Climate change is a “wicked problem.” Therefore, climate response and research require collaboration and solidarity.
HLT: What key priorities does the paper address?
Stein: Procedurally, people with disabilities and their representative organizations should be able to share their knowledge and experiences by meaningfully participating in climate change negotiations, policy-making, responses and research. People with disabilities are problem solvers because we have to adjust our daily lives to survive in a world that was not designed with us in mind. They have knowledge about the experience of disability and the challenges of adapting to climate change. The key point is the importance of recognizing and acknowledging this capacity. People with disabilities and their representative organizations can share knowledge about disability, including indigenous knowledge, because they understand their lives better than others.
Priorities for a comprehensive climate change response must therefore be identified by and together with disability organisations. We are committed to ensuring that climate change policies and responses do not infringe on disability-related human rights.
Existential threats that disproportionately impact people with disabilities need to be urgently explored through transformative mixed methods research, including access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene practices. Intersectional approaches are essential to developing equitable climate responses. For example, women with disabilities face hot weather that impacts maternal health, water, sanitation and hygiene insecurity, barriers to menstrual hygiene management, food insecurity and gender-based violence.
HLT: What outcomes do you hope to see from this effort?
Stein: We hope that activists and researchers, with or without disabilities, will commit to disability-inclusive climate action and research as allies. Climate-resilient, inclusive development benefits diverse people around the world, including people with disabilities.