Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability and the Climate Crisis

Everyone is affected by climate change. But some people — who are already less visible than others — are at greater risk of harm than most. People with disabilities face different and more intense challenges than non-disabled people in the face of events like extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts.

Within the community that studies the climate crisis, however, it has taken until relatively recently to recognize this disparity, and to begin to discuss possible solutions during environmental disasters for what the World Health Organization estimates is 15 percent of the world’s population.

Study after study has shown that people with disabilities often live in poverty, have higher rates of unemployment, and are forced to overcome hurdles in accessing health care, emergency information, and other critical services associated with natural disasters.

People with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed as those without disabilities. With climate change-induced food and water shortages, people who live in poverty are in danger of becoming malnourished, and are at a higher risk of sexualized violence and exploitation when they seek sustenance.

They are also twice as likely to be unemployed than those without disabilities, the Environmental Protection Agency says, which puts them at a disadvantage as the planet heats up. “People with limited incomes may not be able to afford air conditioning in their home during heat waves, increasing their risk of heat stroke,” the agency wrote in 2016.

Disability can also raise the risk of illness or death during severe storms; disabled people may not have access to life-saving medications or hear warnings, be able to escape tight spots, or have access to emergency shelters.

The EPA cites Hurricane Katrina as a prime example of a climate event in which the disabled community suffered disproportionately. Nearly half of all deaths from the hurricane were people over 75 — while this age group only made up less than 6 percent of the area’s population. More than 10 percent of the deaths due to Katrina were in nursing homes. The EPA directly connects this to the fact that this group had “medical conditions and disabilities that made them vulnerable.”

The United Nations estimates that in 2018 alone, more than 28 million people were forced to move because of climate change. And tens of millions of people “are likely to be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure to climate change impacts,” according to the White House. On top of that, there are and will be “trapped populations” that cannot move because of infrastructure and economic disadvantages, and therefore suffer the immediate consequences of the climate crisis.

David Liebmann, a Harvard scholar who studies the intersection of disability and climate change, points to the fact that “one oft-cited estimate suggests 200 million people will be climate refugees by 2050.” Factoring in that 15 percent of the global population has an intellectual or physical disability, he says, “30 million of those climate refugees will require different kinds of support.”

Still, as with many social justice movements, the people being discussed are more often than not excluded from the conversation. During the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021, the International Disability Alliance and the International Disability and Development Consortium put out a statement with this particularly important paragraph: “Without meaningful inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, climate action is missing 15 percent of our planet’s population who have the right, responsibility, and capacity to be part of the solution to this global crisis.”

As Liebmann put it: “A mantra of the disabled community is ‘Nothing about us without us.’ It's vital to remember that the work must be a partnership, whatever it looks like.”