The climate crisis poses major risks to human life and livelihoods, in ways that are compounding and creating new forms of social inequality. Disabled people – including 15% of the global population – are disproportionately exposed to these risks.

Yet, there remains negligible literature on disability-inclusive climate adaptation, and countries are largely neglecting obligations to respect, protect or fulfil disability rights through national climate policies.

When considered, disabled people are typically homogenised as climate ‘victims’; a framing that does little to address the social or political conditions that create such risks, or to recognise the potential contributions of disabled people as knowledgeable agents of change.

This collaborative programme of interdisciplinary research aims to explore and demonstrate as-yet overlooked opportunities to foreground disability rights and knowledges in climate adaptation scholarship, policy and practice, focusing on:

EXPERIENCES AND ADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE

An in-depth programme of qualitative research will be conducted to examine how people with varied histories and experiences of disability are experiencing and adapting to climate change in three pertinent case study cities: Dublin (Ireland), Glasgow and Bristol (UK). Arts-based approaches will be embedded throughout to support diverse opportunities to reflect on, share and instigate new discussions about disability, social justice and climate adaptation.

RIGHTS

Key policy and legal documentation will be analysed to locate disability within local, national and international climate law and policy. Documentary analysis and stakeholder interviews will be used to identify gaps in disability rights protection, implementation and opportunities for reform in each case study region. This analysis will examine the roles that the rights and participation of disabled people could and should play in climate law and policy frameworks.

INFORMING CHANGE

Care will be taken to synthesise and share findings from across the project, to:

(a) identify the intersectional processes leading to the inclusion/exclusion of disabled people in climate adaptation;

(b) counter the marginalisation of disabled people in climate adaptation;

(c) harness climate adaptation to create disability-inclusive, liveable cities, in the world as it is now and as it changes.

IncluADAPT – Disability-Inclusive Climate Adaptation – will be led by Dr Bell and will seek to address the current tendency for climate change adaptation to exclude the insights and priorities of disabled people.

Dr Sarah Bell, Senior Lecturer in Health Geography in the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, has been awarded £1.2m via the UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee after originally being recommended for the 2022 round of European Research Council Starting Grant funding. The work will also be expanded upon with £100,000 funding awarded as part of the Philip Leverhulme 2022 Prize in Geography.

The funding will enable the project team to develop a collaborative, interdisciplinary programme of research, combining documentary analysis, qualitative and arts-based approaches within and beyond the case study cities. It will work with a range of pioneering initiatives, such as the agenda-setting disability-led grassroots community climate action plan co-produced as part of Bristol’s Community Climate Action project.