IncluADAPT: Disability-Inclusive Climate Adaptation

Climate change poses major risks to human health and livelihoods, in ways that are compounding and creating new forms of health inequality. Disabled people - including 15% of the global population - are disproportionately exposed to these risks, experiencing higher injury and death rates and fewer opportunities to influence climate policy or action. By homogenising disabled people as climate 'victims', current efforts to tackle these inequalities largely fail to address the social, cultural and political conditions that exacerbate such risks. The knowledges and adaptive capacities of disabled people must be recognised and respected to enhance the transformative potential of inclusive climate adaptation and prevent maladaptive planning.

Comprising three work packages, in three pertinent case study cities, IncluADAPT will explore and demonstrate as-yet overlooked opportunities to foreground disability rights and knowledges in climate adaptation scholarship, policy and practice.

RIGHTS - WP1 will analyse key policy and legal documentation within and beyond the case study areas to understand whether and how disability knowledges and rights are included within climate change law and policy. It will examine the roles that the rights and participation of disabled people could and should play in climate law and policy frameworks.

EXPERIENCES AND ADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE - WP2 will draw on an in-depth programme of qualitative research to examine how people with varied histories and experiences of disability are experiencing and adapting to climate change in the three case study cities: Dublin (Ireland), Glasgow and Bristol (UK).

INFORMING CHANGE - WP3 will synthesise the project findings and provoke wider publics and decision-makers to: (a) recognise and counter the marginalisation of disabled people in climate adaptation; and (b) re-imagine how climate adaptation policy and practice could create more inclusive spaces with and for disabled people.