Disability, Human Rights, and Climate Justice

Abstract

The universally dire threat of climate change disproportionately affects marginalized populations, including the over one billion persons with disabilities worldwide. States that disregard the Paris Agreement, or exclude disabled persons from climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, are violating agreed-upon human rights obligations. Notably, the rights contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, are threatened by climate change. To date, however, disability has largely been excluded from international climate change negotiations as well as national-level discharge of climate-related measures. By contrast, a disability human rights approach views disabled persons as disproportionately experiencing environmental threats and unnatural disasters due to their exclusion from state laws, policies, and services available to their non-disabled peers. Additionally, a disability human rights approach mandates the removal of exclusionary barriers and the implementation of positive measures to ensure the equitable treatment of individuals with disabilities. Achieving disability-inclusive climate justice requires “participatory justice”—empowering persons with disabilities to ascertain climate mitigation and adaptation approaches that are efficacious for, successfully implementable by, and accountable to disabled people. Disability-inclusive climate justice solutions are in synergy with universal climate justice goals and benefit entire societies, not “only” those with disabilities.