Abstract
Although protecting the most vulnerable populations is a central priority in climate resilience planning, people with disabilities (PWDs) are rarely addressed explicitly in climate planning. This case study analyzes the inclusion of PWDs in climate resilience planning, using Massachusetts’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program, the state’s comprehensive approach to climate resilience planning, as a case study. Drawing on in-depth interviews, document review, and participation in a multisectoral working group addressing disability issues, we find that the planning program includes only minimal attention to disability issues overall, that differences in PWDs’ functional abilities were not addressed, and that the challenges PWDs face in participating in planning processes—physical, logistical, and communication barriers—were not considered. A discussion explores reasons for this oversight, including the limits of disability designations in climate planning, the intersection of disabilities with other factors of marginalization, and the emphasis on physical rather than social models of disabilities in climate planning. We argue that environmental justice frameworks, as operationalized in climate resilience planning, could better support the needs of PWDs by including a rights-based approach.
INTRODUCTION
Governing institutions from the international to the local level are organizing efforts to minimize impacts of climate change on people, places, and systems. In these efforts, it is widely recognized that climate change will exacerbate existing inequities, and therefore protecting the most vulnerable populations is a central priority.1,2,3,4 Despite constituting 15% of the global population and 26% of adults in the United States,5,6 people with disabilities (PWDs) are rarely addressed explicitly in climate planning discourses, even when the focus is on vulnerable populations. 7 PWDs experience more death, illness, and loss from climate change events and are four times more likely to die during a disaster than those without a disability. 8 In addition to overt challenges associated with more frequent and severe storms, PWDs face compounding issues, including poverty, ineffective evacuation measures, and insufficient insurance plans.9,10 PWDs remain significantly understudied in climate resilience research, creating a critical knowledge gap that hinders the development of inclusive adaptation strategies.
This article investigates the inclusion of PWDs in climate resilience planning using Massachusetts’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program as a case study. Examining local and state climate resilience plans is crucial as climate change impacts are often most pronounced at local levels, and policies at these scales can have a significant effect on the adaptive capacity of communities, including PWDs. 11 As a program focused on vulnerable populations, ostensibly grounded in justice principles, so overlooks this population is not viewed as a failure of the state apparatus; in fact, MVP officials responded proactively to address shortcomings revealed by preliminary results of this case study. Rather, it suggests that the way environmental justice (EJ) is operationalized in climate resilience planning discourses is not adequately addressing the needs of PWDs.
PROBLEM
Research has begun to document the particular ways in which PWDs are affected by climate change impacts. Climate-related disaster events exacerbate existing health conditions for PWDs, as these events disrupt the availability of food, health care, secure shelter, and important social relations. 12 In addition to acute climate events, gradual, slow onset events such as drought, economic stressors, and climate-induced migration result in their own unique impacts on PWDs. Furthermore, PWDs with certain preexisting health conditions and long-term chronic illnesses, such chronic respiratory diseases, are more likely to be affected by some gradual, slow-onset changes, such as increased temperatures and exposure to air pollutants. Individuals who are on medications for physical or mental health can also be impacted by rising temperatures, whereas increased psychological distress and impaired mental health have been linked to a range of other climate impacts. 13
PWDs also face unique challenges in climate disasters owing to their limited access to resources, a symptom of their systemic neglect. Kosanic and colleagues describe how disaster preparedness and emergency response systems are largely designed for people without disabilities, as these plans involve activities such as walking, running, driving, seeing, and hearing. 14 Even while developing climate resilience measures around the needs of more vulnerable populations, practitioners and policymakers pay little attention to disability issues, rendering those needs largely “invisible” in climate adaptation efforts. 15
Massachusetts has been a leader in addressing climate change since the 1980s, when the state elevated the rebuilt Deer Island sewage treatment plant in Boston Harbor several feet above worst-case storm surge estimates, 16 and has continued leadership in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The MVP program, developed in 2017, represents the state’s comprehensive approach to climate resilience planning. Through the program, local governments and municipalities receive funding and technical assistance to assess their vulnerability to climate change and develop action plans. Initially, municipalities receive a planning grant, which, upon completion, makes them eligible to apply for MVP Action Grants, which facilitate projects that reinforce resilience in various areas, including vulnerability assessments, community outreach, and the development of green infrastructure. Beyond financial assistance, the program offers planning toolkits, a comprehensive resource library, sample documentation, and postgrant advisory sessions. Moreover, participants can benefit from a peer-driven resource exchange network to share insights and best practices.
The program has achieved widespread participation among municipalities, with most of Massachusetts’s municipalities participating. However, the incomplete consideration of PWDs and their specific vulnerabilities to climate disasters within the program means that municipalities responding to the program’s incentives and guidance reproduce this oversight.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The lack of attention to disability issues within climate resilience planning is puzzling given that climate change research and policy has increasingly adopted justice-based frameworks that recognize how sociopolitical marginalization produces vulnerability in the face of environmental change.17,18 This case study suggests, following Pellow 19 and others engaged in critical EJ studies, that prevailing frameworks of EJ—as operationalized in planning discourses and policy formation—overlook the lived experiences of some marginalized peoples and stymy the transformative aims of EJ.
EJ, as it has come to be operationalized in planning paradigms, encompasses three primary understandings of justice. 20 Distributional justice focuses on the unequal presence of environmental harms, as well as the scarcity and inferiority of parks, greenspaces, and other environmental amenities, in communities of color and lower socioeconomic statuses. 21 Procedural justice addresses the processes to define public policies about environmental amenities and hazards and whether these processes are inclusive, fair, and representative. 22 Recognitional justice is based on the understanding that failure to acknowledge the lifeways, culture, and values of those affected by environmental problems devalues individuals and communities, allowing injustice to persist in risk analysis and in planning outcomes even where procedures appear to be inclusive. 23 Climate change, in exposing and exacerbating these social inequities,24,25 and more broadly reconfiguring human–nature configurations, demands all the insights of EJ.
Although EJ principles underpin the focus on vulnerable populations in climate adaptation discourses, Anguelovski and colleagues describe how the “compartmentalized tridimensional account of justice” only allows for a limited view of the ways in which residents experience injustice. 26 Domingue, in her case study of climate adaptation in Louisianna, describes how adaptation actors recognize some forms of social vulnerability yet still frame the priorities of EJ communities in ways that de-link those communities—primarily communities of color in her study—from the larger (white) society. 27 Vaughn shows how a racial political order in Guyana determines access to climate protections that are ostensibly aimed at protecting vulnerable groups. 28 In framing what constitutes justice, the knowledges, practices, and testimonies of some marginalized groups are allowed to surface and are legitimated while others are overlooked. 29
Although an emancipatory, anti-subordination EJ requires more than an expansion of established EJ frameworks, 30 a notion of justice that may meaningfully advance inclusion for PWDs in climate planning is readily available in the rights-based frameworks of justice. 31 Enshrined throughout the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a rights-based understanding regards disabled individuals as rights bearers entitled to legal protection and substantive equality. 32 It requires signatory states to take appropriate measures to ensure persons with disabilities the access to the physical environment, including transportation, information, and other facilities and services open to the public, access to work and safe working conditions, the right to water and sanitation, and the right to adequate housing, including security of tenure, protection against forced evictions, availability of services, and cultural adequacy, with the right to accessibility being an important precondition for the realization of other rights. Highlighting these rights as a basis of EJ turns attention to the “homes, plazas, neighborhoods, and workplaces” that Anguelovski and colleagues see as the essential site for politicizing and rehumanizing “place–life relationships.” 33
CASE STUDY DESIGN
Case selection
To examine the inclusivity of PWDs in the MVP program, we employed a case study approach. Massachusetts’ leadership in climate resilience planning, the wide reach of the MVP program—the program extends guidance to all state municipalities and is utilized by 95% of the state’s 351 municipalities—and linkage of state goals and municipal actions made it a fitting case study for examining how PWDs are addressed within climate planning. Our primary research objectives were threefold: to evaluate inclusion of PWDs in MVP planning processes and outcomes at the state level; to assess the extent of consideration of PWDs’ needs in municipal level projects under the MVP’s ambit; and to contextualize Massachusetts’ strategy within the broader landscape of climate resilience planning, specifically focusing on the reasons behind the limited attention directed toward the needs of PWDs in climate resilience planning.
Data collection and study setting
The study’s research methods included in-depth interviews with MVP officials, Massachusetts’ climate resilience planning officials in other agencies, and disability experts; review of public documents associated with the MVP; and participation in a weekly multisectoral working group addressing disability issues at the local, state, and national levels. Interviews and participation in the working group occurred from August 15, 2021 through April 28, 2022. Because of pandemic restrictions at the time, interviews were conducted via video call on Zoom, with follow-ups via email, phone, or text, per the preference of the informants. All of the in-depth interview participants were located within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the time of the interviews, and the interviews were between 60 and 90 minutes long. Ethical approval for the research was obtained from the Internal Review Board at the authors’ institution, and informed consent was obtained from all research participants.
In-depth interviews were held for a total of 12 participants, focused on gaining information and perspectives about the MVP and state-level climate planning priorities and processes. Additional interviews were also conducted with leading national and international disability advocates from the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and Saving Institutional Lives Via Emergency Relocation (SILVER), two organizations that respond to displaced PWDs during and after emergencies. PWDs involved in community, national, and international disaster planning were also interviewed for their expert opinions about the experiences of PWDs during climate disasters and best practices for inclusive climate planning.
Sampling method
These interviewees were selected through a purposive sampling approach aimed at engaging experts and leaders in the fields of climate resilience planning, disability advocacy, and intersections between the two fields. A purposive sample of experts is a more efficient way of generating “information-rich” cases than random sampling in qualitative studies.34,35 The sample was generated through a snowball sampling method, 36 beginning with experts in climate resilience planning and disability advocacy with whom the researchers had familiarity from earlier professional engagements.
All participants held a leadership role in a state agency, local municipality, or advocacy organization. Interviews were designed as semi-structured conversations around eight open questions designed to produce rich data related to state-level policy formation and governance practices. 37 These exploratory questions asked participants to discuss explicit and tacit priorities related to policy formation practices and inclusion of marginalized groups, including PWDs. Interview responses were coded to identify emergent themes, and multiple interviewees were subsequently engaged in follow-up “member checking” conversations to clarify and elaborate on themes. The sample of 12 participants was deemed sufficient, following other research in qualitative studies38,39 as the information power inherent in the sample of experts from policy and advocacy groups, and the in-depth nature of the interviews, allowed us to achieve theoretical sufficiency about the research questions. Although additional nuance may have been discovered through more interviews, strongly coherent themes had emerged through engagement with this sample.
Rigor in the analysis was assured by using a detailed question guide to facilitate interviews, transcription, and textual coding of interviews, and member checking to confirm accuracy and validity. The contextual inferences of the research setting and participants, as policy and advocacy leaders at the state level, make the findings transferable to climate resilience planning processes in other U.S. states and at other scales and locations.
Limitations of the study
A limitation with the study is that, as the analysis revealed, PWDs encompass an extremely diverse group with a range of experiences related to climate events and planning processes, with these experiences intersecting with other registers of identity. Research participants included interviewees with self-disclosed disabilities related to sight impairment and physical disabilities, and experts within disability advocacy, and we rely on this sample to represent the experiences of PWDs as it pertains to inclusion within climate resilience planning in Massachusetts. Another limitation is that the state’s climate resilience planning efforts are an ongoing undertaking. As this research was ongoing, the state was formulating its Municipal Vulnerability Program 2.0 and preliminary findings from the research, in fact, prompted MVP officials to convene a working group on inclusion for PWDs. The findings from this study describe the context before MVP 2.0, which was released after the research period.
We analyzed public records pertaining to the MVP over the duration of its existence, from 2017 to 2022, which included state-level criteria and guidelines for municipal grants and materials provided to municipalities to assist in the development of municipal climate adaptation plans, including the Community Resilience Building Guide, the toolkits MVP disseminates to municipalities with guidance on resilience strategies, and the submissions that municipalities provide when applying for planning grants.
RESULTS: CHARACTERIZING PWD’S INCLUSION IN THE MVP PROGRAM
Minimal consideration given to PWDs
The examination of the MVP program aimed to assess its effectiveness in meeting the needs of PWDs and promoting inclusivity of this marginalized group in municipal-level projects. Our analysis of the MVP plan revealed a focus on identifying and engaging communities vulnerable to climate hazards but specific planning for disability issues had minimal attention as of mid-2022. Public records related to MVP, including documents provided to municipalities, had minimal mention of PWDs. When mentioned, PWDs were listed among vulnerable communities, but the information provided lacked detailed guidance. Although racial inequality, income inequality, and limited English proficiency were discussed extensively within the MVP Environmental Justice Equity toolkit, disability was mentioned only once in a sentence that included “income level, disability, racial inequity, health status, or age.” 40 By contrast, racial inequality was mentioned 12 times, income inequality 9 times, and limited English proficiency 8 times.
Only one municipality of the 270 that participated in the MVP explicitly addressed the needs of PWDs throughout their proposed climate resilience plan. This municipal plan included concrete examples for addressing the needs of PWDs in climate planning. For instance, the plan included accessible infrastructure measures, such as installing wheelchair ramps and tactile paving in areas prone to climate hazards, and included accessibility assessments of evacuation routes and shelters to ensure they were accommodating for individuals with different disabilities.
Our investigation revealed a significant oversight in addressing the needs of PWDs within municipal climate planning through the MVP program. The significant oversight of PWDs was confirmed by the Greater Boston Regional Coordinator of the Massachusetts MVP program who said that PWD-specific information was absent from the materials shared with municipalities, resulting in inadequate consideration of PWDs’ needs in municipal planning. The coordinator also emphasized the significance of our study in influencing the revision of MVP’s framework. She suggested that enhancing the inclusivity for PWDs could be decided among the MVP officials, stating, “If we think it’s a good idea, we can just incorporate it into the update.” Additional information about MVP was gathered at an environmental networking event specifically organized for individuals associated with MVP. During this event, we engaged with a regional coordinator from a Massachusetts region different from that of the previously mentioned official as well as with two professionals who had collaborated with MVP on their municipality’s MVP planning grants. These individuals confirmed the lack of specific, actionable content addressing the needs of PWDs in the MVP guidelines and settings they had encountered.
Disability advocate Harriotte, who is blind, also confirmed that “there’s not much awareness, let alone structured steps [from the government]” when it comes to PWDs being at greater risk of climate change. Although a larger portion of the municipal MVP proposals indicated funds for PWDs in resilience planning, they failed to address the needs of this population in the proposals. In contrast, higher levels of resources, and specific planning interventions, were allocated to addressing the needs of other marginalized groups, such as the elderly and low-income residents.
Barriers for PWDs to participation in MVP planning
Although extensive efforts were made within MVP planning processes to engage diverse stakeholders, including vulnerable populations, PWDs and their needs were conspicuously absent from these processes. A webinar entitled “Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) Equity and Climate Planning MVP” was held in the inaugural year of the program, 41 which provided detailed information about groups requiring extra consideration owing to climate change vulnerability, including specific examples, outreach strategies, modifications to facilitate participation, case studies, and descriptions of how climate change impacts these communities, and PWDs were not mentioned. To address these disadvantages, Harriotte says that she, “operates on the premise that being blind puts [her] in the minority, so [she] learned to advocate for [herself]” and others with her advocacy work with PWDs. Many people we interviewed mentioned that there was no mention in the MVP materials of modifications that would accommodate blind or deaf individuals. Furthermore, our readings and examination of the materials indicated that PWDs were not considered in terms of the challenges they face with mobility and navigation of planning processes.
In her observations on preparedness, disability advocate Harriotte further highlighted that “the hardest part is that the resources for preparedness are distributed via the web. There needs to be a central library of resources [compiled] from different advocacy and provisional groups” that cater to the varied needs of PWDs. As a person who is blind, materials were not easily accessible for her. This insight shows a gap in the current MVP programs. Although the MVPs may include infrastructure for accessibility, they often lack detailed strategies for incorporating PWDs into the local climate resilience planning processes. The one municipal MVP proposal that did include accessibility infrastructure still failed to provide specific guidance on engaging PWDs effectively.
DISCUSSION
This discussion aims to parse out how this particular expression of environmental injustice played out, such that PWDs were so overlooked in climate resilience planning in Massachusetts, a leading state in climate resilience planning. We tease out some particular aspects of disability issues that make accounting for and including PWDs difficult within the EJ frameworks that underpin climate resilience planning in practice. Vulnerability mapping processes, a foundational step in local and state resilience planning that is intended to incorporate information, experiences, and dialogue from diverse populations within municipalities, perpetually excludes PWDs owing to difficulties representing this particularly diverse community which is not characterized by shared community histories, cultural and race relations, or geographies. The discussion points mentioned in the following section highlight the individualized nature of PWDs’ marginalization while also addressing systemic issues that work against protecting the rights of PWDs in climate resilience planning.
The limits of disability designations for climate planning
Inclusive climate resilience planning requires a comprehensive understanding of the diverse abilities and disabilities of individuals as well as the specific barriers PWDs face during climate emergencies. Planning orthodoxies rely on disability categorization systems—the three most commonly used systems are medical diagnoses, the US Census classification system, and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)—which inadequately differentiate between disabilities as diagnostic categories and disabilities as functional limits. Medical categories do not provide the information needed to describe a person’s functional limits as it applies to interacting with existing systems. 42 For instance, two people with very different diagnoses might have the same functional limitation and cannot climb steps; however, one might be a medically healthy person with severe ankle damage while the other might have breathing problems.
In the U.S. Census categorization, which is also used in the Centers for Disease Control, four categories qualitatively describe functional limits—difficulties in ambulation, cognition, hearing, and vision—along with categories for independent living and self-care, which is not sufficient for describing the disparate abilities and disabilities of diverse people. The ICF is intended for use in a medical care context at the other extreme; its specificity is too great to be useful in planning, with distinct codes for specific medical diagnosis, the situation in which it arose, and the number of times it has occurred.
Kailes developed the C-MIST Framework (Communication, Medical, Independence, Supervision, & Transportation), aiming to create a more accurate and flexible planning and response framework that is based on essential, sometimes overlapping, functional needs. 43 The C-MIST framework initially focused on communication, medical needs, maintaining functional independence, supervision, and transportation and was modified in 2020 to include maintaining health, independence, support, safety, self-determination, and transportation. 44 Kailes’ work serves as a guide for understanding of the needs of PWDs rather than being a definitive framework that specifies and meets all needs but it is useful for thinking about the rights of PWDs in climate disasters and long-term climate planning.
Disability intersects with other experiences of marginalization
Intersectionality theory plays a crucial role in understanding the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities in the context of climate-related disasters. 45 Adults with disabilities in the United States are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than those with no disabilities (27% compared with 12%). Black American adults with disabilities experience an even higher rate of poverty, at 37% compared with 20% of Black American adults without a disability. 46 Marginalization and poverty translate into less access to resources even before a crisis event, resulting in fewer resources to plan for that event and fewer savings to bounce back from such an event. Poor and disabled people worldwide disproportionately live in areas of high climate hazard. 47 In addition, where a disaster event results in loss of employment and income, these outcomes can lead to loss of assistive devices, ranging from basic wheelchairs to digital technologies for people without vision or hearing. Devices lost or damaged during such events are less likely to be replaceable, representing an ongoing loss of autonomy, which also diminishes chances of regaining employment. PWDs who are female, living alone, of non-White ethnicity, or low-income status may experience exacerbated marginalization, discrimination, and difficulties during disasters.48,49
King and Gregg describe how disability cuts across various demographic factors and therefore is often overlooked as a social identity; the ways in which disability intersects with other social categories is even less understood. 50 These intersecting vulnerabilities are intensified by the perspective described by Jodoin and colleagues, which regards individuals with disabilities as “the least worth saving.” 51 The intersectional identities of PWDs mean that they bring perspectives that can address multiple facets of vulnerability. When these perspectives are omitted from policy discussions, it can lead to the creation of strategies that fail to fully address the layered challenges they encounter. Many barriers can impact this group.
Barriers can limit PWD participation in events intended to support community input. These include physical barriers (e.g., settings inaccessible to wheelchairs), logistic barriers (e.g., locations not served by public transportation, insufficiently accessible directions within large buildings), and communication barriers including initial outreach (e.g., inaccessible to people with hearing or visual impairments or low literacy). PWDs experience greater poverty, so financial barriers may impede both transportation costs to in-person events as well as equipment and bandwidth to access virtual events. The absence of PWDs’ voices may result in something analogous to a false negative; that is, it may give a false impression that there is no unmet need. 52 By neglecting to include PWDs in the initial planning and development of the MVP program, a path was established that disregarded their unique challenges and requirements and has had far-reaching consequences that created a systemic barrier for PWDs, preventing their meaningful participation in shaping climate resilience plans.
Focus on physical rather than social models of disability
The starting point for addressing the needs of PWDs within planning is a physical model of disability. The physical vulnerability model emphasizes the medical aspects of disability and the individualized needs of PWDs, viewing them from the type of help individuals may need because of their disability. Two recent reports, from the U.S. Global Change Research Program 53 and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 54 identify persons with disabilities as needing particular attention in preparing for and responding to climate-related extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts because of their specific access and functional needs, dependence on caregivers and others for assistance, and potential reliance on medical equipment that could be damaged or inoperable during power outages. This prevailing view locates the problem within the individual and the medical characteristics of the nonconforming body.
The social model of disability emphasizes that the disaster risk experienced by a disabled individual stems primarily from the societal shortcomings in the predisaster society. In this light, high rates of poverty and low employment rates of PWDs are viewed as significant impediments to climate resilience, and are themselves attributable to societal phenomena such as discrimination in the workplace, inadequate accommodations, and insufficient safety net programs. This view aligns with the pressure and release model of disaster risk, which views disaster risk as a product of both physical hazards, including the medical impairment, and social vulnerability caused by socio-economic factors. 55 Although the physical vulnerability model offers insights into the concrete, immediate challenges PWDs might face during climate disasters, it constrains formation of policy and planning approaches that could address systemic climate vulnerabilities of PWDs.
Undifferentiated characterization of PWDs
Given the limited attention to PWDs at all within state and municipal materials, it is not surprising, but still significant, that planning documents did not identify different kinds of disabilities or functional limits for PWDs. “People with disabilities” might include people with vision and hearing loss, physical disabilities, speech disability, mental health disabilities, developmental and other cognitive disabilities, or behavioral health issues, as well as cross-disability access issues such as hearing, vision, mobility, speech, and cognitive limitations. 56 Ignoring such differences has led to vague planning for physical access, inadequate communication, poor services and accommodations access, response failures and, overall, inability to provide life-saving help to PWDs in climate emergencies.
For instance, Weibgen, 57 Aryankhesal, 58 and Roth 59 indicate that differentiating disability types or functional limits is a precursor to identifying the particular barriers that limit PWDs’ access to resilience resources meant for all. The identification of such barriers, which differ by disability types or functional limits, can inform plans to remove those barriers, enabling equal access to life-saving public resources.
CONCLUSION
The goal of this project was to use the lens of Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Program to explore the inclusivity of PWDs in climate resilience planning. The significant oversight of PWDs in climate resilience planning even within this leading state turned our attention to the reasons this population elides consideration within climate planning orthodoxies, which otherwise prioritize the concerns of vulnerable populations. To the program’s credit, the recent release of the MVP 2.0 program materials provides for better inclusivity of PWDs, both in the materials and in the expert working groups. 60 We argue that the broad lack of inclusion of PWDs in climate planning practice and discourses reflects limits to the frameworks of EJ that underpin climate planning. By integrating insights from critical EJ research and advocacy, along with established principles within disability research and advocacy, we propose that adopting a rights-based approach to justice can broaden the scope of EJ. This expansion can enhance the capacity of climate resilience planning to better address the real-life challenges faced by individuals with disabilities.
We argue that adopting a rights-based approach emphasizes the need for special consideration of the fundamental human rights of PWDs in the context of climate disasters and gradual climate impacts. This approach involves several factors:
Conducting accessible needs assessments to ensure that the specific needs of PWDs are addressed effectively. Removing barriers to their participation in planning discussions to facilitate their active involvement. Employing communication techniques that are inclusive and accommodate everyone, particularly individuals with sensory or cognitive challenges. Tracking both individuals and groups at the highest risk of mortality to tackle the disproportionately high death rates among PWDs during climate emergencies.
Although a rights-based approach presents challenges for climate planning, such as data collection, tracking, and resource allocation, we align with disability advocates who argue for a social determinants of risk framework. This framework shifts the focus from individual failures to adapt to environmental risk factors to the societal factors that perpetuate the marginalization of PWDs. These societal factors include stigmas that contribute to the disproportionate impacts of disasters on this population. Eriksen and colleagues describe how focusing on the rights of PWDs deepens our understanding of social justice, both by shifting the focus from the individual’s disability to society’s responsibility regarding the condition of disability and by identifying the lack of inclusion for PWDs in societal activities as a violation of human rights. 61
The social model views disability, following Lawson and Beckett, as “a socially produced injustice which it is possible to challenge and eliminate through radical social change,” 62 and this is not only crucial for protecting the lives and dignity of disabled individuals but it can also facilitate a just transition and promote climate resilience for society at large.
Footnotes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank all the participants who contributed to the research, through interviews and participation in the working group.
AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS
C.B.: Conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, writing—review and editing, supervision, and project administration. S.M.: Conceptualization, methodology, writing—review and editing, supervision, and project administration. R.A.-A.: Methodology, writing—original draft.
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No competing financial interests exist.
FUNDING INFORMATION
No external funding sources supported this research.