COP27: Progress Made in Disability-Inclusive Climate Action but States Still Failing to Respect the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
By Amanda Bowie-Edwards
A side event co-hosted by McGill University, “From Exclusion to Leadership: People with Disabilities Develop An Agenda for Inclusive Climate Action.”
The 27th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday, November 20th. Dubbed the “African COP,” it resulted in a landmark agreement by States to establish a fund to provide compensation for the loss and damage caused by climate change following years of advocacy by countries in the Global South and civil society. Unfortunately, this achievement was undermined by the simultaneous failure of States to reach an agreement on the phasing out of all fossil fuels. Without progress on this front, the impacts of climate change will inevitably continue to threaten the social and physical infrastructure of countries vulnerable to climate change. The failure of States to take decisive action to fight climate change and limit warning also means that climate change will continue to threaten the effective enjoyment of a wide range of human rights for all individuals. However, the rights of certain groups are threatened more severely than others.
Persons with disabilities are among those most affected by the impacts of climate change. However, climate action often fails to include persons with disabilities. Although States have clear obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of persons with disabilities in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, an updated status report on the inclusion of disability rights in national climate policies by the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme and the International Disability Alliance, reveals that States are fall short of these obligations. Only 37 of 192 State Parties to the Paris Agreement currently refer to persons with disabilities in their NDCs, while only 46 refer to persons with disabilities in their domestic climate adaptation policies. Moreover, even those States that refer to persons with disabilities in their climate policies often fail to include concrete measures to ensure that the substantive and procedural rights of persons with disabilities are respected.
In the face of this reality, the efforts by human rights and disabled persons organizations during COP27 to ensure that States’ responses to climate change are inclusive of persons with disabilities are all the more significant. Indeed, COP27 saw several notable achievements in the area of disability rights.
Last year, the first-ever official side event to focus on disability in the history of the UN climate negotiations was held at COP26 in Glasgow. This year, the progress continued with two official side events focusing on persons with disabilities and numerous other events featuring speakers with expertise in disability rights. Topics discussed included the involvement of persons with disabilities in the UNFCCC, the rights of Indigenous persons with disabilities, and the inclusion of persons with disabilities in responses to loss and damage. Many events featured speakers who identify as individuals with disabilities, ensuring that persons with disabilities themselves were at the forefront of discussions on climate change and disability.
Progress was also made in advancing the inclusion of persons with disabilities in climate action. The draft decision on the Action plan under the Glasgow work programme on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) includes, for the first time, actionable language regarding persons with disabilities. The decision provides that when mapping existing guidelines and good practices under the Glasgow work programme, special consideration should be given to persons with disabilities. The ACE decision also references the eleventh preambular paragraph of the Paris Agreement, which indicates that Parties should, when taking action to prevent climate change, respect, promote, and consider their obligations on the rights of persons with disabilities. These references are an important step in ensuring that persons with disabilities are empowered to engage in climate action.
Although the developments at COP27 are meaningful, they are insufficient. States must begin to uphold their obligations under international law by designing and implementing climate mitigation and adaptation efforts that include persons with disabilities and respect and protect their rights. Doing so requires States, especially those in the Global North, to take ambitious measures to prevent further warming, including phasing out fossil fuels. Their failure to do so means that the impacts of climate change will only continue to worsen, further threatening the rights – and lives – of persons with disabilities.
A mural by Shilo Shiv Suleman on the wall of the Children and Youth Pavilion