This petition demands that all 164 signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities explicitly include and engage with disabled people in the decision making processes around climate change policy. This would enable disabled people’s lived experience to inform policy making and give disabled people a voice in decisions which affect them.

There is little mention of disabled people in governments’ Nationality Determined Contributions, Climate mitigation policies and Climate adaptation policies. Nationally Determined Contributions are the contributions each Party to the United Nations Paris agreement agrees to make towards reducing their individual greenhouse gas emissions. It is against international human rights laws not to include mention of disabled people, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The preamble to the Paris Agreement affirms that, “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights,” including disability rights. By not including disabled people in climate policy, governments are breaking international human rights laws.

Disabled people are more at risk in the climate crisis. Globally 1.3 billion people are disabled. This is 16% of the global population. Lack of legislation around disability rights by  governments is already leading to such things as lack of accessible transportation during evacuations of disaster impacted areas and lack of accessible communications about climate related issues with fatal consequences.  In Germany, on July 15th 2021, twelve disabled people living in an assisted living home, died when floodwaters swept over them. In 2017, in Florida, twelve older people in a nursing home suffocated to death when the air conditioning was knocked out by Hurricane Irma. In Japan, in July 2020, fourteen nursing home residents died due to flooding. As UK resident Denise Ashurst says, “Disability is hugely complex... If mitigating climate risks is also complex, we are a multitude of accidents waiting to happen.  Approximately, 30,000 excess deaths are already the norm according to medics. We will die faster as this crisis escalates. This isn't natural selection, it's dereliction of duty by politicians and budget holders. We need not be the collateral damage of neglect of science, but we already are…”

Neglecting including disabled people in climate mitigation policies means ignoring the meaningful contributions disabled people could make. These measures could include things with universal benefits such as wheelchair accessible public transport. This would also be useful for baby strollers.