Data & evidence missing on the impact of climate change on persons with disabilities
General overview of women gathering firewood near Kachiuru, Kenya. Approximately 500 households in Kachiuru village are to be beneficiaries of CBM’s drought response in Meru County. The village has no clean drinking water, and relies on traders who truck in water and sell it. CBM/Hayduk
Every year in July, governments and civil society get together for the High-Level Political Forum to discuss how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been implemented so far and to determine where more work needs to be done.
Data, especially data on people with disabilities, have undergone many noteworthy improvements since the establishment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its SDGs. Some Challenges include the worsening climate crises, pandemics, and conflicts, all of which have an impact on the recent advancements in development.
On July 13th, the Stakeholder Group of Persons with Disabilities organised a side event that brought together a number of OPDs to discuss the significance of statistics on people with disabilities in times of crisis, with a focus on climate change and the sharing of experiences from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is the seventh most climate change vulnerable country, according to the Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) 2021. North-eastern Bangladesh's Sylhet has suffered greatly as a result of the current flooding.
Key issues shared on OPD experiences in Bangladesh include:
· Lack of data and few OPDs able to support: There is no information on how the flooding has affected people with disabilities, and because they are spread over the region, it takes some time to provide them with financial assistance. Additionally, there aren't many OPDs to support them.
· OPDs are not being included in policy: What we have observed is the completion of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP). The four thematic areas of water resources, agricultural, livelihood security, climate change-prone urban, drought, and coastal areas would be the primary focuses of the NAP's attention. Sadly, it is not clear how or where OPDs were involved in the creation of these programmes.
· The relationship between climate change and the rights of people with disabilities may go unnoticed due to a lack of cooperation between the many government departments. For instance, the model NAP was created by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change (MoEFC). The Ministry of Social Welfare is the ministry in charge of people with disabilities, and unless there is a coordinated effort, the rights of people with disabilities may fall through the cracks.
· Donor influence: In climate change, the donors have not yet added them to enhance the skills and capacity of persons with disabilities and to work in a particular field. As a result, there is not much work being done for persons with disabilities to know exactly what situation they are in, what needs to be done for them, and how.
At the side event, some preliminary findings were also presented. Working with a master's student, CBM Global is recording the experiences of OPDs responding to the climate crisis and participating as active participants in efforts to address the crisis. Madagascar and Bangladesh, two countries participating in the CBM Global programme, are being studied.
Bangladesh's findings thus far include:
· a genuine desire for people with disabilities to be represented in government climate change meetings and a commitment to incorporating climate change into their work, but with limited resources and access.
· the necessity for more knowledge regarding how climate change is affecting their communities. The respondents highlighted how they felt the impact of experiencing negative impacts on their bodies, displacement, food insecurity, because of extreme weather events, and more information and planning for accessibility was important; and
· Some people stated that they are too busy fighting for their basic human rights to be able to focus on the effects of climate change and that more funding, networking with other organisations, and awareness-building efforts are required to do so.