Promoting Disability-Inclusive Climate Action through Litigation

Last month, HPOD, together with the Programa de Acción por la Igualdad y la Inclusión Social (PAIIS), based at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, and the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Program (DICARP), based at McGill University in Canada, submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, urging the Court to ensure that States Parties to the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) are aware of their obligations under international law to ensure that their climate change adaptation and mitigation measures are inclusive of persons with disabilities. In response to a joint request by Colombia and Chile last year, the Court is poised to deliver an advisory opinion on the scope of states' international human rights obligations to respond to the ongoing global climate crisis. The Court's opinion presents a unique opportunity for a regional human rights tribunal to articulate a broad, human rights-based framework for states to undertake climate action as well as for this Court to expand on its 2017 advisory opinion on "State obligations in relation to the environment in the context of the protection and guarantee of the rights to life and to personal integrity." 

HPOD, PAIIS, DICARP, along with numerous other signatories from throughout the Americas, recommended firstly that the Court recognize that states' ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) reinforces their obligation to reduce carbon omissions, particularly in light of Article 11, which requires States Parties to take “all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.” The amici further provided extensive examples of how the Court has increasingly interpreted states' obligations under the ACHR consistently with their CRPD duties and lastly signaled specific obligations stemming from the CRPD that the Court should consider highlighting in order to give states effective guidance on disability-inclusive climate measures. Relying in large part on recent developments in international human rights law resulting from the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the amici urged the Court to highlight states' obligations to:

1) adopt climate change mitigation and adaptation measures tailored to adequately and effectively meet the specific needs of persons with disabilities;

2) ensure both that climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are accessible to persons with disabilities and also that persons with disabilities receive the supports they may require to benefit from these measures on an equal basis with others; and 

3) guarantee that persons with disabilities and their representative organizations participate fully and effectively in all stages of planning, implementing, and monitoring climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. 

This joint effort builds on HPOD's growing body of scholarship and advocacy to promote disability-inclusive climate action. For example, in February 2022, HPOD called on the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to do more within its monitoring activities to impress upon States Parties their climate change-related obligations under the CRPD. Not long thereafter, the Committee issued its most robust recommendations for disability-inclusive climate action to date, urging Andorra to “[a]dopt a gender- and disability-responsive strategy and plans to manage situations of crisis, humanitarian emergencies and climate change”; Germany to develop an “overarching disability inclusive, human rights-based strategy for all situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies, including public health emergencies, climate change and disaster risk reduction”; and Mongolia to “[c]losely consult persons with disabilities through their representative organizations on the design and implementation of all disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation plans at the national and local levels and at all stages of the process,” among similar climate-related recommendations to Austria, Israel, Malawi, Mauritania, and Paraguay.   

The Committee's intensifying focus on States Parties' climate change-related obligations coincides with a growing global awareness of the need to ensure that all climate action is disability-inclusive. Correcting the long-standing invisibility of persons with disabilities within the global climate change agenda, disability advocates participating at the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28), for example, were able to secure explicit references in the COP 28 main outcome document to the obligations of States Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to

"respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to health, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity." 

The same is true for the COP28 agreements on the Loss and Damage Fund and on the Just Transition work programme, where UNFCCC States Parties also recognized the importance of respecting and promoting the human rights of persons with disabilities as part of their climate change agendas. Although much remains to be seen as to how states will choose to respond to the COP28 agreements, thanks in no small part to the activities of like-minded disability rights advocates and researchers throughout the world, slowly but surely the international legal order appears to be evolving to recognize an emerging global consensus that climate change efforts must be inclusive of persons with disabilities.