Surviving the Climate Crisis with a Disability:

I remember the day the heat nearly killed my mother. It was a 45°C afternoon in our Delhi slum, and our one-room home had turned into an oven. I was 12, fanning her with a newspaper as power cuts silenced the fan. Born with chronic asthma, she gasped for air in the thick, burning heat. I dashed between a trickling municipal tap and her bedside, trying to keep her cool and hydrated. At the same time, I was fighting my own body’s rebellion — my head pounding, coordination faltering from dyspraxia, words stuck in my throat from anxiety. In that moment, climate change wasn’t an abstract concept; it was personal. It was the sweat on my brow, the panic in my chest, and the very real fear that help was out of reach for us.

Growing up with disabilities (I have an undiagnosed learning disability and a stammer) in a low-income neighborhood, I have always lived the climate crisis at ground level. Extreme heat, choking winters of smog, water shortages — these were the backdrop of my childhood. But while everyone in our area suffered, not everyone suffered equally. I noticed that families like mine, without money or mobility, were hit the hardest. And within our community, people with disabilities — those who couldn’t see, walk, hear, or process information quickly — were struggling in ways that remained largely invisible to others. Each summer’s heatwave or each season’s torrential rains added an extra layer of difficulty to lives already made precarious by disability and poverty. Yet, nobody talked about it. Our struggles were either ignored or seen as unfortunate but normal.

Over the past two years, I set out to change that silence. I spoke with dozens of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill Indians about how climate change is impacting them. Their stories echoed my own experience and opened my eyes further. Ritu, a young woman living with multiple sclerosis, told me how she stopped leaving her house when April’s temperatures soared beyond 42°C. “It’s like being trapped in your own skin,” she said quietly over a phone call. “Even the fan feels like fire now.”For her, stepping outside is nearly impossible — her wheelchair can’t navigate the sun-baked, broken pavements, and there’s no shade or ramps anyway. “I don’t need sympathy,” Ritu added. “I need a city I can survive in.”

Then there’s Ankur, a 24-year-old on the autism spectrum, who described how a short trip to buy groceries became a sensory nightmare in the heat. “The heat feels like needles on my skin. The noise from traffic is louder, the smells stronger… I feel like I’m dissolving,” he told me. To cope, Ankur now avoids going out before sundown at all. “Sometimes, I feel like the city doesn’t want me in it,” he confessed. That poignant statement captures exactly how exclusionary our environment can be. Public spaces were never fully safe for him, but with climate extremes making every sound and surface more intense, the city has become outright hostile to his very existence.

Their voices paint a stark picture: global warming is not just an environmental crisis — it’s a human rights emergency for people like us. Heatwaves, floods, droughts — these events amplify every inequality. When a record-breaking heatwave hits, those with means escape to hill stations or cool interiors; disabled people in slums like Ritu and me roast alive in tin-roofed rooms. When floods come, who evacuates the blind woman living alone on the ground floor? When drought dries up water supply, how does a wheelchair user carry water from an emergency tanker down the street? These are the questions almost no one was asking — until we started asking them ourselves.

The Unseen Crisis in a City Built for Others

Listening to these accounts, I realized our experiences aren’t isolated at all — they’re part of a pattern of systemic neglect. India is home to at least 26.8 million people with disabilities (likely far more in reality), yet we are invisible in climate planning. In fact, a 2022 analysis of national climate plans found that only about 20% of countries even mention people with disabilities. This silence at the policy level trickles down to local governance. It’s why Delhi’s Heat Action Plan had plenty to say about setting up cooling centers, but nothing about making sure those centers have wheelchair access or sign-language interpreters.. It’s why early warning systems send out text messages or sirens that deaf or blind residents can’t catch. And it’s why, during an electrical-fire evacuation last year, my blind friend Tanya was left behind until neighbors realized in the nick of time — there were no drills, no inclusive protocol for her. As Tanya later told me bitterly, “Heat makes the wires melt. But it’s neglect that sets things on fire.”

Our infrastructure itself loudly proclaims who it was built for. The main roads have overpasses and footbridges I can’t climb with my mobility issues. The buses rarely kneel or wait long enough for someone with a walker. Cooling centers (in theory) exist for heat emergencies, but I’ve seen one in a public school up close — it was up a flight of stairs with no ramp, effectively barring anyone using a wheelchair. In temporary flood shelters, there’s often no space for mobility aids or a quiet corner for someone with sensory sensitivities. These places are lifelines during disasters — yet they silently announce, “disabled not welcome.”

Even outside of acute crises, everyday city planning fails disabled citizens. Footpaths with tactile paving abruptly end into open sewers. Government buildings lack functioning elevators. Hospitals overflow on a normal day, and in a heatwave they turn into chaos — I’ve waited for hours in sweltering corridors, my stutter worsening as I tried to advocate for my mother’s care. No consideration, no training, no contingency is in place for patients or caregivers with disabilities during climate-exacerbated health surges. The mental and emotional toll of this constant marginalization is immense. We’re not just battling physical threats like heatstroke or infection — we’re battling the anxiety of being forgotten. Many disabled friends have told me about the loneliness they feel when it’s too dangerous to go outside and no one checks on them. “I miss meeting my friends,” one wheelchair user confided about the long summer lockdown imposed by heatWorry and isolation during extreme weather often lead to what one caregiver called “a slow, quiet grief.” It’s grief for lost independence, for plans canceled because the city wasn’t accessible or safe enough for us to step out.

For disabled people, climate change multiplies barriers in every sphere of life. Health deteriorates faster — my mother’s condition worsened with each heatwave and polluted winter, and I saw others with epilepsy, diabetes, or mental health conditions struggling as extreme weather upset their medication schedules and routines. Livelihoods are at stake too. Rakesh, a street vendor with a spinal injury, told me how his hand-cycle cart overheats on brutal hot days; he has to stop selling goods by noon because his body gives up. In a recent heatwave he even fainted on the road. He’s afraid that as summers get hotter, he won’t be able to earn at all. Many others shared similar fears — the farmer who can’t hear early flood warnings in time to save her crops, the call-center employee with chronic illness who can’t commute in 44°C heat and loses her job. Climate disruptions hit disabled and poor people disproportionately, compounding poverty and undermining years of hard-won progress in inclusion.

Through all of this, the most painful refrain I heard was: no one asks us. Not the government, not the media, not even well-meaning climate activists. “We’re not even in the conversation,” as one interviewee said. When heatwaves or floods are discussed on TV panels, nobody thinks to include a disabled person’s perspective. It’s as if society has decided that we are worth protecting last during a crisis. This must change — and it must change now.

Nothing About Us, Without Us: Pushing for Inclusive Climate Action

After witnessing so much avoidable suffering, I refuse to stay quiet. The climate crisis is here and we — disabled people — are already on the frontlines surviving it. Now it’s time to be seen and heard. If there’s one lesson, it’s that accessibility and climate resilience must go hand in hand. We need to overhaul our approach to disaster planning, urban design, and policy-making with inclusion at the center. What would that look like? Here are a few urgent steps we can take right away:

1.) Accessible Crisis Infrastructure: Ensure every relief center, cooling station or storm shelter has ramps, wide entrances, and accessible toilets. Stock them with mobility aids and have sign-language interpreters or visual announcement screens on site.

2.) Inclusive Early Warnings: Create warning systems that everyone can use — loud sirens paired with flashing lights, SMS alerts paired with phone calls or door-to-door volunteers. No one should be left unaware when danger is coming.

3.) Community Support Networks: Train community health workers and volunteers to assist disabled and elderly residents during climate extremes. Simple check-ins or help with evacuation can save lives.

4.) “Nothing Without Us” in Policy: Include people with disabilities at every stage of climate policy and planning. From city councils to national climate commissions, our representation isn’t optional — it’s essential.

These changes are not high-tech fantasies; they are practical measures that governments and communities can implement today. And they benefit everyone. When a wheelchair user can easily enter a flood shelter, a mother with a baby stroller can too. When sign-language interpreters are provided at public briefings, so are captionings that help the elderly and many others. Designing a world that suits the most vulnerable among us ends up creating a safer, more resilient world for all of us. Because until our cities and climate strategies are designed for everyone, they don’t really work for anyone.

I’m dedicating my life to this fight. In 2022, I founded an initiative called Green Disability to champion disability-inclusive climate action. What began as a personal mission — writing about these hidden struggles, holding workshops in my community — has grown into a small but determined movement. We’ve gathered first-hand accounts from across the country, from blind women in flood-prone Assam to Deaf villagers in cyclone-hit Odisha. We’ve brought these stories to policymakers and climate forums, insisting that they pay attention. We collaborate with urban planners on ideas like “cool rooms” in slums — low-cost cooling spaces accessible to people with mobility issues. We are developing guides for making disaster drills inclusive of autistic and intellectually disabled participants. Bit by bit, we are proving that **disabled people are not just victims of climate change — we are leaders and innovators in the solutions. Our lived experience navigating an inhospitable world has given us unique resilience and knowledge.

Change is beginning, but we have a long road ahead. Many officials have been surprised to hear these perspectives for the first time; some have been receptive, others dismissive. Yet, I hold onto hope. I have seen the power of community — like a WhatsApp group of wheelchair users in my city who now share water delivery tips and oxygen cylinder locations during heatwaves. . I have felt the solidarity when disabled activists from around the world encouraged me that our fight is global and gaining momentum. It’s clear that climate justice and disability justice are two sides of the same coin. You cannot solve one without the other.

My journey from sweltering slums to speaking up in policy meetings taught me that stories can drive change. I’ve told you mine, and the stories of Ritu, Ankur, Tanya, and others, to put a human face on this crisis. Now I ask you — whether you’re a decision-maker, an activist, or an ally — to remember these faces when you think about climate action. We’re not asking for pity. We’re demanding our right to exist safely on this planet. We’re demanding the right to shape how our world adapts to the climate crisis. Our mantra is simple: nothing about us, without us.

The climate crisis is accelerating, and so must our inclusion efforts. I don’t want the next generation of disabled kids to grow up, as I did, feeling like the world’s problems are theirs alone to endure. I want them to see ramps where we found stairs, accessible homes where we found obstacles, and compassion where we encountered indifference. We are already here — sweating, gasping, surviving. We will not wait quietly for a “better time” to be prioritized. It’s time we are seen. It’s time we are heard. And it’s time for climate action to finally include all of us — so no one gets left behind.

#GreenDisability #SDGs #WeAreBillionStrong #AXSChat #Heatwave