Increase focus, action for PWDs in climate crisis

Up to 18 million PWDs globally may be displaced due to climate disasters by 2050. [iStockphoto]

The short story of a woman and her husband living in a shanty somewhere in Baringo, Kenya was the VOA’s focus on World Climate Emergency Day. They had lived in the house since being displaced by floods in 2013.

Though unmentioned in the story by Victoria Amunga, it was evident that Sote Lokotos was visually impaired and physically challenged. Her husband’s right eye also seemed to have a cataract. He, too, limped, due to old age.

One glance at the house revealed poverty. In Sote’s words and without elaborating, the flooding separated her from her children. The first 40 seconds of the three-minutes story brought out a lot. The family lived in a farm; now man and wife can only accommodate one child in the shanty.

The family was split, not because it was time for some to go to boarding school or work in a different town, but because they had to seek survival away from home in a smaller dwelling. Things have never changed for the better. They lost everything in the night floods.

These People With Disability (PWD), now in old age, also suffered forced climate induced migration. Climate disasters disproportionately affect PWD, women, children, people in old age and the frail or sickly.

Considering the dependence on rain-fed agriculture for a lot of families in rural areas, such climate disasters have capacity to mess food security, livelihoods, health and peace should those migrating find hostile reception.

Sote’s family and others around them may have been displaced by flooding, but there is no guarantee they will not suffer other effects of climate change such as drought. It is a vicious circle for the already affected, which worsens for PWDs.

So what happens after the disaster? What should have happened before it? Did the displaced families see this coming? If there was information about impending flooding, who had it and why didn’t it help? Many families affected by climate calamities resign to fate. Only a few cry, aloud, for help.

As focus shifts to COP28 in December, the calls to have families such as Sote’s compensated for loss and damage should increase, with emphasis not only on property lost due to effects of climate change, but also the psychological torture suffered. Besides food insecurity at Sote’s, poverty, poor health, water stress, disrupted access to schools for their children, a torn social fabric, family splits, lost sources of livelihood are possibly endured in the home.

All are tied to climate change, which aggravated any pre-existing problems they may have had. The problems may escalate other social issues such as gender-based violence, child abuse, child labour and even conflict, sometimes triggered by a small argument over shared resources. We need increased focus on PWDs affected by climate change in rural settings. They must access knowledge, capacity building, climate funds and opportunities backed by policies that ensure increased adaptive capacity for PWD and others rendered this helpless by climate change.

UN reports have shown that up to 18 million PWDs globally may be displaced due to climate disasters by 2050. Just as PWD require more help during disasters, their representation in decision making tables locally and globally, as well as actual climate action within their ability must increase. They must also be funded to be part of the climate solutions.

Since 2013 when Sote’s family was displaced, Baringo has been in the news over drought, more flooding and conflict, beside good reasons. You can imagine their worries with every season of weather extremes, yet other problems everyone else faces, such as high cost of living, abound.