Disability-inclusive climate emergency planning in Scotland - Reports & Roundtable
By Sarah Bell, Shivali Fifield and Pauline Nolan
Climate change is intensifying and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events worldwide. This summer shows we can no longer ignore this risk with heat waves, droughts and wildfires across Europe including in Scotland’s Cairngorms.
Disabled people make up 26% of the Scottish population and are disproportionately impacted by climate change. In a 2025 survey and report by Scope, for example, 75% of disabled people reported significant challenges during hot weather, from exacerbated symptoms to unaffordable electricity costs for running fans or cooling equipment, and unsuitable homes. The heightened risk of climate change to disabled people is not, however, due to intrinsic ‘vulnerability’ but a result of adverse societal decisions, policies and practices that disadvantage disabled people.
Towards disability-inclusive climate emergency planning
A collaborative programme of work by the Sensing Climate research project, Inclusion Scotland and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland has identified a series of priorities for disability-inclusive climate emergency planning in Scotland.
By ‘disability-inclusive’, we refer to policies that are co-designed by disabled people, are informed by their priorities and include tangible actions to reduce the risks for disabled people.
The priorities are centred on a six-step model:
Know the needs of disabled people
Acknowledge and address existing inequality
Develop inclusive governance
Build awareness and capacity of disabled people to engage in emergency planning
Build awareness and capacity of emergency services to respond to disabled people
Ensure emergency planning information and resources are accessible.
These priorities are presented in a report that is informed by a review of Scotland’s key climate change policies linked to emergency planning and a lived experience workshop with disabled people.
The report is available to download in three different formats:
Easy Read, which is split into two documents – a summary of the policy analysis and a summary of the workshop findings.
We launched the report and discussed key priorities at a policy roundtable event in Edinburgh in June 2026. The event brought together climate adaptation policy and resilience practitioners and decision-makers, with disabled people and Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs). The aim was to identify challenges and opportunities for progressing disability-inclusive climate emergency planning in Scotland.
A summary of the roundtable discussions is available to download as a Word document or pdf document.
Inclusion Scotland also produced a short video of the event (a description of the visuals is provided in the video caption):
Priorities for progressing this work
Three key areas were identified during the roundtable as essential to progressing this work:
Ensuring that multi-agency resilience partnerships are disability competent and have safeguarded access to relevant, up-to-date information about the emergency assistance needs of disabled people. There is a need for an emergency assistance ‘one-stop-shop’ for people to record (and update) their assistance needs that is only shared with relevant agencies to keep people safe in the event of emergency.
Ensuring that emergency preparedness guidance – which is used for households and multi-agency resilience partnerships – reflects the needs of disabled people and embeds inclusive language throughout.
Recognising that disabled people and DPOs are key actors within climate emergency planning and capacity building. Accessible information, dedicated time and multi-year funding schemes are needed to support collaborative working with Disabled People’s Organisations in ways that are strategic and proportionate.
Heather Fisken, CEO of Inclusion Scotland, said:
“Taking forward these recommendations, informed by disabled people, is urgent. Action is required now before disabled people are put at further risk in climate emergencies because they are not being included in action planning and their needs have not been accounted for. Disabled People's Organisations need to be around the table to inform the ‘how’ of the next steps, with resources to ensure that our disabled members are involved and informed”.
We are excited and encouraged by the engagement from key stakeholders to work with DPOs to be disability competent and are seeking funding to progress this work through a Disabled People’s Climate Action Network led by Inclusion Scotland.
Find out more
If you would like to find out more about this work, do get in touch:
Dr Sarah Bell, Sensing Climate, sarah.bell@exeter.ac.uk
Dr Pauline Nolan, Inclusion Scotland, Pauline@inclusionscotland.org
Dr Shivali Fifield, Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland, sfifield@ercs.scot
Acknowledgements
We would like to give a special thanks to the participants of the lived experience workshop who informed this work: Derek Kelter, Elaine Paterson, Kim Dams, Gautam Kumar Chaudhury, Gordon Yuill, Calum Grevers, Derek Todd, Peter McDade and Ian Jubb.
We would also like to thank everyone who participated in the policy roundtable, and to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for funding this work under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y004264/1].