New guidance for local authorities

30 Jan

By Emma Geen and Sarah Bell

We are excited to launch new guidance for local authorities around disability and climate action.

One of the barriers to climate action that is fair for disabled people is the lack of research and resources on how to design and create accessible and inclusive responses to climate challenges. Disabled people are regularly left out of climate change conversations and forgotten in most plans.

When disabled people’s ideas, priorities and insights are overlooked on climate change issues, either as a community or as staff, this often leads to the design of local projects that create new barriers for disabled people.

Recognising these problems, Sensing Climate has worked with Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership’s Climate and Disability programme, to develop a new set of resources for local authorities that aim to reduce the risks of eco-ableism in local climate policy by developing understanding and suggesting solutions.

The resources are informed by insights developed through the Sensing Climate research, Bristol’s community climate action plan by and for disabled people (created by the Climate and Disability Forum), and two policy roundtables that took place in Bristol from 2024-2025. A huge thanks to everyone who has taken part in these activities and offered their valuable ideas.

The resources are a set of short guides that council departments can use to guide the development of plans with a climate change angle. There are seven core resources on thematic areas, such as nature, jobs and transport, and two supplementary resources on how to carry out co-production and inclusive engagement with disabled people.

The core resources include:

An introduction to the ways in which climate change or action on climate change can impact upon disabled people in the area.
The story of a fictional disabled character (based on the combined lived experience of a range of people) affected by action on climate change.
Case studies where these are available.
Key questions for council workers to consider when carrying out work on climate change to support them to understand how their projects could impact on disabled people and suggest how to improve this work.
Examples of areas to prioritise for action, taken from Bristol’s community climate action plan by and for disabled people.
Links to further resources.

Council workers at Bristol City Council and the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority will be offered briefings on the documents in February. The resources were created by Climate and Disability programme associate, Dr Emma Geen and Dr Sarah Bell from Sensing Climate.

Housing and energy