How do climate change and disability intersect in everyday life? In this travel letter, Elizabeth McKenzie Jemison shares reflections from a field trip to Uganda. Engaging with local communities, she gained insight into how resilience and exclusion are experienced, and why inclusive climate action must begin with those most affected.
I went to Uganda to explore two pressing issues close to my heart: climate change and disability. I sought to hear from people in Kampala and Kiboga, to understand how they navigate climate hardships alongside the physical and structural barriers of disability. Despite the differences in our environments, these challenges cross borders, just like disability itself.
In Uganda, we worked closely with other students and teachers to collect data and reflect on the experiences and information we collected. We were given space to adjust and reformulate ideas based on our interactions and interviews with different stakeholders. It was a learning experience to see how stakeholders described climate change. How various actors expressed their interests in climate change, and the language used to give differing accounts of what it is and how (or whether) they connected it to the lives of people with disabilities.
What I learned was powerful: People don’t passively accept marginalization, they seek answers. They respond best to concrete, actionable solutions, not empty gestures or bureaucratic obstacles. Hope fades without possibility, and confusion breeds frustration. When we don’t know what hope looks like, we need peers, mentors, and friends who push us to ask overlooked questions such as: How are people with disabilities affected by climate adaptation measures when their needs aren't targeted within green spaces or new building policies?
In Kiboga, I saw the strength of cooperative learning. Communities and organizations came together to survive, support one another, and resist exclusion. In their unity, I found a lesson: Addressing climate injustice and disability exclusion starts with asking, “What if?”
What if local governments created climate policies with those who have already been practicing adaptation? Could their insights make entire communities safer and more accessible in the face of climate change? What if we truly included them?
We need to recognize that the struggles of people with disabilities aren’t just their own but a reflection of broader societal shortcomings, ones that climate change will only expose further.