Engaging new audiences: learning from the climate change, risk

and disability project

Sue Porter

Norah Fry Research Centre

Climate change, risk and disability –findings

Literature review – shared findings and sense-making via NCVO and WECIL

• A culture of neglect

• Experiences of discrimination

• Lifestyle and independent living

• Interdependence

‘…the disability perspective of interdependence is a practical guide from the margins

for making new choices that may lead to a just and sustainable world—a concept

that reduces the distance between each other and our environment.’ Erik Leipoldt

• Individual or structural change?

Individual or social change needed?

Individual lifestyle model – Structural model

Individual medical model – Social model

Literature and activists advocate individual actions forsustainability.Focus is on sustainable consumption

Broader societal changes are required in the organisation of social life and embedded power relations.Structural issues and inequalities are reproduced in environmental inequalities

It’s the individual that needs to be ‘fixed’ by treatment, cure or

rehab.

Society needs to make structural changes to include disabled people.Physical and social barriers to participation need to be addressed

What can we learn from ‘researching with’, rather than ‘communicating to’ communities

• Lived experience

• Different perspectives

• Active partners

• Remind ourselves of the need to remember the 3 legs of sustainability:

• environmental, • economic and • social

Shared cause?

“Having been involved in environmental and disability movements I've been

surprised by the lack of crossover - and had interesting conversations with

my disabled friends about how the more 'environmentally sound' shops

etc. tend to be inaccessible, whereas the bigger chains are more likely to

be accessible.

One friend in particular complained of green campaigners advocating the use

of bikes over cars etc, often don't take different forms of embodiment into

account. She worried that such campaigns can even strengthen the

discourse of disabled people are burdens on society”.

Shared cause?

“I signed up for a Transition research network meeting, and on checking

access was told (very apologetically) that I’d have to use the public toilet

120 yards down the street”.

“Very interested (although unsurprised) to hear about your experience

regarding the Transition Meeting - I have noticed here in Leeds meetings

arranged in rooms that are "unfortunately not wheelchair accessible".

“One of the reasons I became interested in this area of research was from my

own experience of developing a chronic illness and finding I wasn't able to

continue with many of my previous pro-environmental behaviours, whilst

at the same time feeling quite judged for using a car and not cycling etc

when I attended environmental events!”

Insights … for engaging with new and different audiences

• Don’t assume you know how it is

• Beware positioning other people e.g. as onlyvulnerable

» Resources

» Champions too

» Valuing vulnerability

• Being welcomed in– People don’t want to be excluded from the debates

– People may need to be targeted and facilitated

– Peer support groups and advocacy organisations can help to support debate and reach people others can’t.