Inclusive climate justice at the Global Disability Summit 2025: An opportunity for change
In April 2025, the third Global Disability Summit (GDS) will be held in Berlin, co-hosted by the governments of Germany and Jordan as well as the International Disability Alliance. The Summit provides a critical moment to galvanise commitments and prompt genuine action on inclusive climate justice.
GDS2022 was the first time the GDS applied a disability rights lens to climate change. Seventy-five organisations and networks made 182 commitments categorised on the GDS Secretariat’s online portal as focused on ‘conflict and crisis, including a focus on climate change’. While many of those 182 commitments promise systemic change that will indirectly strengthen disability inclusion across the climate crisis, only 30 commitments (2.12% of all 1,412 GDS2022 commitments) explicitly focused on strengthening disability inclusive climate action. Organisations that engaged on the issue at GDS2022 were also limited, leading providers of climate finance (including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gates Foundation and the World Bank Group) as well as the private sector (except for one commitment from Microsoft). were entirely absent from any one of those 30 GDS2022 commitments
GDS2025 is a critical milestone toward more inclusive climate justice. More commitments on inclusive climate justice from more organisations (compared to GDS2022) are vital, but it’s equally important that GDS2025 commitments prompt climate action that targets data gaps and looks toward ambitious, evidenced areas of focus.
Recent research Impel has been involved in uses programme and research data generated by more than 21 Civil Society Organisations and Organisations of People with Disabilities (and their partners, including persons with disabilities) to spotlight data gaps and highlight emerging practices that will strengthen inclusive climate action. The data-driven report (forthcoming at the time of writing) strengthens the case for the urgent need for disability inclusive climate action and provides clear insights for ‘how’ different climate actors, partnering with persons with disabilities and their representative organisations, can strengthen disability inclusive approaches and enable impactful progress.
Insights from the report point to clear focus areas for GDS2025 commitments for different stakeholder types:
Researchers and research organisations must bridge the data gap by examining the inequities experienced by people with disabilities and the wider benefits of inclusive climate action.
Providers of climate finance must accelerate climate financing that includes a focus on disability inclusion and is accessible to disability organisations, setting aside funding for innovative, sustainable and accessible solutions led locally by persons with disabilities and their representative organisations. Strengthening also social safeguards to ensure climate action neither excludes nor compounds barriers to inclusion.
Multilateral agencies must help to champion and build a Disability Constituency at UNFCCC COP, and set clear expectations on inclusive climate action in existing UN reporting systems and processes.
Private sector organisations must apply a disability lens to their organisations transition plans, to ensure employees, suppliers and customers with disabilities equally benefit from efforts to reduce an organisations carbon footprint and enable a just transition for all.
National and local governments must ensure adaptation programmes and policies consider both the views and equity of people with disabilities.
Considerable improvement is required now on the number, and ambition, of commitments to inclusive climate action; GDS2025 provides the opportunity to transform delivery of inclusive climate justice.