Jan. 16: Disability-Inclusive Climate Actions

Join Dr. Sébastien Jodoin (McGill University, Faculty of Law) for a public talk about Disability-Inclusive Climate Actions: Principles, Progress and Pathways on Monday, January 16.

This event will be presented in person and via Zoom. Request a Zoom link here.

About the Event

Despite forming 15% of the world’s population, people with disabilities have been largely excluded from efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Climate adaptation and disaster risk readiness policies have generally failed to strengthen the adaptive capacity of people with disabilities, thereby exposing them to disproportionate rates of mortality in severe weather events such as cyclones and heatwaves. Many measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions have only reinforced social inequities by failing to consider the dependence of people with disabilities on certain carbon-intensive products and services and the barriers they face in accessing low-carbon alternatives. Citing examples drawn from Canada and around the world, Dr. Jodoin will demonstrate that climate action can and should be designed and implemented in ways that meaningfully integrate the disability community and its human rights. By empowering people with disabilities as knowers, makers, and doers in the climate movement and thereby enhancing the equity and effectiveness of climate solutions, disability-inclusive climate action can generate multiple benefits for the disability community and society as a whole.

About Dr. Sébastien Jodoin

Dr. Sébastien Jodoin is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law of McGill University, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Health, and the Environment. Drawing on his lived experience with multiple sclerosis, Dr. Jodoin co-founded and directs the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme, a pioneering initiative to generate, co-produce, and translate knowledge at the intersections of disability and climate justice. His research in this area has been cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and has been covered by media outlets around the world, including the CBC, the BBC, and The Guardian.