Climate change disproportionately impacts Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), amplifying existing inequalities through unique vulnerabilities.
We bridge gaps in environmental governance and resilience for Persons with Disabilities by aligning accessible technology, equitable policy, and grassroots collaboration amid climate crises.
Every morning, 17-year-old Omambia wakes to the stench of Nairobi River’s sludge seeping into his family’s one-room shack in Mukuru slums. For Omambia, born with an intellectual disability, the world is already a storm of overwhelming sensations—screeching matatus, flickering fluorescent bulbs, the prick of coarse fabric. But the river’s poison is a relentless assault. And when these sensations make him scream, he is in a pain he cannot articulate beyond frantic rocking and cries that neighbors dismiss as “tantrums.”
When the river floods, raw sewage swirls around his wheelchair, trapping him for days in a room reeking of decay. Omambia’s hands tremble, his senses hijacked by the rot. He cannot understand why the water hurts, why the air suffocates, why no one comes to help.
But they know.
The factory owners dumping chemicals under cover of darkness. The officials who pocket bribes to ignore reports. The lawmakers who shrug as sewage plants crumble. They know Omambia exists—another “invisible” child in a slum the world erased.
Kenya’s Environmental Management and Coordination Act (EMCA) calls this criminal negligence. Omambia’s blistered skin and silent screams call it something simpler: cruelty.
To pollute a river is to sentence Omambia to a lifetime of agony. To look away is to declare his life unworthy of clean water, air, or mercy.
His suffering is not an accident. It is a choice, a choice made by someone at NEMA or KEBs.
Amina, a 32-year-old wheelchair user in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, navigates a daily gauntlet of climate threats. When floods submerge her neighborhood, her wheelchair sinks into muddy water mixed with raw sewage. During droughts, the cost of clean water soars, forcing her to ration insulin for her diabetes. Yet, when county officials draft disaster plans, they never consult her—or any person with disabilities (PWDs).
Climate change is not a “great equalizer.” For the 1.3 billion people with disabilities globally, it magnifies systemic exclusion, turning risks into catastrophes. From inaccessible disaster shelters to policymaking tables that ignore PWD voices, governance systems perpetuate a dangerous myth: that resilience is one-size-fits-all. This webpage exposes how climate negligence in Kenya harms PWDs and demands radical inclusion.
Public Participation According to a 2022 International Disability Alliance report, only 3% of 100 major climate conferences provided full accessibility services. At Kenya’s National Climate Change Summit, deaf attendees were given handwritten notes after panels ended—a practice deaf activist Edwin Osundwa called ‘greenwashing for the disability community’ in a 2022 interview.
Yet when global forums shut out voices like Osundwa’s, counties—where survival hinges on local budgets and disaster plans—plunge deeper into the abyss. In Kisii, Amina waits for a climate committee meeting she cannot attend: no sign language for deaf farmers, no ramps for wheelchair users, just dimly lit halls where her name is never called. How many Aminas must drown in floods or starve in droughts before decision-makers see the darkness they enforce? If Nairobi’s polished summits abandon PWDs, what hope exists in Kenya’s margins? When will you stop planning for our deaths and start fighting for our lives?
In Kisumu County, Jane Atieno’s calloused hands grip her wheelchair, staring at the young saplings she cannot reach. The county’s Miti Pesa program promised cash for planting trees—but not for her. With no ramps to the nursery, no tactile guides for her fading vision, Jane, like 97% of PWDs in Kisumu, watches as others pocket the climate funds meant to “include all.” “They see trees, but not us,” she whispers, her voice swallowed by the same winds carrying away the topsoil she once farmed.
Six hundred kilometers east, in Kitui, Muthuku, a deaf farmer, traces his fingers over cracked earth. Last year, the County Government of Kitui launched a drought-resistant crop initiative. But meetings were held in crowded halls where officials shouted over murmuring crowds—no sign language, no visual aids. Muthuku’s maize withered, like 98% of PWD farmers here, while the county praised its “inclusive” program. “They ask us to adapt,” his wife signs, tears blending with dust, “but how, when they won’t even look at us?”
In Turkana, where scorching winds fuel hope in wind turbines, Robert Esekon’s family grazes their goats near a towering turbine—a project that displaced them without warning. Robert, who uses crutches, now camps on barren land, his ancestral grazing grounds fenced off. “They said ‘clean energy,’” he scoffs, “but left us in the dark.” Over 200 PWD pastoralists share his fate, their protests drowned by the hum of progress.
Even in Garissa, where solar lamps promised
respite from kerosene smoke, Halima Abdi, a mother of three deaf children,
received none. Training sessions demanded verbal responses; her family’s
silence became their exclusion. “At night, my children still cough,” she says, “while
the world talks of ‘green light.’”
Yet in Kakamega, a flicker of hope: deaf farmers, armed with sign-language tutorials, now power homes with biogas. One county listened. But why must resilience be a lottery?
The data screams what Jane, Muthuku, Robert, and Halima live: PWDs are climate collateral. When counties design mitigation in the light but deliver in the dark, who bears the cost? We plant trees, erect turbines, and draft policies—but erase people.
Will you keep building a future where we
burn?
