Climate Change and Disability

Jason Strother (center) interacts with students at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. (Photograph by Anamika Taneja)

An estimated 1.3 billion people across the world experience significant disability, according to the World Health Organization. They constitute about 16 percent of the world population and are at a greater risk of being affected by climate change. For instance, a disabled person might lose access to medical treatment or have mobility issues after a natural disaster.

Jason Strother, a multimedia journalist and 2023 Fulbright (South and Central Asia) Regional Research Award recipient, traveled across India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, to research how climate change impacts people with disabilities. He is also an adjunct professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he created journalism courses, including one on disability representation in media and how to report on disability.

In September, with the support from the U.S. State Department, Strother participated in events across various Indian cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. During his visit he interacted with journalists, students, activists and civil society organizations focused on disability and climate matters. Strother also presented his documentary, “Disaster and Disability,” filmed in Odisha with support from the U.S. State Department.

Excerpts from an interview with Strother.

What inspired you to study the impact of climate change on people with disabilities?

In 2014, I traveled for a reporting assignment to the Philippine city of Tacloban, which had been devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. Several thousand people died, and the city was in ruins.

I have a low vision disability and have no problem getting around during normal circumstances. But it got me thinking—how would I survive 200 kmph winds, with debris flying around? I thought about people who use wheelchairs, are blind, deaf, are on the autism spectrum disorder, of families with children that have multiple disabilities, and how they are going to be affected by natural disasters or severe weather events.

Tell us about your work as a Fulbright scholar in India. What did you learn?

Two years ago, when I was applying for a Fulbright, [I found] this rare regional award where I could pick three countries to conduct my work. I knew India had to be one of them. I found some organizations based in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, [working on disabilities and climate change] and reached out to one of them, which was run by Asha Hans, a Fulbright alumna. I spent three months conducting my fieldwork around Odisha, [focusing] on how climate change is impacting people with disabilities.

During my research, I found that Odisha has [made] some benchmarkable progress in including people with disabilities in its disaster management planning. In 1999, when a super cyclone killed about 10,000 people, there was a fledgling disability advocacy community in the state.

Now, you have several disability groups at the local level and in specific communities, which raise awareness about how to evacuate and safely shelter people with disabilities. They have raised a lot of awareness about disability vis-à-vis climate change-related disasters.

How has your work as a journalist helped your research?

I’ve worked overseas for almost 20 years as a reporter. This, combined with my lived experience as someone with a disability, and my curiosity helped me in my current project.

I teamed up with Snehasis Das, a Bhubaneswar-based documentary filmmaker who runs a production company, The Naked Eye. We co-produced a short film on Odisha’s efforts to make its disaster planning more accessible and inclusive, and where there is still room for improvement.

Tell us about your documentary “Disaster and Disability.”

I traveled to Puri on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, which is often battered by severe storms. Even though Odisha has a policy to include vulnerable populations in its evacuation and sheltering protocols, not many there knew about it when they had to evacuate for Cyclone Fani in 2019.

In Ganjam district, however, some storm shelters were built with ramps and accessible bathrooms. I found this interesting—in Ganjam, something is working quite well, but in Puri, something was missing. These are the regions I wanted to compare in my reporting. Das, his team and I formed a 10-member production crew with a drone pilot and multiple translators because the people we interviewed only spoke Telugu.

So, we needed to find someone who could speak both Telugu and Odia and then I had a research assistant who translated back to me in English. It was one of the most complicated productions I’ve ever been on.

What kind of response did you get from the audience? Are there any plans to screen it in more Indian cities and in Indian languages?

The reactions I’ve had so far have been largely positive. It was new to many of the audiences and the students I spoke with had poignant and thoughtful questions. There are multiple languages already in the film—Telugu, Odia and English. It also has English subtitles. I will produce an audio description for this film—a type of narration that describes on-screen action and imagery for visually impaired audiences.

I am also looking into ways to have Odia language subtitles and audio descriptions.

What are your key takeaways from your engagements with journalism students and climate activists in India?

Climate change is something that I think most people in India are very well aware of. In Odisha, I met climate change observers who focused on marginalized populations in their research and were aware of how disabled people are most likely to be adversely affected. The disability community I met in Odisha and New Delhi knows the risks too.

At the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, I talked to journalism students, some of whom had disabilities, about my research and showed my video. They had great questions about the production of the film.

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