When we consider climate change, it’s impossible not to think of the rising sea levels. As our understanding of the environmental crisis becomes clearer, sea level rise persists as its most notorious outcome, and after years of media and pop culture sensationalization, it has also become one of its most feared. 

While some rejoice in the prospect of beaches coming to us - who wouldn’t - it’s important to understand that this is not the primary effect we should expect from sea level rise. As oceans and lakes creep closer to the shoreline, they will destroy residences, services, and roads, leaving millions homeless and unemployed.     And that’s not all: the damage to the infrastructure could make it easy for pollution to spread and harder for existing pollution to be regulated, limiting fishing and other sea-dependent labor in affected areas. In that sense, the expansion of water bodies will lead to the shrinking of human activity that relies on them rather than its development. But human societies are diverse; there is no universal experience of climate change. How much will the impact of sea level rise vary across communities? 

The ifs and buts

When we discuss sea level rise, two basic questions come up: first, “How will it happen?”; and second, “Who will be affected the most, and why?”. 

Many of us imagine the answer to the first question as a single cataclysmic event. But our data suggests otherwise: sea elevation maps, statistical projections, and other rigid scientific methods tell us that sea levels will rise gradually over time, causing some of the easternmost parts of the world to flood first. Our current understanding of global warming points at excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as the main culprit behind shoreline expansion, but there are other important factors to consider, such as the shift in rainfall patterns that is already causing rivers and lakes to overflow.

The second question is meatier. While we may find the idea of environmental disasters as a great equalizer comforting - or even convenient - this notion falls apart fast when we consider the material implications of said disasters. In this case, the loss of submerged land will lead to the displacement of the people who inhabited it; and as these populations move deeper into the mainland, the race for real estate acquisition could devolve into a large-scale housing crisis. So what decides who gets a new house? Let’s look at an example.

Consider a 9-to-5 worker living on the coastline. The rising sea levels have claimed her immovable property and her job, and she is now forced to abandon her coastal city to seek a new home on dry land. How will this person afford rent when all of her assets are gone? With thousands - or millions - of others competing for the same goal, it will boil down to a bidding game between richer expatriates, predatory landowners, the BnB industry, and her, with her lackluster savings and disenchanting government welfare options. Survival in an environmentally insecure world hinges on financial success.

Albeit poignant, this scenario is still one of the kindest. It assumes that our protagonist already had access to employment and real estate; but in a world where job interviews and mortgages are skewed by bias, marginalized groups are losing the housing marathon before it has even begun. Refugees, religious minorities, and members of the LGBT community - to name a few examples - face housing and workplace discrimination that will translate to further disadvantages in an environmental disaster context. However, as the world becomes more hostile and housing gets scarce, there is a particular social class that could suffer the most, and that is people with disabilities.

Disability in a changing world

While we fret about climate change turning our world materially and socially hostile, people with disabilities are already being faced with similar challenges. What does it mean to be a person with a disability in the world as it is now? Modern architecture and infrastructure are still largely inaccessible, job and housing discrimination are rampant, and the resulting wealth disparity between able-bodied and physically disabled adults is striking. In Greece, the poverty and social isolation index for people with disabilities aged 30-34 years old was found to be 54.2%, as opposed to its 32.5% non-disabled counterpart. 

We already discussed how hard it will be for anyone without assets to navigate the post-sea level rise housing crisis. For people with disabilities, their likelihood to be less financially secure than their peers will make the task of finding a new house even more daunting. Those who manage to move to an unafflicted area will be faced with the same disheartening situation as their former homes: inaccessible and unmodifiable apartments, unwelcoming infrastructure, and an awkward municipality that shows no accountability for its failure to accommodate disability. The picture only gets grimmer upon realizing that the job market will be so clogged with the newly-unemployed that disabled applicants will often have to concede their workers’ rights for a shot at getting a job. 

However, even this scenario is relatively favorable. Those who cannot afford to move will be faced with a different set of adversities, including the possibility of further flooding, erosion, the contamination of agricultural soil, etc. For people with disabilities, this could mean the deterioration of an already inaccessible landscape, now burdened with more obstacles and uneven terrain. The treatment of communities that live in present-time environmental “dead zones” is telling of how submerged areas and their citizenry of “undesirables” will be treated in the future. 

This is a perfect example of what is possibly the cornerstone of disability rights advocacy, the social model of disability. Where the medical model defines disability around an individual’s impairment, the social model focuses on the structural barriers present in society that prevent the individual from living on equal terms with their able-bodied peers. In both cases we examined, people with disabilities will be at a disadvantage because of issues that are already present but will be exacerbated under the threat of sea level rise. 

Studies give us as little as 15 years before sea level rise starts having visible effects on our livelihoods. In certain parts of the world, coasts, rivers, and lakes are already overflowing, displacing thousands in the process. We have the option to be proactive, but with that option comes the responsibility of listening to those that a large-scale environmental disaster will put to the greatest risk. Vulnerable communities have always provided invaluable suggestions on making our communities more inclusive. The least we can make out of losing our cities is learning how to make them kinder the next time we try.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Owen Uachave for helping with editing and development.