Cross Party Group on Climate, Nature and Wellbeing
Grŵp Trawsbleidiol ar Hinsawdd, Natur a Lles
17:00 – 18:00
13.10.2022
Virtual Meeting over Zoom
Cyfarfod ar-lein dros Zoom
Agenda
1. Croeso a chyflwyniad
Welcome and introduction
Delyth Jewell MS
2. Cofnodion y cyfarfod diwethaf
Minutes of the last meeting
Delyth Jewell MS
3. Llysgenhadon Hinsawdd Ieuenctid Cymru
Youth Climate Ambassadors for Wales
4. Dr Maria Kett, Athro mewn Dyneiddiaeth ac Anabledd, Sefydliad Epidemioleg a Gofal Iechyd UCL
Dr Maria Kett , Associate Professor in Humanitarianism and Disability, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare
5. Busnes arall
Any other business
Delyth Jewell MS
Actions
- Contact First Nations speaker
- Set date of next meeting
- Key contacts to be shared
Attendees: Antonia Fabian, Anouchka Grose, Caitlyn Williams, Emily Darney, Gwenda, Joe Rossiter, Kate Lowther, Kathryn Speedy, Liz Williams, Madelaine Phillips, Maria Kett, Molly Hucker, Ollie John, Rhiannon Hardiman, Ryland Doyle
MS in attendance:Delyth Jewell MS, Huw Irranca-Davies MS
Minutes
1. Croeso a chyflwyniad
Welcome and introduction
2. Cofnodion y cyfarfod diwethaf
Minutes of the last meeting
Delyth Jewell MS
- Welcome
- Meeting is being recorded for minuting purposes
- If you would like to contribute in Welsh, there is no official translation service but I will translate it into English
- We have had a long break, especially to give young people a break over the summer, and now we are re-energising the group and find out what everyone has been doing
- We will be hearing from our Youth Climate Ambassadors as well as Dr Maria Kett
- For anyone who is new to the group, the purpose of the group is partly to make sure that people feel empowered and to recognise the interlinks between the climate and nature crises, people and mental health. It is something which affects people of all ages and there is a very intergenerational aspect to our work as a group
- This is something which affects young people in a particular way and partly in recognition of this the Youth Climate Ambassadors co lead this group, there is a standing item in these meetings for them to give us an update
- Minutes of last meeting signed off by Delyth Jewell MS
3. Llysgenhadon Hinsawdd Ieuenctid Cymru
Youth Climate Ambassadors for Wales
Emily Darney
- Youth Climate Ambassadors (YCA) held an online event about climate refugees for Big Green Week, which is one of the main points in our manifesto
- This year we worked with solidarity stories and Oasis Cardiff, some refugees shared their stories and we gave people more information on what a climate refugee would be
- Working on a petition to make ‘Climate Refugee’ a recognised status, this is still in the early stages and we’re planning on having it ready for next year
- If anyone would like to support it or have more information please email the YCA
- On Saturday we have a meeting with the Wampis Youth, an indigenous group, to see how climate change is affecting them and how to help amplify their voices
- On the 8th and 10th November we are hosting a Youth COP in Cardiff to run alongside COP 27 to bring schoolchildren together and show them what a COP is
Delyth Jewell MS
- Fantastic to hear what the YCA are doing
- COP stands for Conference Of Parties and the principle is about bringing people together
Anouchka Grose
- I would like to hear more about how the YCA group came together and what to tell other people who want to do that kind of thing, how does it all work?
Emily Darney
- The group is facilitated by Size of Wales and started as a group during the first lockdown and I joined a year later
- We have some in person meetings but it’s mainly on Zoom
- If any of us have a topic we want to do some work on we share it and the group will then decide if we’d like to work on it
- We mainly do events or virtual events such as the COP or eco schools
Anouchka Grose
- How do the eco schools find you?
Emily Darney
- We do a lot of posting on social media, mainly Instagram, and we post a lot of campaigns on that
- We did a biodiversity campaign earlier in the year and made new contacts through that, so it’s mainly through sharing information
Delyth Jewell MS
- That’s brilliant, does anyone else have any questions?
- This group is meant to be as un-hierarchical as possible to make sure that everyone’s voice is amplified
- Climate change will affect young people most of all so we need to make sure that the platform is there for young people too
4. Dr Maria Kett, Athro mewn Dyneiddiaeth ac Anabledd, Sefydliad Epidemioleg a Gofal Iechyd UCL
Dr Maria Kett , Associate Professor in Humanitarianism and Disability, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare
Delyth Jewell MS
- We will now hear from Dr Maria Kett who is associate professor in humanitarianism and disability at UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare. Dr Kett is a social anthropologist by training, she's worked in over a dozen countries in Africa and Asia, leading on a number of research programmes on disability and International Development.
- Doctor Kent is co-founder of the Global Disability Innovation Hub, leading on the humanitarian focused work that they do. She’s going to be talking to us about disability and climate change
Dr Maria Kett
- Thanks to Liz for inviting me to speak
- I’ve always tried to ensure my work has real world application and work with people who are affected, and people with disabilities in particular.
- People with disabilities are more impacted by climate change and are more at risk of being injured or dying from climate related emergencies, such as flooding, earthquakes
- Food security and resource scarcity are also likely to impact disabled people more
- Up until quite recently people with disabilities weren’t very involved in key decision making processes such as the UN framework on climate change
- Rising temperatures impact a lot of people, especially elderly people but also people with certain health conditions, such as multiple sclerosis
- Globally we have an ageing population and an increasingly urban population. We’re seeing increasing heat events and the inability of our current environment to deal with that
- The is an imbalance of power which makes people with disabilities more at risk from climate change, it is the social structures which make people with disabilities more vulnerable to those impacts
- People with disabilities don’t necessarily know about some of the mitigations or conversations that are happening around some of these issues so aren’t necessarily engaged and organisations of persons with disabilities aren’t really represented at climate forums and at the UN
- We were recently asked by the UK government and the foreign Commonwealth Development Office to look into the inclusion of people with disabilities and their climate resilience in research in 2018
- This gave us the opportunity to work with colleagues in Bangladesh and Kenya
- We found that then, and with later work we did in 2021 there wasn’t a huge amount of research around people with disabilities, and both into the impact of climate change on people with disabilities and the extent to which climate change activities are including people with disabilities
- The Open Society Foundation perspective is very interesting because they were really looking at climate justice and how you address the imbalance of the poorest people in the world, who are the least likely to cause the emissions that create climate change, are the most likely to be impacted by it
- The research is available online and what we found is that there wasn’t much difference between 2018 – 2021
- The exclusion of people with disabilities has led to a focus on emergencies, disaster risk management, rather than long term actions
- Globally there’s quite strong legislation to support the inclusion of people with disabilities in disaster risk reduction but we need to look more upstream and stop those impacts happening in the first place
- We’d say from our research that people haven’t intentionally excluded people with disabilities but it was that these people weren’t actively included so we need to do more things to include them, such as braille, accessibility etc
- Things are starting to change and there is an increased awareness of including people with disabilities, partly because since 2008 there has been a United Nations Convention on the rights of People with Disabilities and this has a trickle down effect
- the adaptive measures are based on deeper social and economic change rather than the incremental adjustment of the current systems, it’s much more the coming together of groups
- There have to be trade off with people with disabilities, some of the climate issues were not always the most beneficial for people with disabilities, for example plastic straws – the idea of banning plastics is necessary for the environment but some people with impairments have a need for this
- We need to have debates about how what works for one group has an unintentional impact on another group, so its about trade offs and priorities for different groups
- If we’re talking about an inclusive society then it’s not about disability adaption etc it’s broader climate adaption
- People with disabilities need to be brought into the discussions, and I think it will be higher up in the upcoming COP with representative groups included
- This COP will be focussed on loss and damage, and it’s about how people are compensated for the damage caused to their environment by higher income countries or industries
Delyth Jewell MS
- Thank you very much
- Any questions?
- Questions can also be emailed to Dr Kett, the address will be circulated with the minutes
- The world is designed for people who don’t have disabilities and then adaptions need to be made for people with disabilities, surely that’s the wrong way around and we should be designing things in a much more inclusive way
- The point around plastic straws was interesting because the Welsh Government are looking to introduce legislation for ban certain types of single use plastics but the point has come up in committee that banning plastic straws would be really unfair on people who need to use them because of their disabilities
Dr Kett
- People often bring up cycling at this point because cycle lanes are not so easy for people with visual impairments
- Also changing the colour of the crossings, particularly to make art, is not easily used by people with visual impairments
- Within the last 18 months the disability community has come together at an international level. There’s the Disability Alliance which is an alliance of national organisations and people with disabilities to create a clear list of priorities and every continent in the world is represented
Liz Williams
- For people with sight loss and people with visual impairments there are barriers at every stage of accessing a meeting where the information that’s shared isn’t accessible, or they can’t get public transport, or can’t afford a taxi, so there’s all sorts of barriers
- Do you know of any examples where disabled people have engaged in this work and co-production has happened really effectively?
Dr Kett
- Vanuatu is one which people are using as a good example at the moment. They have quite an active disabled community and have put out a disability inclusive action plan.
- What’s important is whether governments are supporting issues for people with disabilities
- Kenya has been very supportive of rights for people with disabilities
Ollie John
- This is about still needing to understand the breadth of exclusion
- We’ve been involved in some work around mental health inequalities and it’s been challenging to evidence documents to do it justice and I’d be really interested in that point and around what’s currently happening to best understand this
Dr Kett
- We’ve become very good in the disabled community at making points of principles e.g. things should be accessible and equitable
- We do have evidence from richer countries like the US to know which groups are more affected but unless people are collecting the data we won’t know, and there hasn’t been a lot collected in a lot of other countries
- It’s about converting our points of principle into really specific actions
Ollie John
- Thank you, and that’s the point as well on the focus on immediate disaster risk reduction as opposed to upstream measures
Delyth Jewell MS
- Definitely, and that’s a similar point to earlier around designing it from the start rather than waiting for a problem and responding which doesn’t just isolate communities but also doesn’t make economic sense
- Dr Kett, what gives you the most reason for hope?
Dr Kett
- A year ago I would have said that young people are really going to be the driving force but I went to a workshop around climate anxiety and the first thing one of the young people said was that why do they have to think of all the solutions when they didn’t create the problems
- I think that communities will come together and there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation whether it’s building back better or building more inclusive environments
5. Busnes arall
Any other business
Delyth Jewell MS
- We can all be part of this change in different ways and it’s fantastic that so many members of this group care enough to be coming to a meeting at 5:50 in the evening
- Is there any other business or does anyone else want to update on what they’re doing?
- Huw Irranca-Davies has just joined us, Emily was just talking about the work they’re doing with climate refugees and the youth COP which will be happening on the 8th and 10th. There’s a lot going on and we’ll be sending out emails with the details
Emily Darney
- One day is in the Temple of Peace and the other day is in the meeting rooms in the Pierhead
Delyth Jewell MS
- We’ve also heard from Dr Kett about climate change and disability
- We were just speaking about what gives us hope
Huw Irranca- Davies MS
- I was writing up a report on the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Nova Scotia and there was a real focus on sustainable development goals, climate change, sustainability but a real frustration about parliamentarians’ inability to hold governments to account, particularly from the smaller developing nations
- There was a real interest and knowledge from Commonwealth parliamentarians about the well-being of future generations act and in particular the Nova Scotians reflected on their own First Nations people and their 7 generations principle which goes back to the ancient times of the First Nations that you take decisions based on 7 generations ahead. In the Canadian system you also have to consult with First Nations people on any planning.
- What I found interesting is that we in Wales have put a similar legislative paradigm into place thinking about future generations
Delyth Jewell MS
- Would one of the Canadians want to come to a future meeting of this group and speak to us?
Huw Irranca- Davies MS
- I’m sure. It would be great to get one of the First Nation leaders to come and talk. I can make that approach if people are happy with this
Delyth Jewell MS
- Does anyone have any thoughts on anything that you'd like us to cover in our next meeting?
Anoushka Grose
- I met a person today who had converted his eco anxiety into action. He’s from a village in Pakistan and a big company wanted to take over the land and use it for intense farming and he and the village stopped it
- He said this was provoked by his anxiety and he’s done the exact thing of converting his eco anxiety into action
Delyth Jewell MS
- Fantastc
- In terms of the next meeting we haven’t got anything in the calendar
- Thursday around this time seems to be good so maybe we should go for January
- Many thanks everyone