A/HRC/44/30 provided to the public, 13 is another issue that places persons with disabilities at a disadvantage vis-à-vis climate change impacts.14 10. Extreme weather events can result in disruptions to the availability of and access to health-care services, especially in rural areas. 15 Persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the adverse impacts of disasters 16 and are at greater risk of death, injury and additional impairments owing to their general exclusion from disaster risk reduction policies, plans and programmes.17 Emergency-related information and warnings are often not accessible to persons with disabilities. 11. Many persons with disabilities rely on assistive devices that enhance physical functions, including by enabling them to hear or see better and achieve mobility. During a disaster, assistive devices are often lost or damaged, leaving persons with disabilities without adaptive assistance. Such devices are typically not a part of distributed relief materials and when they are, they may not provide for the same functionality that the lost devices provided.18 12. Persons with disabilities, in particular women and girls, are at heightened risk of violence, including sexual violence, exploitation or abuse, during emergencies, especially in emergency shelters. 19 In some countries, conservative belief systems constrain the movement of women with disabilities, including deciding who may assist in their evacuation and where they can stay during emergencies,20 placing them at increased risk of harm from the adverse effects of climate change. B. Food security 13. Climate change is already impairing the ability of some communities to feed themselves and as temperatures rise the number of people affected will grow (see A/HRC/31/52). A decline in food production will adversely affect people who are already living in poverty, including persons with disabilities, who are more likely to live in poverty than others.21 Climate change is projected to exacerbate food shortages and malnutrition in the poorest regions of the world, while also negatively affecting agricultural and community enterprise livelihoods. That is likely to adversely impact the quality of life for people in the poorest communities, where persons with disabilities are disproportionately represented. 14. With rising temperatures and increasingly frequent extreme weather events, climate change will have a negative impact on crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture productivity and therefore on the availability of food (see A/70/287). Climate change is projected to reduce food quality, decrease water availability and make food storage increasingly problematic owing to warmer weather (ibid.). Access to food can be affected by damage to crop yields and infrastructure, as well as by the destruction of livelihoods 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 See Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, general comment No. 2 (2014) on accessibility. See Sébastien Jodoin, Nilani Ananthamoorthy and Katherine Lofts, “A disability rights approach to climate governance”. Ibid. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Disability and Development Report, p. 15. See Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Building Disability-inclusive Societies in Asia and the Pacific: Assessing Progress of the Incheon Strategy (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.18.II.F.4). Ibid. See Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, general comment No. 3 (2016) on women and girls with disabilities; and Sightsavers and Disabled Rehabilitation and Research Association, “Disability, disasters and empowerment: evidence from qualitative research in a disability inclusive disaster preparedness programme” (November 2015). See Sightsavers and Disabled Rehabilitation and Research Association, “Disability, disasters and empowerment”. See John Twigg and others, “Disability and climate resilience: a literature review”; and Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Disability and Development Report, p. 2. 5