A Resilience Circle alumnus, Puneet Singh Singhal is a disability rights advocate and an accessibility professional. He is the co-founder of Billion Strong, an organization working to empower people with disabilities globally. Here Puneet shares his story about his “Green Disability” initiative, where he is working at the intersection of disability, climate change, rampant inhumane urbanization and mental health.
I did not first encounter climate change in a classroom, policy report, or conference hall. I encountered it growing up in a crowded slum in Delhi, where the climate crisis was not a future threat but part of everyday survival.
Delhi is often described through statistics: one of the most polluted cities in the world, rising temperatures, worsening heatwaves. But statistics rarely capture what it feels like to live through these conditions, especially when your life already sits at the edge of vulnerability.
I grew up navigating dyslexia, dyspraxia, and a stammer while caring for my chronically ill mother in a household shaped by poverty and domestic violence. The city outside our door was chaotic and unforgiving. For someone with dyspraxia, even crossing a busy road or climbing stairs could become an ordeal. Communication, because of my stammer, often carried anxiety and stigma.
In winter, Delhi’s smog would settle like a heavy curtain over the city. Breathing became difficult. The air aggravated my anxiety and worsened my stammer. Summers brought relentless heatwaves. Our home, poorly ventilated and cramped, would turn into something resembling an oven. Water shortages were common. Noise pollution never stopped.
The hardest moments, though, were watching my mother struggle through these conditions. Her chronic health problems would intensify with every heatwave. Dehydration, exhaustion, and pain became part of the rhythm of summer. As her caregiver, I often felt overwhelmed and powerless.
What struck me most during those years was the silence surrounding these experiences. Climate change was already shaping our lives, yet the conversations happening in policy circles and climate forums seemed far removed from people like us.
I later realized that millions of others shared similar realities: disabled people, neurodivergent individuals, chronically ill people, and caregivers navigating a changing climate with very little recognition or support. Despite representing roughly 17–22 percent of the world’s population, the disability community is largely
absent from climate discussions.
That realization eventually led me to start Green Disability. Green Disability began with a simple but urgent idea: climate justice cannot exist without disability justice. Accessibility and sustainability are deeply connected. When climate policies fail to consider disabled lives, they fail many others as well.
Around this time, I became part of a Resilience Circle through The Resilience Project. It was one of the first spaces where I could sit with others navigating similar emotional and structural challenges of climate work—not just the urgency, but the exhaustion, the grief, and the quiet weight of it all. The Circle was not about
solutions alone, but about learning how to stay present, connected, and human in the face of overwhelming systems.
That experience shaped how I began to approach Green Disability, not just as advocacy, but as a space of listening, care, and collective processing. It reinforced something I had lived but never fully articulated: that resilience is not only built through infrastructure or policy, but through relationships, community, and the
ability to hold difficult realities together.
To better understand these connections, I began speaking with people from my own community and beyond. Over several months, I conducted conversations, sometimes on Zoom or Google Meet, sometimes in person. People spoke about heatwaves intensifying chronic illnesses and leaving them trapped inside homes that were not designed to cope with extreme temperatures. Some described how air pollution worsened respiratory conditions, especially for those relying on breathing aids.
Many also pointed out something that often goes unnoticed: climate infrastructure rarely considers accessibility.
Cooling centers are frequently inaccessible to people with mobility impairments. Emergency evacuation routes do not accommodate assistive devices. Disaster warnings are rarely delivered in formats accessible to people with sensory or cognitive disabilities.
The economic impacts are equally severe. Climate disruptions often deepen existing inequalities. Disabled people are already more likely to face barriers in employment, and climate shocks can push families further into financial insecurity. Rising healthcare costs during environmental crises add yet another layer of stress.
Mental health is another dimension that often remains invisible. Climate anxiety, isolation during extreme weather events, and the breakdown of social support networks can leave many feeling alone in circumstances they did not create.
Green Disability has gradually grown into a community of advocates working to bring these realities into climate discussions. Today, the initiative connects hundreds of disability advocates and allies across the world, with thousands more engaging through our networks and publications.
Our work focuses on documenting lived experiences, translating complex climate research into accessible language, and ensuring that disabled voices are included in conversations about urban planning, disaster preparedness, and climate resilience.
Disabled people are often experts in adaptation. We navigate barriers daily. We develop strategies for resilience in environments that were never designed with us in mind. These insights are valuable, not only for disability policy but for climate action more broadly.
When cities become more accessible, they often become more sustainable as well. Walkable neighborhoods, inclusive public transport, and thoughtful urban design benefit everyone, not just disabled residents.
Resilience should not mean forcing people to endure systems that exclude them. It should mean designing societies where everyone has the support and dignity needed to adapt and thrive.
If the climate crisis teaches us anything, it is that our futures are deeply interconnected. True sustainability will only emerge when the people most affected by environmental change are not treated as afterthoughts, but as partners in shaping the solutions.
In that sense, Green Disability is not simply a project. It is an invitation to rethink how we understand resilience.
Illustration by Jade Johnson
