People with low personal mobility or living in areas with lower accessibility of services tend to have lower ability to respond to and recover from climate impacts because it may take them longer to help themselves, or to seek and receive help from others

 

Credit: JRF/Liz Hingley

 

A person’s ability to respond in the event of a flood or heat-wave will depend on their personal mobility. People with reduced mobility may be more reliant on others to assist them, e.g. whether in the community or within serviced accommodation like a care or residential home. Even in cases where individuals are normally able to help themselves, their capacity to do so may be severely reduced in the event of a flood or heat-wave event, for example due to power cuts or due to other infrastructure being affected. Some people with reduced mobility may also have other characteristics which increase their vulnerability, for example due to their age or health status.

 

Getting help during events may also rely on the general accessibility of services to the local community and this can be limited, particularly in some rural and coastal areas ¹,².   Physical isolation due to poor mobility or transport networks presents a particular challenge for responding to floods, especially if critical transport infrastructure is also affected by the event. People working away from home may also have limited capacity to assist others or to deploy measures at home, such as flood gates, in the case of rapid onset events like surface water flooding. While people in generally cooler rural areas may be less likely to experience extremes of temperatures, physical isolation from medical services may make getting help more difficult and also inhibit the ability of friends and family to provide support.

 

More physically isolated areas can be associated with communities facing multiple vulnerability factors, such as low incomes, irregular and low paid employment, high rates of transience and low community cohesion³. Factors like low income can increase reliance on particular transport modes. For example, people on lower incomes and older people tend to be more reliant on public transport, particularly bus services⁴. Rural and coastal areas also tend to have higher proportions of older people, something which is set to further increase in the future⁵. 

 

Extreme weather events can put pressure on transport systems. For example, the direct and indirect impacts of past flood events are known to have caused disruption and delays on both minor and major road networks. The flooding in 2007 alone has been estimated to have resulted in an economic cost of around £100 million. While this economic impact is considerable, flood events also affect how far people are able to help themselves and their family, neighbours and friends.  Other hazards, like hot weather and landslides, e.g. due to extreme rainfall, can also affect road and rail services⁶.

 

Patterns of accessibility vary considerably and have a distinct geographical pattern which is different to many other indicators of social vulnerability⁷. Several indicators of mobility and accessibility are available in the map tool. These include measures of accessibility to medical services, both generally and by ‘at risk’ populations (i.e. those who do not have access to a private vehicle). Additional information may be available locally through partnership work with local transport, health and social care service providers.

 

Improving and protecting mobility and accessibility in local communities is an important means to ensure better community resilience and has wider health and wellbeing benefits, e.g. for older people or people who are more socially isolated. Public transport and accessibility are core elements of published recommendations aiming to improve community resilience and foster a better quality of life in older age⁸.

 

In allocating increasingly scarce resources, actions which aim to improve mobility and accessibility need to consider some of the principles of social justice. For example, providing a socially just response to personal mobility issues needs to take account of the fact that someone with a protected characteristic like a disability which affects their mobility will require a higher amount of resources in order for them to realise the same level of wellbeing as someone without that disability⁹. This is a good example showing how equality of resources does not always ensure equality of outcome and instead may disadvantage particular people and groups. Similarly, there is evidence that current transport investment tends to favours those on higher incomes relative to those on lower incomes. For example, it has been estimated that people in the top 10% income bracket get four times more benefit from transport investments that those in the lowest 10% income bracket¹⁰. This is due to a disproportionate amount of spending going towards investment in the rail and road transport networks and the fact that people on lower incomes tend to rely more heavily on bus transport and generally travel shorter distances. Local actions can help to better target the specific needs of local communities. The Localism Act provides some means for local communities to participate in and if necessary to challenge investment decisions in their local areas. However, in practice mounting such challenges also relies on the ability and willingness of individuals to engage and to express collective views. Differences in participation between people with different income status may act to further advantage higher income communities over others¹¹. 

 

This summary highlights that there is a need to consider the specific needs of people with limited mobility, or living in places with poor accessibility, as part of the process of building more climate resilient communities. In this first version of the Climate Just resource it has only been possible to provide a short overview of available evidence and outline a small number of the possible actions which might be taken in response. However, other parts of the resource provide additional relevant information and complement the information provided here. They provide further evidence, case studies and examples, list other possible actions, outline guidance on how actions might be achieved and connect you to other tools and resources. To find out more, consult the additional resources on:

• Recommended general actions.
• Guidance for effective working through partnerships and community engagement,
• Specific recommendations associated with other vulnerable groups. This is important as many of the factors affecting which people and places are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events are interconnected. The most extremely vulnerable people will be those who have multiple causes for their vulnerability, for example where where people with limited mobility, or living in places with poor accessibility, may also have other characteristics which affect their vulnerability, such as being older, being in poor health, living in particular types of housing, or being on a low incomes.
• Mapped indicators, including maps of some of the relative proportion of people with no access to private transport in your local area.

 

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