Transcript for After the Rain

Audio description: Text appears: In Rwanda, changes in weather patterns have caused rains to be stronger and heavier.

Audio description: A flooded road with significant damage. People walk along the damaged road. Text appears: Torrential downpours have washed away roads and destroyed homes.

Audio description: Florentine Mukantagwera, from the Gakenke District, Northern Province, sits and gestures while speaking.

Florentine: My wish is to have a well-roofed house because it rains in and out.

Audio description: A flooded road next to houses. Text appears: In 2023, floods in Rwanda devastated the country’s Western and Northern provinces, leaving about 130 people dead.

Florentine:  When the flood happened…

Audio description: A makeshift metal bridge over a fast-flowing, muddy stream. People work to clear mud and debris from a flooded area.

Florentine: I was here alone.

Audio description:  A large section of land has been eroded, revealing a steep slope of exposed earth and rocks.

Florentine: I heard people in the mountains shouting and crying that they are dying.

Audio description: The interior of a small, sparsely furnished room. A mosquito net hangs over a bed.

Florentine: I wondered, What if my house falls on me? The whole yard was water, and it started to fall in the house through the roof.

Audio description: A view of the interior of a damaged roof. Water damage is visible. Catheline Nyiramanzi, Florentine’s neighbor, sits on a wooden bench and speaks to the camera.

Catheline: As her neighbor, I wish her a safe house because she lives in a crushed house due to its old and heavy rain.

Audio description: Florentine sits outside her house, appearing to throw a rain covering over her belongings.

Catheline: As a person with a disability, this flood and landslides have doubly affected her life.

Audio description: Interior of a simple room with a bed and a mosquito net. Text appears: During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Florentine and her family fled to Congo. Ten years later, they returned to the demolished house she lives in.

Audio description: A young man gathers leaves in a metal bowl. Text appears: Ten years ago, she lost control of her motor functions after contracting tuberculosis. She relies on her neighbors and son for survival.

Audio description: Eric Niyogisubizo, Florentine’s son, sits and speaks to the camera

Eric: I really want to continue my studies. I tried all my best, and I ended in primary six to care about my mother.

Audio description: Eric brings a bowl of food to Florentine.

Florentine: My neighbors cultivate for me without my request, and they give me beans from their houses.

Audio description: Two women bring a blanket to Florentine.

Florentine: I sit here and find them providing me food and porridge.

Audio description: Florentine sits by a small fire, preparing food.

Florentine: There is a Bible verse saying that, “For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, naked, and you clothed me. Ill, and you cared for me.” You cannot imagine how much that polish relieved me.

Audio description: The Disability Justice Project logo, featuring a bright yellow letter D with a triangular play button in the center, appears on a black background.

Transcript for Field Lessons

Audio description: A brown goat eats green plants, its head down, body angled towards the ground.

Steven Bukaya, a Ugandan man in a yellow shirt, sits on the ground, chopping a banana trunk with a large knife.

Bukaya: I’m Bukaya, Steven. I’m age 57 years.

Audio description: Steven looks off-camera and smiles. Cows are visible in the background.

Bukaya: I’m a farmer.

Audio description: He sits on the ground next to piles of sweet potatoes and a bag of plants.

Bukaya: Most especially in the cattle rearing and piggery.

Audio description: Steven sits on the ground petting a brown-and-white cow eating a banana trunk. In the next shot, Bukaya is revealed to have a limb difference affecting his legs. He crawls on the ground, protecting his hands with salmon-colored sandals.

Bukaya: When you’re a person with disability and rear animals, your home becomes a school to other people. They always refer to you that if a disabled person can raise animals, how about we?

Audio description: Text overlay: Work has become harder for Bukaya as worsening droughts during Uganda’s dry seasons have driven up the cost of essentials like animal feed, water, and transportation.

Bukaya: Climate change is affecting me so much because when the climate is very hot like it is now, the feeds are very expensive, most especially when it comes to to a maize brand. There is a type of grass which they eat, and it accelerates the milk.

Audio description: A white sack is tied with string with some banana trunk sticking out.  Bukaya milks a cow, filling a pink bucket with milk.

Bukaya: But during the dry season, that type of grass is nowhere to be seen.

Audio description: Cows stand in a wooden enclosure. Text on screen: To feed the animals, Bukaya and his family often forage for plants or stretch their feed supply by diluting it with water.

Stephen works on his hands and knees, picking up green plants from a pile of wooden planks.

Bukaya: We don’t get enough food like grass and other things. We supplement the feeds with it. With water.

Audio description: A woman pulls animal feed and then water into a trough.

Bukaya: During the dry season, the bill for the tap to water it goes up. Yes.

Audio description: A white pig eats from a trough.

Bukaya: So these days they don’t eat to the maximum. They eat only to survive.

Audio description: A woman chops a banana trunk with a knife next to a small child. Text overlay: Facing lower returns on milk and increasing prices, maintaining his cattle and family has become a challenge for Bukaya.

Bukaya: We have been yearning for the government to help us. But to the way they bring in their programs, they are not disability-friendly. When we are in this type of business, we face a lot of challenges.

Audio description: Text overlay: Bukaya hopes to modernize his farm by acquiring hybrid animals, which are more resilient to climate change, and by having more accessible transport to the market.

Stephen sits on the ground, holding a plant in his hands.

Bukaya: We are using this bicycle, the local bicycles.

Audio description: A man pushes a bicycle laden with banana trunks.

Bukaya: but my vision is to make this thing more, more commercial than it is. I need a motorized transport, like a piki.

Audio description: Bukaya gestures as a small fleet of motorized scooters gathers behind him.

Bukaya: That’s what I’m heading for. But it’s a bit expensive.

Audio description: Bukaya slips his sandals over his hands to begin crawling toward the camera. Text overlay: Without disability-inclusive government programs and sufficient funding, Bukaya and other Ugandans with disabilities face the greatest risks from the impacts of climate change.

Text overlay: While Uganda has made strides in enacting laws like the Persons for Disability Act in 2020, more must be done to ensure their inclusion in future climate change adaptation and action plans.

The Disability Justice Project logo, featuring a bright yellow letter D with a triangular play button in the center, appears on a black background.

Transcript for Climate Isn’t Equal

Audio description: An Indian man wearing a beanie and navy sweatshirt on a red bench in a park speaking to the camera.

Pranav: Most of the neurodiverse people are surviving and not living, and I genuinely feel the same. See for neurodiverse people, every day is a survival.

Audio description: An aerial view of Delhi, a densely populated city covered in smog.

Audio description: Text on screen: Pranav Sethi is a 34-year-old  autistic disaster risk reduction professional.

[soft acoustic music throughout]

Text continues: He is vocal about climate change and its effects on disabled and neurodivergent people.

Audio description: Pranav sits indoors looking at a laptop,

Pranav: I mean I personally have seen the impact of climate change.

Audio description: Pranav walks down a street with  parked cars and buildings on either side.

Pranav: Because of my special interest and because it’s slow.

Audio description: Three smokestacks emit smoke into the sky,

Pranav: Like, you know, it’s not a sudden change. It’s a process.  Like you know, it’s a very slow process.

Audio description: Pranva walks through a smog-filled park with trees and benches.

Pranav: The moment you land in Delhi you know you  can have as many uh air purifiers as you like.

Audio description: A plane lands on a runway in heavy smog. Passengers disembark and walk through the haze.

Pranav: They are not going to do anything because you cannot seal your home. Winters are here.

Audio description: A car drives through dense fog and smog. Streetlights shine through dense pollution.

Pranav: Smog is at its peak. As you can see, like, you know, most of us are coughing. It’s a lot of smog.

Audio description: Text on screen: Climate change makes smog worse by increasing heat and sunlight.

This speeds up the chemical reaction between pollution from power plants, cars and factories.

Text continues: More ozone forms, leading to dirtier air and more health problems.

Pranav: You find it difficult to breathe. You find it difficult to like, you know, drive.

Audio description: Prav drives a car.

Pranav: During winters it is like that – that all the air will kind of accumulate over the northern plains.

Audio description: Cars drive on a highway through dense smog. A hazy aerial view of Delhi, buildings and traffic,
barely visible.

Pranav: And we are in the middle of it so you know we end up suffering.

Pranav’s wife Shivani: And we are just no ready to face the changes that are happening these days.

Audio description: Pranav is joined by his wife, Shivani. They sit together on a red bench in a park. Shivani wears light pink jeans and a beige hoodie with yellow
trim.

Text on screen: Shivani Chandel, government schoolteacher, Pranav’s wife.

Shivani: I mean the pollution for one, the like natural disasters being more frequent.

Pranav: Like, I’ve seen people in the middle of such crisis.

Audio description: The Red Fort in Delhi crowded with tourists and layered in smog.

Pranav: After coming out of it they still are not able to acknowledge the fact that you know it’s because of climate change.

Audio description: Pranav stands in a park covered with fallen leaves. Wearing sandals, he shuffles his feet through the leaves.

Pranav: They will think of any random, obscure, um like, you know, reason but not climate change.

Audio description: A drive-by view of people walking on a busy street in Delhi, wrapped in shawls. A wide view of a smoggy landscape with a river and birds flying overhead.

Pranav: That is how bad the thing is.

Audio description: An aerial view of Indian women wearing colorful saris walking in a line through a dry landscape, carrying large pots of water atop their heads.

Text screen: While 82% of people in India acknowledge that global warming is happening, only 54% believe it is primarily caused by human activities.
Source: Yale climate opinion maps for India 2024

Text continues: the rest attribute it to mostly natural changes in the environment.

Shivani: And given like how uneducated a majority of our population is they think that, “Okay, we’re just a minuscule part of this big, big population of India.

Audio description: A woman arranges garlands in her shop. Two women carry pots of water on their heads.

Shivani: And anything we do will not make any difference.

Audio description: Time-lapse showing the Red Fort in Delhi, crowded with tourists and shrouded in haze.

Shivani: They cannot be worried because they have so much to worry about, like what they’re going to have next in their meal, if they’re going to have enough clothes to wear for the winters.

Like, I think a mindboggling uh sum of people are uneducated.

Audio description: A woman sells vegetables at a market store.

And they just don’t they don’t know about it, so they they can’t care about it.

Audio description: A crowded, polluted street in Delhi, with overhead wires.

And if they know about it, they still can’t care about it because they have like very immediate issues that they have to cater to. That’s how I feel.

Pranav: You know people are busy with their own life to an extent where they don’t even know that they don’t even know the climate is changing.

Audio description: An aerial view showing cars and people on the street, another overhead view of Delhi with a train running down the center.

Pranav: And they have started to accept this as the new normal. People are believing that this is how it is now.

Audio description: A small boat with people on a smoggy river, birds flying overhead.

Pranav: It was never the case earlier, like 20 25 years back. That was never the case, but now it is becoming a big issue,  so like I mean, this should never be considered as normal. This is not normal.

Audio description: A crowded time-lapse of cars and people on the street. Text on screen: As climate change intensifies, inclusive action is more critical than ever. People with disabilities are among those most affected, often facing higher risks during climate-related disasters and limited access to resources for adaptation.

Text on screen: India’s updated climate goals under the Paris Agreement focus on making climate action fair and inclusive, cutting carbon emissions per unit of GDP [gross domestic product] by 45% by 2030 compared to 2005, with solutions that everyone, including disabled communities, can access.

Text continues: Growing forests and tree cover to absorb 2.5 to 3 billion tons of CO2 by 2030 with diverse communities taking part.

Text continues: Increasing funding for climate programs that support vulnerable groups, particularly persons with disabilities, across sectors such as agriculture, water resources, the Himalayan region, coastal
regions, health, and disaster management.

Text continues: This inclusive update to India’s nationally determined contribution [NDC] marks a significant step toward India’s long-term goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2070.

The Disability Justice Project logo, featuring a bright yellow letter D with a triangular play button in the center, appears on a black background.