This article reflects on the learning from five inclusive education projects implemented under the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme across Bangladesh, Kenya, Tanzania, Nepal, and Nigeria (2018-26). It addresses three core themes: finding and enrolling children with disabilities, preparing schools to welcome them, and centring them in teaching. Central to project success was the involvement of Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) in all stages, from design to delivery and monitoring, ensuring relevance, sustainability, and a rights-based focus. The projects demonstrated that inclusive education interventions are more successful when embedded in national strategies, supported by multisectoral collaboration. Despite persistent barriers, the projects demonstrated that low-cost, scalable strategies can improve educational outcomes for children with disabilities.
Participatory research, which is built on the guiding philosophy of enabling and empowering people to play an active and influential role in research that affects their lives, is an approach which can contribute to realising meaningful inclusion. Drawing on experiences gained through developing and employing participatory research methods under the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme, this article explores the methodological opportunities, challenges, and nuances of such an approach. It offers reflections based on the experience of undertaking research focused on inclusive education in Nigeria and Kenya, inclusive livelihoods in Bangladesh, and exploring the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people with disabilities across multiple countries. We analyse both successful practices from these participatory research projects and also highlight those that could have been more collaborative and inclusive. Finally, we look forward, offering reflections and recommendations to guide others who are interested in designing and delivering disability-inclusive participatory research.
Safeguarding refers to specific actions that reduce the risk of abuse, neglect, and harm. It is an essential aspect of all development programming and research, but due to existing social structures and entrenched power inequalities, it is particularly important in development programming and research focused on people with disabilities. This article reflects on implementation experience relating to disability-inclusive safeguarding from the UK aid-funded Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme. It details efforts taken to design and implement participatory safeguarding approaches and activities through partnering with Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs). The article unpacks practical examples of inclusive safeguarding while also identifying challenges in forming equitable, proportional partnerships between international non-governmental organisations and OPDs. It concludes by raising questions about how power, partnerships, sustainability, and solidarity impact on safeguarding for global actors working with locally embedded, under-resourced partners.
Transport is a fundamental enabler of participation in society yet people with disabilities frequently experience barriers to accessing it. These barriers are often greater in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite its importance, transport remains neglected in disability-inclusive development interventions. This article synthesises evidence from the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme and the Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action, which implement and evaluate disability inclusion interventions across multiple LMICs. We draw on their findings to examine the transport barriers experienced by people with disabilities and how these shaped intervention participation and outcomes. Findings highlight inaccessible infrastructure, a lack of accessible public transport options, unavailability of assistive technology, and transport-related stigma and discrimination as barriers. These barriers were shaped by intersectional disadvantage and risk constraining intervention participation and impact. We discuss the implications for disability-inclusive development intervention design and national transport policy, highlighting that transport access is a prerequisite for meaningful inclusion.
All people with disabilities should expect equitable access to services and equal opportunities; the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities explicitly recognises the importance of their full and effective participation and inclusion in society. However, particularly in low-income countries, people with disabilities with high support needs compared to other people with disabilities do not always benefit equally from existing policies, development projects, services, or practices. This article reflects on learning gathered from across the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme. It asserts that strengthening inclusion of people with disabilities with high support needs requires not only practical know-how at project level, but also systemic change to funding practices and project design. We identify key areas where collective focus and systemic change would ensure development programmes more commonly include people with disabilities with high support needs, who are often the hardest to reach and the most marginalised and excluded.
An estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide experience disability and are a part of human diversity. People with disabilities remain underrepresented in development programmes and research. People with disabilities must be included in development initiatives to ensure that no one is left behind. This article serves as an introduction to this issue of the IDS Bulletin, which presents a collection of articles written by researchers and practitioners involved in the UK aid-funded Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme. The articles explore a range of topics relating to disability and development such as health, education, safeguarding, transport, stigma, including the most marginalised groups, the imperative role of Organisations of Persons with Disabilities, and disability-inclusive approaches to research and evaluations. This IDS Bulletin presents robust evidence produced under the DID programme to show what is known, makes practical suggestions for what needs to be done to achieve inclusion going forward, and highlights persisting evidence and funding gaps.
Disability stigma is a persistent barrier to the inclusion of people with disabilities, yet its impact is often overlooked in programming aimed at disability inclusion, and there is little evidence about disability stigma reduction interventions. Drawing on research from the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme (2018-26), this article outlines programme learning about disability stigma through the framework of different stigma types (social, structural, internalised, and stigma by association), as well as the role of intersectionality and stigma. Programme learning about how to reduce disability stigma when working on disability-inclusive programming highlights the importance of having a shared understanding of stigma to better guide interventions. More intentional planning for stigma reduction, as well as targeting the different types of disability stigma is key. It is also important to centre the experiences of people with disabilities. Changing the norms around ingrained forms of stigma requires a long-term sustained approach to stigma reduction.
Health is a development priority across countries and contexts. Yet many health systems are still not accessible for people with disabilities. The Inclusive Family Planning project (IFPLAN), part of the UK aid-funded Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme, operates in Northern Nigeria to improve access to sexual and reproductive health for people with disabilities. It partnered with the Lafiya project-a UK aid-funded mainstream health programme-on putting disability inclusion into their practice. In a team consisting of two Inclusive Futures management staff, a disability specialist seconded to the Lafiya project, and a woman with disabilities from the Nigerian National Association of the Deaf, we led the process to identify lessons from this collaboration. In this article, we address the central question, 'What is needed to support the implementation of inclusive health in mainstream programmes?' We offer eight practical recommendations to enhance equal access for people with disabilities, adaptable across contexts.
People with disabilities experience stark inequities across the spectrum of development priorities. Yet they are rarely prioritised by development programmes. The poor evidence base for 'what works' for disability-inclusive development is a major challenge to taking action and advancing the meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities. The Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action (PENDA) was established to undertake high-quality impact evaluations to assess whether holistic approaches to disability-inclusive development improve the participation of people with disabilities in key areas of society (health, livelihoods, education). Through PENDA, 13 evaluations were implemented across 13 low-and middle-income countries. Impact evaluations are predominantly through the gold standard approach of randomised controlled trials. Each trial has a complementary mixed-methods process evaluation to better understand the findings and their implications. This article reflects on key considerations for undertaking impact evaluations of disability-inclusive development interventions, illustrated from the PENDA trials, and learnings to advance this research agenda.
This is the glossary of IDS Bulletin 56.2: Struggles for Justice in the Energy Transition: Voices from the Front Lines.
This article examines the role of narratives in shaping Colombia's energy transition debate. While the current government's proposal to phase out fossil fuels has gained international recognition, domestic discourse remains polarised and dominated by powerful economic and political interests. These dominant narratives often marginalise alternative voices-particularly those from civil society and fossil-fuel-producing regions. In response, a participatory initiative led by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and partners convened diverse social actors to co-create a metanarrative and set of alternative narratives for a just energy transition. This article explores how inclusive narratives rooted in equity and justice can counterbalance exclusionary discourses and serve as strategic tools for advancing transformative change in the energy transition pathway.
This article analyses the dynamic interactions between civil society organisations, local government, and the energy sector within three key energy-producing regions of Mozambique: Inhambane, Tete, and Cabo Delgado. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities for achieving a just energy transition in a political landscape prioritising investments in an energy matrix predominantly based on hydroelectric power, natural gas, and coal. Drawing on research in Mozambique on civic engagement and energy transition, the article puts forward three main propositions: (1) Mozambique's dependency on fossil fuels and the slow expansion of renewable energy projects creates tensions between the urgent need for energy access and global climate mitigation commitments; (2) the fragmentation of civic space limits the ability of local voices to influence policy decisions around transition; (3) the creation of democratic engagement platforms would expand community participation and foster strategic alliances to address the rights of local communities.
Argentina and Chile have emerged as key suppliers of critical minerals essential to the global green transition. Yet the expansion of mineral extraction in both countries has triggered widespread socioenvironmental conflict. This article examines the scale, drivers, and outcomes of civil society resistance to mining, based on a review of over 180 sources and original mapping of 36 conflict cases. It argues that these conflicts are not isolated or episodic, but pervasive, politically significant, and increasingly influential in shaping the strategies for a just transition. Led by diverse actors-indigenous communities, local assemblies, non-governmental organisations, and municipal governments-resistance has often succeeded in blocking projects, prompting legal reforms, and generating bottom-up innovations. While resistance highlights failures in current governance models, it also advances alternative visions rooted in territorial justice and democratic participation. Civil society resistance should be recognised not as a barrier but as a potential catalyst for institutional and policy transformation.
The role of organised labour is an essential, yet overlooked, driver for a just transition to a low-carbon economy. This article explores how worker agency – rooted in place, memory, and collective organisation – is central to climate and economic transformation. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of worker-led industrial conversion in the UK, it illustrates how trade unions and allied community movements have organised for, and in some cases, successfully implemented socially useful alternative forms of production. Through historical case studies such as the Lucas Aerospace workers’ plan, and more recent experiences – Broughton Airbus’ conversion and Just Transition Wakefield – the article illuminates how organised workers can align climate action with job security and community resilience. We conclude that for decarbonisation to be equitable and effective, labour must reclaim power over wages and conditions, and over the direction of technological and industrial change, through expanded collective bargaining and broader place-based alliances.
This article critically examines how the expansion of ‘green’ extractivist frontiers, under the guise of energy transition, reproduces colonial patterns of territorial dispossession and ecological degradation. Drawing from case studies in Portugal and Brazil, we explore how lithium mining projects, justified by climate goals and the decarbonisation consensus, intensify environmental and social violence in historically marginalised territories. We argue that these regions are rendered ‘peripheries’, not by geography but by relational dynamics within global supply chains, where technocratic narratives of sustainability overshadow local knowledge and ecosocial diversity. The discourse of compensation fails to address irreversible cultural and ecological losses, while the ‘energy transition’ serves more to secure markets and geopolitics than to promote justice. Highlighting the resilience and socio-ecological practices of local communities, we call for diverse cosmovisions that centre life, interdependence, and justice, challenging the dominant paradigms of ‘green development’ and offering pathways for a truly transformative transition.
In this article, Schwartzman and Walk reflect on the politics of economic transition programmes that have come to the southern West Virginia coalfields in the United States since 2015, following directly upon the scale-down of a direct action non-violent civil disobedience campaign protesting the environmental injustices of coal extraction. The article provides historical context for the shift between the contentious politics of protesting coal extraction to the largely uncontentious politics of economic transition efforts. The authors argue that while the protest movement maintained a clear analysis of power, many of the projects and programmes that aimed to diversify the economy or transition the economy into more prosperous terrain lacked an analysis of the power relations therein. The article blends a discussion of funding programmes with personal reflections to provide context for efforts to create a just transition in southern West Virginia.
Este artigo examina criticamente como a expansão das fronteiras extrativistas “verdes”, sob o pretexto da transição energética, reproduz padrões coloniais de desapropriação territorial e degradação ecológica. Com base em estudos de caso em Portugal e no Brasil, exploramos como os projetos de mineração de lítio, justificados por metas climáticas e pelo consenso da descarbonização, intensificam a violência ambiental e social em territórios historicamente marginalizados. Argumentamos que essas regiões são transformadas em “periferias” não pela geografia, mas pela dinâmica relacional dentro das cadeias de abastecimento globais, onde narrativas tecnocráticas de sustentabilidade ofuscam o conhecimento local e a diversidade ecossocial. O discurso da compensação não aborda as perdas culturais e ecológicas irreversíveis, enquanto a “transição energética” serve mais para garantir mercados e manter definições geopolíticas do que para promover a justiça. Destacando a resiliência e as práticas socioecológicas das comunidades locais, apelamos a cosmovisões diversas que centram a vida, a interdependência e a justiça, desafiando os paradigmas dominantes do “desenvolvimento verde” e oferecendo caminhos para uma transição verdadeiramente transformadora.
