At the Margins of the Storm: Mainstreaming LGBTI+ Rights in Climate Change Strategies

Climate change is more than an environmental emergency. It’s a magnifying glass held over the cracks in our societies. For LGBTI+ people, those cracks are already deep, carved by decades of discrimination in housing, work, healthcare, and the right to simply exist.

Our latest report, Climate Change & LGBTI+ Lives, reveals how climate disasters compound these injustices — from being turned away at shelter doors to facing violence in the aftermath of a flood. This isn’t just about rising seas or hotter summers. It’s about who gets left behind when the waters rise.

Our research has found:

• Unequal Impact
  Homelessness rates in the LGBTI+ community are already higher than average. Add climate change’s extremes — heatwaves, hurricanes, floods — and the risks multiply.
• Disaster Relief Gaps
  Relief policies often define ‘family’ as a heterosexual couple with children. This leaves same-sex couples and transgender people excluded from vital aid, as seen in case studies from Fiji, the Philippines, India, and Hurricane Katrina.
• Barriers to Escape
  In many countries, simply being LGBTI+ is criminalised. Seeking asylum after a disaster means facing the double threat of state persecution and physical danger in detention or transit.

Aid cuts and political backsliding threaten climate finance worldwide. If we don’t act now, LGBTI+ people who are often already at the margins of climate policy risk being written out of the response entirely.

Read our Full Climate Change Report