The future of inclusive sport

From the blood‑and‑thunder drama of para ice hockey (I challenge anyone to watch a match and not feel exhausted) to the debut of mixed doubles curling, the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics Winter Games delivered far more than sporting excellence.

We’ve witnessed what human potential looks like when barriers are removed and inclusion is real, but climate change is shifting and rebuilding those barriers – making them higher, harder and, for some, insurmountable.

This is because climate change exacerbates inequality, threatening the hard-won gains made by disability activists over decades and, while progress has been huge, the extreme change in our weather and its effects on Earth are a stark reminder of how fragile that advancement is.

We even saw the impact of climate change at the Games, with some athletes voicing concerns that the March schedule for the event is now too late in the year and that competition conditions were being impacted by warm 'spring-like' weather.

The lesser known dangers of climate change 

Evidence submitted to Parliament is unequivocal: disabled people are more negatively affected by the health and social impacts of climate change than the general population – not primarily because of their impairments – but because systems already fail to meet their basic needs.

People living with disabilities – who are already twice as likely to be inactive according to our research, but who gain the most for their wellbeing from being able to take part in sport and physical activity – are disproportionately affected by rising heat, greater flooding risk and disruptions to accessible transport.

Sport England’s mission is to enable more people take part in sport and activity, but extreme weather is already making that harder.

From washed-out pitches to heatwaves that make outdoor sport unsafe, extreme weather has already prevented three in five adults in England from being active.

Climate research consistently shows why this happens and it’s simple and disheartening – disabled people are routinely excluded from climate adaptation planning.

Globally, 80% of national climate strategies fail to reference disability, leaving huge gaps in preparedness and emergency support.

And wherever disabled people are mentioned at all, they are often labelled as ‘inherently vulnerable’ – a misconception that shifts responsibility away from systems that fail to include them.
 

When torrential and constant rain hits it’s harder to manoeuvre a wheelchair outside. When a ramp floods, when accessible transport is disrupted, when a facility closes ‘for a few days’, some people lose far more than a chance to exercise. They lose independence, community and joy.

If we want to protect the magic of sport and movement – plus the hard-won progress of inclusion in sport for people with disabilities – we must protect the planet that makes sport possible.

That is why Sport England’s mission to help people get active now include helping the planet stay stable.

In May 2024, we launched Every Move, our first environmental sustainability strategy, to help the 150,000 sports clubs and 98,000 facilities across England sitting on the frontline of climate impacts.

We backed this with more than £45 million of National Lottery funding and already more than 570 interventions are underway, including solar panels on roofs, energy efficient systems in leisure centres or redesigned outdoor spaces to cope with flooding.

These changes cut carbon and also keep facilities open, safe and accessible for the communities who depend on them most.

On top of these, all of our partners must have sustainability action plans in place by March 2027 as a funding condition.

This isn’t a box-ticking exercise, but about futureproofing the places and spaces that people rely on to stay active, healthy and connected as communities, including our swimming pools, village halls, football pitches or athletics tracks, to name a few.

Community action agains climate change 

It’s great to see how sport is willing to innovate to face the disrupting weather conditions.

Football and all-weather pitches are working with us to explore transitions away from rubber infill and to increase recycling capacity, with the ambition to be the first in the world to have a fully sustainable system by 2035.

Elsewhere, leisure centres are switching to more efficient systems and community clubs are testing and implementing changes.

Be it the guys at Whalley Range Cricket & Lawn Tennis Club, who are planting trees on the outskirts of playing fields to better soak up excess water, or the river clean-ups hosted by Fulham Reach Boat Club – an organisation doing great work through Row to Rhythm, a project for individuals with visual impairments.

Actions like these collectively truly add up to major impact.

Going back to international competitions, the challenges facing the Winter Paralympics, and winter sport more widely, should not drive despair. They should galvanise us instead, because sport has always been about rising to the moment and responding to the now.

And right now, the moment demands that we confront climate change not just as an environmental issue, but as a justice matter – one that threatens to undo decades of progress in making sport accessible, inclusive and transformative.

If we want a future where Paralympians can still inspire the world from real snow and real ice, and where disabled people everywhere can access the benefits of movement, we must act together and we must do so right now.