When Chennai flooded in 2023, the city cracked open. Streets vanished. Boats replaced buses. Power was gone for days. It looked like the future we keep being warned about, but it was already here. Entire neighbourhoods went under. Along with the infrastructure, safety and dignity drowned too.
For queer people, especially those estranged from family or living in informal housing, the climate disaster isn’t just about the event itself. It often means becoming invisible again. Many who had painstakingly built chosen families or secured rented rooms are forced to return “home” – to relatives who refuse to acknowledge their gender, relationships, or even their preferred names.
There’s little formal data on how many queer people in India are displaced due to climate-induced disasters – in part because disaster assessments rarely collect information on sexual orientation or gender identity, and when they do, respondents may not feel safe disclosing it. Relief and census forms often default to binary gender categories, erasing non-binary and trans identities from official counts. Without this recognition in baseline data, queer displacement remains invisible in disaster statistics. So, in a world where over 70% of LGBTQ+ youth still face family rejection, returning home during a disaster is inevitable. It’s not just inconvenient; it’s unsafe.
Climate change impacts us all, but it also strips away the fragile safety nets that marginalised and vulnerable communities1 manage to build. For those already pushed to the margins of housing, healthcare, and public systems, disaster doesn’t just shake the ground. It removes the roof entirely.
And still, somehow, we stay. And we build.
Feeding Each Other During Crises
During the 2018 Kerala floods, queer communities and allied networks mobilised to deliver supplies to trans people stranded in flood zones. They collected donations, distributed food, and created small support hubs in areas where relief couldn’t reach.
Similarly, during the second wave of COVID-19, Pink List India compiled a list of NGOs offering immediate relief for queer people.
But disasters don’t end when the floodwaters recede, or the lockdowns lift.
What happens when someone is sent “home”? To the very place where their trauma began? Where their name was never spoken? Where they are not able to embrace their real identity. Sometimes the violence isn’t loud. It’s quiet. A room with no mirror. A name that stopped being used years ago. Survival becomes performance. Queerness is carefully folded and locked away, out of sight.
Now Is the Moment to Build Differently
India stands at a pivotal point. Our disaster response systems can become more inclusive and more equitable. There’s a need to recognise that different communities experience unequal starting points and impacts, and therefore need responses tailored to close those gaps. This isn’t about reinventing the wheel but building on what we already know while redistributing resources, safety, and decision-making power more fairly.
We have a real opportunity to design frameworks that recognise gender-diverse individuals as integral to the population. Relief forms can evolve beyond binary gender options. Shelters can be designed with safe, affirming spaces for trans and non-binary people. Identification systems can be adapted to allow dignity, not delay.
We also need meaningful data. How many queer people are displaced during disasters, who gets turned away from shelters, and what kinds of support truly help. Without this information, experiences remain invisible. But this absence is also an invitation: a clear, urgent reason to start documenting, listening, and planning differently.
We don’t need to wait for the next cyclone to make space for queer lives. The time to act is now. To build systems where no one has to erase themselves to be safe.
What sustains us isn’t luck. It’s collective memory. Queer communities around the world have long built systems of survival not as one-time acts of charity, but as everyday acts of care. These aren’t emergency measures. They’re long-term ways of showing up for one another. They remind us that adaptation isn’t just about technology or policy – it’s about how we share, protect, and organise.
So What Do We Do Now?
Inclusion alone isn’t enough. Systems must be rebuilt with us and around us.
Disaster planning teams must consult LGBTQ+ groups – people who know what’s at stake from lived experience, not checkbox tokenism. This is where queer thinking becomes essential.
As climate researcher May Thazin Aung puts it, “Queer thinking offers a powerful lens to reimagine climate justice. It challenges dominant norms around gender, identity, and power, and invites us to look beyond individual vulnerability to the deeper, systemic causes of climate risk. By queering climate action, we move away from reactive, one-size-fits-all responses and toward approaches that are intersectional, inclusive, and rooted in lived experience.” This means designing humanitarian and climate responses that not only protect, but also transform, addressing the structural inequalities that make communities vulnerable in the first place.
Queer thinking isn’t just theory – it can, and should, shape how institutions prepare for crises. In some places, it has already begun. Back in 2015, the Social Justice Department, Kerala, was the first government body to create a Transgender Policy. Now, working with the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) it’s the first state in India to devise a plan for inclusivity of Transgender people and the LGBTQ community into its Disaster Risk Reduction Policy.
Several other states have already taken important steps by establishing trans welfare boards and transgender protection cells. These existing structures provide a ready foundation to integrate disaster preparedness and relief measures that are inclusive of gender-diverse communities. With focused funding, training, and coordination with disaster management authorities, these boards and cells could become powerful engines for change, ensuring that policy commitments translate into safe shelters, respectful relief processes, and systems that protect dignity during crises.
Policies like this open a door. A chance to turn what queer communities already know about survival into something that shapes how disaster response works. The skills, networks, and resilience we’ve built over years aren’t just stories from the margins; they’re tools the whole system can learn from. We have been labelled “vulnerable” for so long, we almost forgot we’re also the ones who know how to survive best. Because we’ve done it before. We’ve built safety out of borrowed rooms, chosen families, friend groups, and online payments. We know how to hold grief and turn it into something soft, useful, and alive.
When the next flood comes – and it will – we won’t just be in need. We’ll be there already, passing food down a line, stitching tarps into tents, looking around and asking: “Okay. Who else do we need to call?” Imagine if this readiness were matched by institutions aligning community energy with supportive policies, well-resourced shelters, and relief systems designed to be equitable from the start. With community networks and state systems working hand in hand, we can ensure that during any disaster, safety, dignity, and belonging are guaranteed for all, and no one is left outside the gates.
- By “marginalised and vulnerable communities,” this piece refers to groups facing systemic barriers to safety and opportunity including but not limited to queer and trans people ↩︎
To read this article in Hindi, please click here.
Cover image by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
