Climate Change
Climate change and occupational safety and health
Climate change and associated environmental degradation pose increasing risks to workers’ health and safety. They are often the first to be exposed to climate change effects, for longer durations and at greater intensities than the general public. They cannot elect to avoid those hazards.
Climate change is impacting health in various ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, increases in vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Some of those impacts threaten equally business assets and business interruptions and the operation of entire supply chains.
Sector
When
October 2022 – December 2024
Development Partners
Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, The United States Department of Labor (USDOL)
In the 2022, the G7 leaders in the Employment Ministerial Meeting Communiqué,recognized “the importance of effective occupational safety and health measures to protecting workers, ensuring decent work, maintaining high productivity and promoting employability, including in the face of new challenges due to structural reasons and climate change. We acknowledge the important contribution the Vision Zero Fund makes to improving OSH in global supply chains. We express our renewed commitment to support the Fund’s work and welcome a greater focus on climate change and OSH in global supply chains, including through the implementation of a new pilot project within the Vision Zero Fund.”
The Vision Zero Fund identified three project countries across three different continents—Madagascar, Mexico, and Vietnam—where pilot activities are successfully implemented. These activities focused on designing and implementing adaptation measures that benefitted some of the most vulnerable workers in the agriculture and construction sectors.
In Madagascar, the Fund commissioned research that assessed the impact of climate change on the safety and health of cotton farmers and construction workers. The research findings informed the development of training courses aimed at enhancing the capacity of the labor inspectorate and social partners. Furthermore, the findings contributed to proposals for closing regulatory gaps to improve worker protection.
In Mexico, the project developed and implemented a methodology to measure heat exposure and heat stress among workers in the tomato and chili pepper sectors in Jalisco, assessing both the perceived and direct impacts on their health and productivity. Subsequently, heat adaptation measures will be designed, implemented, and monitored. Based on these results, the project will support improvements to national and workplace-level frameworks addressing occupational heat stress.
In Vietnam, the Fund conducted a comprehensive feasibility study that assessed the impact of climate change on the safety and health of agricultural workers. The study will help to identify and implement adaptive measures that address these challenges with the support of the Fund.
In 2024 the G20 appreciated the importance and significant contributions of multilateral global initiatives such as the Vision Zero Fund addressing climate change challenges, including heat stress for workers.
