Sat 06 July 2019:
Climate change causing a growing heat stress on workers in agriculture and other sectors will cause a productivity loss equal to 80 million full-time jobs by 2030, said a report from the International Labor Organization (ILO).
ILO estimated that in 2030, 2.2 percent of total working hours worldwide will be lost because of higher temperatures, based on assumptions that warming will be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Southern Asia and western Africa would suffer most from growing heat stress, where over 5 percent of working hours per day would be wasted, said the authors of the report, “Working On A Warmer Planet: The Impact Of Heat Stress On Labor Productivity.”
According to AFP, the losses of the global economy are estimated at $2.4 trillion. Catherine Saget, the report’s author, told reporters: “This is roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom economy.” Heat stress refers to heat in excess of what the body can tolerate without suffering physiological impairment, and usually occurs at temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius, in high humidity. “The impact of heat stress on labor productivity is a serious consequence of climate change. We can also expect to see more inequality between low and high income countries and worsening working conditions for the most vulnerable, as well as displacement of people,” she said.
The two most affected industries are agriculture, in which work 940 million people across the world, and is supposed to lose 60 percent of working hours by 2030; along with the construction industry which is expected to lose 19 percent of its productivity. ILO economist Nicolas Maitre said that while southern Asia and western Africa would suffer most from growing heat stress, Europe should not expect to be spared.
“We should expect to see more and more heatwaves like the one we have seen recently, more and more frequent, and more and more intense,” he added. In order to confront the harm of the heat stress, the organization has encouraged the “building of a suitable infrastructure and early warning systems to handle heatwaves.”
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