Protect labourers from adverse impact of climate change

On this May Day, there is an urgent need to recognise the organic links between workers’ rights and climate change, and build worker-centred pathways for climate-just transitions

The Indian jurisprudence has indeed taken cognitive steps in linking the adverse impacts of Climate Change to Articles 21 and 14. In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court of India stated that the rights to life and equality cannot be fully realised without a clean, stable environment. This observation will create a churning in framing and articulating the strong interconnection between lives, livelihoods, environment, and a stable and secure future.

May 1 is International Workers’ Day in India and it is important to revisit some of the realities existing around us. About 90 per cent of the workforce is informally employed; only 62 per cent in agriculture, and 70 per cent in construction-related activities get minimum wages; around 30 per cent people survive on Rs 100 a day.

Further, production processes in India have increasingly become capital-intensive and labour-saving; fewer workers were employed between 2000-2019 than in the 1990s; the gross value added increased by 6.2 per cent in the period 2000-2012, whereas employment increased by 1.6 per cent. In the 2012-2019 period, the corresponding figures are 6.7 per cent and 0.001 per cent, respectively. While growth was taking place, there was a huge fall in employment — and thus increasing precarity.

In this context, informal workers, who constitute staggering majorities of our working people, are the worst hit. With minimal job security, irregular incomes, very few, if any, employment contracts, unsafe and difficult working conditions and lack of social protections, workers are exposed to high levels of vulnerabilities.

Climate Change is impacting them adversely. They are exposed to the dangers of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, cyclones, floods, and air pollution. They are the first and the most exposed, and least protected.

A recent study reported that Indian workers lost 259 billion hours of labour annually, between 2001-2020 due to the impact of humid heat. The ILO projected that India would see a reduction of approximately 5.8 per cent of its overall labour hours by 2030 due to the above reasons. The work loss for workers because of floods, droughts, cyclones, landslides, etc., and habitat losses and displacement they suffer have not been adequately researched.

A recent ILO report ‘Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate’ says that the share of global workers exposed to Climate Change has increased in the last decade and stands at around 70.9 per cent today.

Action Aid and Climate Action Network South Asia projects that about 37.5 million people will be displaced by 2030 and an estimated 62.9 million by 2050, in five South Asian countries. India alone is likely to see around 45 million people being forced to migrate from their homes by 2050 due to climate disasters, three times more than the current figures.

 What needs to be done?

The impact of Climate Change on the lives and livelihoods of Indian informal workers should be well researched and documented to build restitutive policies to address it.

Compensation mechanisms need to be formulated to encapsulate loss of wages, livelihoods, health, and habitats. There is a need for a strong intervention by the State through objective laws and policies. A loss and damage compensation and rehabilitation framework to safeguard workers would ensure our workers are protected against climate-induced disasters, for which they are not responsible. Many of the informal workers such as workers in the fishing sector, pastoralists, agriculture workers, forest workers, etc., are those who contribute to maintaining ecological and environmental balance.

A loss and damage compensation framework must be an integral part of the national and state climate action plans to build resilient economic strategies and robust protection mechanisms for workers. These must go beyond the needed basic requirements and improvements for climate-adapted working conditions like alteration of working hours, water points, shade and cooling, etc. 

Robust institutional mechanisms are needed for proactive monitoring, compliance, and policy response. A national level ministry dedicated to fight Climate Change, developing, and implementing policies and programmes needs to be constituted.

Strengthening of the local bodies will enable workers to participate and engage substantively with response mechanisms.

On this May Day, there is an urgent need to recognise the organic links between workers’ rights and Climate Change, and boldly build worker- and people-centred pathways for climate-just transitions.

(Sandeep Chachra is Executive Director, Action Aid India, and Tikender Singh Panwar is former Deputy Mayor of Shimla.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.