Climate change and impact on livelihood

Rajbir Saha

(rajbirsaha1995@gmail.com)

This impact of climate change must be addressed in the context of the new Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030, adopted in September, which recognizes that eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. Climate change is a formidable threat to the working lives of people across the globe — especially those whose employment depends on agriculture. From erratic rainfall to flash floods, from salinity intrusion to altered ocean currents, the impacts of climate change are forcing people to search for new livelihoods. For many, that search takes them far from home. The trade union movement must step up its work and attention on climate change, as it poses one of the gravest threats to ensuring workers around the world. Not only do the impacts of climate change take away people's livelihoods; they also speed up the processes that are making work more precarious. Climate-induced migration accelerates migration to cities, saturating urban labour markets and placing downward pressure on wages. Climate migrants, like other migrant workers, are more likely to wind up in temporary contracts with a few legal rights. In a globalized world, a threat to the well-being of workers anywhere becomes a threat to workers' wellbeing everywhere. The current refugee crisis in Europe is evidence of this. From Kutubdia to Java, from Nepal to New Zealand, climate change is transforming the way people live and work. In some cases, climate change manifests in swift and drastic occurrences such as cyclones or storm surges. In other cases, slower, prolonged changes – visible in gradually rising sea levels, salinity intrusion and diminishing precipitation, for example – are playing out in the environments where millions of people reside. In all instances, climate change is dramatically changing economic activity, reshaping migration and altering patterns of development. Understanding these changes is paramount to mitigating the negative impact of climate change on what matters the most to regular people – their jobs and incomes. Climate change and employment interact in four ways. First, whether through a natural disaster or gradually over time, climate change has a direct bearing on jobs and incomes in affected geographies, especially in regions that depend on agriculture. For instance, in Tanzania, changes in the mean temperature and rainfall patterns will extend dry seasons and make periodic droughts more severe, two directly altering the livelihood of thousands of farmers and their families. Second, these types of changes set off a chain reaction that disturbs a whole host of ancillary services and sectors – the indirect impact of climate change on jobs and incomes. Third, as the effect of climate change becomes more severe, people are forced to relocate. Climate-induced migration, whether temporary or permanent, affects the labour markets in host geographies. Such migratory pressures fuel rapid urbanization. But cities frequently lack the infrastructure, governance and services – clean water, sewage systems, housing – to manage migration. This can lead to urban slums where residents face poor health and economic outcomes. Finally, on the flip side of the adverse effects of climate change on livelihoods is the potential for job generation that arises from climate adaptation and mitigation. But managing the negative effects of climate change on employment and incomes on one hand, and leveraging the positive job generation potential of mitigation and adaptation on the other, requires action on behalf of multiple stakeholders including governments, the private sector and trade unions. The life-altering effects of climate change are especially pronounced for the people in these three developing nations. Climate projections through 2030 suggest that the likely impact of changing temperatures will be concentrated in four major regions in India: the Himalayan region, the Western Ghats, northeast India and the coastal zone. These regions are not only home to hundreds of millions of people; they also host some of India's most important economic sectors and industries – with manufacturing activities on the southeastern and western coastlines and tea and coffee cultivation in the hills of the Western Ghats and the north-eastern state of Assam, to name a couple of examples. Northeast India is one of the most troubled regions in the nation. Separatist movements, political instability and inaccessible terrain make this one of the most difficult regions to develop. As a result, the economy largely depends on agriculture, which climate change is already disrupting. The region is home to highly concentrated and productive tea industry in the state of Assam. But changes in rainfall patterns and high temperatures are threatening the sustainability of the tea plantations, which employ roughly one million workers. While evenly distributed rain previously made year-round tea processing a possibility, more heavily concentrated rain today means that harvesting happens less predictably. Only large plantations, as opposed to smallholder farms, can cope. If the result is worker layoffs, it will reduce the bargaining power of tea plantation labourers, who have been striving to organize themselves and recently succeeded in arguing for a higher minimum wage. Climate change not only threatens to disrupt the impressive economic growth trajectories of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, as well as other countries at similar stages of development; it also threatens to reverse the gains these countries have made so far. The experience of these three nations highlights a reality that must feature prominently in debates on how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Among the poor, marginalized groups such as women are most likely to bear the brunt of the challenges posed by climate change. Leaving scores of workers vulnerable in this way is not only a gross violation of human rights, but is also a valuable loss of productive potential that calls for urgent action on part of governments, unions and the private sector.