South Asian Cities Faced Relentless, Record-Breaking Heatwaves Last Year

By Selomi Garnaik and G. A. Rumeshi Perera
BENGALURU, India / COLOMBO Sri Lanka, Jun 2 2025 – From the blistering heat of Delhi’s streets to Colombo’s humid corners, workers in the informal economy are silently enduring the toll of labour on their bodies and livelihoods.

In 2024, South Asian cities like Delhi and Dhaka, faced relentless, record-breaking heatwaves. Meanwhile, in Nepal, the heaviest rains in decades triggered deadly floods and landslides. Sri Lanka, too, faced repeated severe storms, displacing hundreds of thousands, underscoring the vulnerability of the region to climatic chaos.

Then, why are those hit hardest by climate collapse left out of the rooms where its future is decided?

Ms. Swastika, President of the United Federation of Labour Sri Lanka, highlighted on Labour Day how temperature has affected the workers and their daily livelihoods; asking the fundamental question, ‘when do polluters take accountability?’

Workers in Dhaka holding up messages for climate and labour justice during May Day activities. Credit: Hadi Uddin / Greenpeace South Asia

One of four people living today is from South Asia, yet the region is responsible for barely 8% of the cumulative CO2 emissions, while facing some of the harshest impacts of the climate crisis.

Climate Conversations Cannot Ignore Workers:

According to the World Bank, over the past two decades, more than 750 million people, over half of South Asia’s population, have been affected by one or more climate-related disasters.

It’s quickly becoming clear just what this means for workers: India alone is projected to lose 34 million full-time jobs by 2030 due to heat stress. Bangladesh loses US$ 6 billion a year in labour productivity due to the effects of extreme heat.

In Nepal, where over 70% of the workforce is engaged in agriculture, changing rainfall patterns and flash floods have already slashed yields and forced seasonal labourers to migrate. By 2050, climate change could displace 100-200 million people, leading to a rise in climate refugees.

Yet these impacts are reduced to mere ‘economic losses’, rarely acknowledged as human suffering and almost never compensated. This disconnect between climate damage and accountability lies at the heart of global climate injustice.

Workers, particularly in the Global South- must be central to the climate conversations. For them, climate change isn’t abstract: it’s failed crops, deadly heat, toxic air, and unsafe workplaces. These daily realities threaten their health, livelihoods, and dignity.

Despite this, climate planning and response mechanisms are designed by ministries and consultants isolated from the ground realities of workers. Labour ministries, welfare boards or labour unions are rarely included in national climate adaptation frameworks or climate budgeting. Heat Action Plans often overlook worker-centric measures like paid rest breaks, hydration stations, or medical preparedness for outdoor labourers.

This is not just a gap. It is a governance failure.

When national or global climate plans ignore labour protections they deepen existing injustices. Outdoor workers, gig workers, migrant workers, and women in informal employment must be seen not as “vulnerable groups” but as central stakeholders, whose inclusion is essential for a just and durable climate response.

The Unpaid Bill: Who Owes Whom?

For over a century, profits were extracted from the earth and the pain outsourced to its most exploited workers. Now, those frontline workers are leading the call for climate accountability. Polluters Pay Pact, an international movement supported by trade unions, climate justice groups, and frontline communities that calls on the world’s largest fossil fuel and gas corporations to compensate those who are living with the fallout of their actions.

Just five oil and gas companies made over $100 billion in profits in 2024 alone, while informal workers are breathing toxic air, suffering heat extremes and losing workdays- without compensation or insurance. This isn’t aid, its owed justice.

The Polluters Pay Pact must result in binding commitments: climate-linked funding, worker led adaptation, and a global recognition of labour as central to climate action.

Most importantly, the pact is not waiting for international summits to act. Across the region, grassroots campaigns are gaining momentum- taking legal action, seeking compensation for heat-related losses, and pushing for fossil fuel taxes to fund worker protections.

This marks the beginning of a new phase in climate accountability: one that is worker-led, justice-driven, and grounded in the principle that those who suffer should not be left to shoulder the costs alone.

The way forward: From Survival to Dignity

The Polluters Pay Pact is beyond compensation. It’s about correcting a system that treats labour as disposable and emissions as externalities. To make climate justice real and tangible, governments must move beyond symbolic acknowledgments of “climate vulnerability’’ to institutional reforms that protect the people that hold up our economies.

It is inspiring to see countries like Sri Lanka take the fight to the International Court of Justice, highlighting how vulnerable nations are bearing the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause. By co-sponsoring the resolution and emphasizing intergenerational equity and human rights, Sri Lanka is underscoring that climate inaction by high-emitting states is a violation of basic rights like access to water and food. There is growing momentum from South Asian countries demanding climate justice.

Here is what ‘labour justice is climate justice’ would mean:

Classify climate risks as workplace hazards– National labour laws across South Asia must classify climate-induced hazards as occupational risks. This would entitle workers to compensation, paid rest, and workplace safety standards during extreme weather events.

Investment in localised worker centered infrastructure– Governments must prioritise tangible, community-level infrastructure like citizen-led early warning systems, much of which should be financed by new taxes on the oil and gas industry. Shade, hydration points and cooling infrastructure at high-risk sites, must become standard in heat-prone districts. The health care system needs to be strengthened to treat heat-related illness.

Embed Worker Voices in Climate Governance– Worker Unions of street vendors, construction workers, gig workers, waste pickers and migrant workers must be formally represented in local and national climate adaptation planning. Policies made without them are policies bound to fail.

We must move from damage to repair, from exploitation to protection. Climate action will only succeed by including those who face its worst impacts. Polluters must pay- investing in worker resilience across South Asia would save life and uphold climate justice.

Selomi Garnaik and G. A. Rumeshi Perera are climate and energy campaigners for Greenpeace, South Asia.

IPS UN Bureau

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