Prioritising worker well-being in a climate crisis
Bangladesh has the world's highest number of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified "green" factories. While this may attract foreign buyers, does this pathway safeguard the health and well-being of Bangladeshi workers confronting the climate crisis?
The International Labour Organization recently reported that 71 percent of the global workforce is exposed to excessive heat due to climate change, resulting in 22.85 million occupational injuries and 18,970 deaths annually. This is not a distant, dystopian future—it is happening now.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. In Bangladesh, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, people are grappling with record-breaking temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, longer periods of warmer months and unprecedented flooding that threatened the livelihoods of nearly six million in 2024.
Combination of extreme heat and humidity can cause dehydration, heat stroke, and even death. It increases the risks of reproductive complications, organ damage and other chronic health issues. This translates to increased absences, lower productivity, fewer working hours—even during peak production months—and an estimated loss of $26.5 billion in potential garment export earnings by 2030.
As a country still heavily reliant on the RMG sector, climate change poses serious challenges to the country's prospects unless adequate measures are taken to adapt to, and mitigate against, climate risks.
A great deal of the initiative in this direction comes from outside. There is increasing pressure on garment manufacturers to meet the recently legislated human rights and environmental due diligence requirements such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) required by the European Union (EU), which is the largest destination for Bangladeshi textiles and garments, and also a key destination for footwear, plastics and shrimp exports.
This has fuelled the drive to rebrand the RMG industry through "green" or LEED-certified factories. While this has some benefits, such as reducing carbon emissions and energy usage, building certifications cannot ensure the health and well-being of workers.
LEED certification primarily focuses on energy and water efficiency and waste management. It does not require measures to address extreme heat stress such as providing frequent cooling and water breaks during heatwaves and maintaining adequate workplace temperatures. Nor can LEED certification address workers' health, if they have to endure sleepless nights in low-income housing that lacks uninterrupted electricity and water.
While due diligence legislations are an important step towards ensuring greater transparency and responsibility of business operations across global supply chains, the sharing of costs remains, as in the past, a contentious issue, and workers' engagement in these discussions remains tokenistic, especially at the international level. Cutthroat purchasing prices, even at LEED-certified factories, show that international brands continue to capture the largest share of profits from garment value chains and refuse to acknowledge the true cost of their business practices. And of course, their exploitative practices are abetted locally by the fact that Bangladesh has one of the lowest minimum wages for garment workers (Tk 12,500, around $105), lower than key competitors like Cambodia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
When I asked Kalpona Akter, former child worker and the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, about the most important priority of workers in light of climate crisis, her response was simple: "Living wages." There is an abundance of evidence that the recently increased minimum wage falls far short of meeting workers' basic needs, let alone paying for the additional climate-related health and livelihood risks that endanger workers as well as their children and families. These people are the least responsible for climate change yet they face its worst consequences.
The short- and long-term consequences of climate risks represent not only an occupational health and safety concern but also a public health crisis for Bangladesh. It is necessary to widen the focus beyond a handful of garment factories that can afford LEED certifications. The Global North has to wake up to the fact that its prosperity has been built on a long history of extracting value from the people and environment of the world's poorer countries. Climate justice demands that it assumes responsibility for the costs of reparation that is proportionate to the loss and damage it has inflicted.
But we should not wait for them to wake up. We can also take responsibility ourselves. We can mount a concerted effort to pool resources and expertise to ensure that existing labour protection policies and frameworks prioritise workers' well-being as part of a just transition to environmentally and socially equitable alternatives.
Moreover, implementation of worker protection beyond the RMG sector needs to be prioritised. While the RMG sector contributes the largest share of export earnings, it employs only a fraction of the country's approximately 71-million-strong labour force. Over 80 percent of the workforce is engaged in highly vulnerable informal work, such as agriculture, where many workers are self-employed women in low-paid seasonal jobs.
A risk-based evaluation of key employment sectors, and jobs within those sectors at high risk from climate change, is essential. Establishing sectoral funds to assist with evidence-based adaptation and mitigation efforts that are cost-effective and locally tailored is equally important. Workers and their communities should be empowered through collective forms of representation and grievance channels to foster institutional accountability. Lessons learned from successful community-based climate adaptation solutions such as BRAC's community health clinic model, could support preventative measures and awareness-raising campaigns. Such initiatives could effectively reach vulnerable groups, particularly women, whose double burden of work and household duties leaves little time to recover from extreme heat stress.
A recently drafted white paper prepared by a committee of eminent local scholars, also warns against over-reliance on LEED certification as an industry strategy. Instead, it recommends developing a local framework and certification alternatives to build local capacity, save foreign exchange and create jobs.
Under the current interim government, a labour reform commission has been tasked with proposing reforms to ensure labour rights and improve worker welfare. This presents an opportunity to innovate and imagine beyond "green" certifications and GDP growth at the expense of our people and the environment.
After all, ensuring dignified livelihoods for all citizens is fundamental to upholding the values of "anti-discrimination" that inspired the students and workers who led the July uprising. It is also enshrined in our founding constitution. We must strive towards this aim, even though the scale of compounding challenges is colossal. And we must start with vulnerable sections of the country's working people.
Adiba Afros is an independent researcher/consultant focusing on gender and labour rights in garment value chains.
The author would like to thank Dr Naila Kabeer (professor emerita, LSE), Taslima Akhter (president, Bangladesh Garment Workers Samhati, photographer) and Kalpona Akter (executive director, Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity) for their valuable insights and contributions.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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