Increasing high heat and humidity due to climate change costs Bangladesh an estimated 32 billion hours of lost labour worth Tk1 trillion every year, a study says.
Between 2001 and 2022, the country lost an average of 567 hours of labour per person every year.
The study, published in the journal “Environmental Research Letters” on January 13, was conducted by researchers at Duke University, said a media statement.
It estimated that during the 20-year-period, heat-related labour loss amounted to about 5.5% of GDP every year.
The loss in the last two decades is worth an estimated Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) of $26 billion labour productivity loss annually.
Heat, especially when combined with humidity, can slow people down when they are doing heavy work, such as in agriculture or construction.
As the climate heats up further due to greenhouse gas emissions, every fraction of a degree of warming is causing more work time to be lost for heat-related reasons.
With 3.3 billion workers globally, the study revealed that around 205 labour hours are lost per person per year.
Over the last four decades, heat-related labor losses have increased by at least 9% as global average temperatures rose about 0.4°C because of human activities.
This study further estimates that work lost to heat and humidity is about 400 billion hours, which is roughly the same as the amount of work lost during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Duke University study, some countries are especially badly affected by heat-related labour losses and suffer from higher economic costs.
Using the Lancet Countdown, researchers estimated that India currently loses around 259 billion hours of labour annually due to the impacts of humid heat, more than double the previous estimates and worth an estimated PPP $266 billion of labour productivity per year, while the US loses PPP $22 billion.
Luke Parsons from Duke University, who is the lead author of the report, said, "Strikingly, if outdoor workers are losing productivity at the current temperature and humidity levels, then almost three-quarters of the global working-age population, or about 4 billion people, are already living in locations with background climate conditions associated with heavy labour losses of at least 100 hours or person or year, or about a week of heat-associated lost work.”
"Outdoor heat exposure associated with noticeable labour losses in the summer months isn't something we need to wait until mid-century to experience- it's already here for many people working outdoors in the summer months," he added.
"These results imply that we don't have to wait for 1.5°C of global warming to experience impacts of climate change on labour and the economy – the warming we've already experienced may be associated with large-scale background labour losses," said Luke.
“Even small increases in global temperatures in the last few decades show impacts on many of the most vulnerable to climate change. Less than 0.5°C of global warming in the last 40 years may be associated with a large-scale increase – an increase of about 10% - in global, heat-related lost labor for outdoor workers,” he added.