It took friend and col­league, cli­mate change gu­ru Steve Max­i­may, to re­mind me last week of an over­due com­mit­ment to ad­dress the im­pact of chang­ing cli­mat­ic con­di­tions on the world of work in the Caribbean. I am com­ing to what led to this short­ly. Stay with me.

This is no new area of glob­al con­cern. The In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO) and oth­ers have been at this for many years now.

In 2004/2005 (20 years ago!) I worked with the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­di­a­Work­ers (ACM) and what was then the Cari­com Main­stream­ing Adap­ta­tion to Cli­mate Change (MACC) project on a cli­mate change hand­book for Caribbean jour­nal­ists - ar­guably the first of its kind any­where. Pa­cif­ic me­dia col­leagues even want­ed one of their own! Cred­it T&T com­mu­ni­ca­tion guy, Tony Deyal, for spawn­ing the idea.

Even then, the sub­ject of the chang­ing world of work was com­ing up as ex­perts con­clud­ed that “adap­ta­tion” to in­evitable change had to be at the fore­front of the nu­mer­ous sur­vival strate­gies of small vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries.

The ILO has al­so looked, in suc­ces­sive pub­lished stud­ies, at the di­rect and in­di­rect con­se­quences of a phe­nom­e­non whose hu­man con­tri­bu­tions have been al­most uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

In a fol­low-up to our first pub­li­ca­tion, with sup­port from UN­ESCO in 2020, Max­i­may, Dr Dale Rank­ine and I co-au­thored ‘Re­port­ing the Cli­mate Cri­sis, A hand­book for Caribbean jour­nal­ists.’ Some read­ers thought “cri­sis” was an in­ap­pro­pri­ate de­scrip­tor and per­haps re­main en­ti­tled to their un­in­formed view.

Au­thors of the UK Guardian’s Style Guide were how­ev­er clear, and in 2019 man­dat­ed in­ter­nal em­ploy­ment of “cli­mate cri­sis” and “cli­mate emer­gency” as pre­ferred terms to de­scribe the un­fold­ing sit­u­a­tion.

Now, back to Steve and our jour­ney through hilly St Joseph last week. We came across the dili­gent postal work­er who ser­vices my area (and who de­serves a spe­cial award for her dili­gence). There she was - seat­ed on a cul­vert, mid-morn­ing, with her head down, per­spi­ra­tion dot­ting the hot pitch. “Heat,” she mut­tered. “Heat.” She de­clined our of­fer of a lift.

“You know,” Steve sug­gest­ed, “this is why cli­mate change and how peo­ple work must be ur­gent­ly put on the agen­da. Things will get worse.” We both un­der­stood the sym­bol­ism of that sim­ple, brief en­counter.

In April there was an ILO press re­lease which de­scribed cli­mate change as of­fer­ing up a “cock­tail” of se­ri­ous health haz­ards with the po­ten­tial to af­fect up to 70 per­cent of the world’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion.

It might well be that Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), and non-aligned mem­ber unions have found time in their busy sched­ules to dis­cuss this mat­ter. But I have not seen the press re­leas­es. No­body has been mak­ing the me­dia rounds. Labour Day came and went and the on­ly heat I heard about was a threat of rhetor­i­cal “fire” in Fyz­abad.

Last year, al­most to the day, and host­ed by Dr An­dré Vin­cent Hen­ry, Di­rec­tor of the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Caribbean labour lead­ers and ac­tivists looked at these pre­cise is­sues at a Caribbean World of Work Fo­rum. What­ev­er hap­pened to the agen­da set there?

Re­vised labour stan­dards are clear­ly need­ed as a buffer against the on­slaught of un­even cli­mate im­pacts across re­gions, coun­tries, and sec­tors. Even ac­com­pa­ny­ing mea­sures to ad­dress this come with cost­ly price tags.

The im­per­a­tive of a “just tran­si­tion” to low-car­bon re­al­i­ties al­so has vast im­pli­ca­tions for work­ers. Glob­al dy­nam­ics af­fect­ed by the dri­ve to achieve emis­sion tar­gets are um­bil­i­cal­ly linked to the fu­ture of work­ers and the com­mu­ni­ties in which they live and per­form their du­ties.

In our re­gion, there are al­ready recog­nis­able im­pacts on the in­ci­dence of heat-re­lat­ed and res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es – de­vel­op­ments hope­ful­ly be­ing record­ed and re­searched by pub­lic health agen­cies in T&T. A few months ago, I was a part of a jour­nal­is­tic ex­er­cise which looked at the ris­ing in­ci­dence of cli­mate-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es among the el­der­ly of Bar­ba­dos.

In that in­stance, we not­ed a sad pauci­ty of of­fi­cial da­ta but abun­dant anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion on grow­ing hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions for the treat­ment of pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enc­ing high­er tem­per­a­tures and pro­tract­ed ex­po­sure to the pol­lut­ing ef­fects of Sa­ha­ran Dust.

There are al­so grow­ing con­cerns re­lat­ed to dis­ease-car­ry­ing vec­tors that thrive on the com­bined ef­fects of un­sea­son­al and more in­tense weath­er events. Have you won­dered about the in­ten­si­ty of this year’s dengue out­break and as­so­ci­at­ed eco­nom­ic costs in­clud­ing those oc­ca­sioned by work­place dis­rup­tions?

How are our unions con­tribut­ing to such a dis­cus­sion? Should they not be lead­ing the way? Where are they? Where is this front­line of de­fence against labour’s ris­ing cli­mate costs?