I’m really happy to have a chapter in the Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, published earlier this year. The compendium is a mammoth effort — it has 50 or so chapters from world leading scholars on key questions in the world of work, and critiques on the possibilities and limitations of the Sustainable Development Goals themselves.
There are two chapters specifically focussed on climate change, the first by prominent scholars in this space, Nora Räthzel and Dimitris Stevis, on ‘The role of labour and nature within just transition strategies’. This is followed by my chapter on ‘Work health and safety, adaptation, and climate change’:
Abstract: At the nexus of accelerating climate change and efforts to achieve decent work, sit a range of challenges for labour. To date, the problems of industry reorganisation, sustainable jobs and just transitions have drawn most attention from scholars, labour and climate movements, and bodies like the International Labour Organization. Far less attention has been paid to the manifest and urgent work health and safety (WHS) impacts of global warming. This chapter explores the WHS impacts of climate change, with particular attention on the problem of high heat, and considers the issues in line with how the Sustainable Development Goals approach this issue. The chapter argues that the notion of climate precarity, alongside a radical politicisation of adaptation, can usefully frame discussion and more sustained action in this context.
It is an expensive (and heavy!) book, but you can ask your campus or local library to buy it if they don’t have it already.
Citation: Humphrys E (2025) ‘Work Health and Safety, Adaptation and Climate Change’, in Marcel van der Linden, Christoph Scherrer and Madeleine Moore (eds) The Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, Edward Elgar.
