Fashion for the Earth
Fighting to Survive in a Heating World
May 28, 2025
As the climate crisis accelerates, fashion continues to focus on mitigation – cutting emissions, reducing water use, and sourcing sustainable materials. But there’s another side to climate action that remains dangerously overlooked: adaptation, particularly for the garment workers who power the fashion industry. Despite growing sustainability efforts, the fashion industry continues to ignore how climate change endangers the workers and communities behind global garment production.
While the world warms and extreme weather events escalate, the apparel workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam, backbones of global garment production, bear the brunt. In these tropical and subtropical production zones, climate change manifests not only as rising sea levels, but in heat-stricken factory floors and flooded neighborhoods.
Flood events in worker neighborhoods that have relatively poor infrastructure are chronic irritants for workers in South Asia. They lead to delays in getting to work and the loss of income. Face-to-face surveys conducted in Dhaka by the BRAC University Center for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), found that apparel workers miss an average of three full days of work due to flooding and heat illness.
Flood events last for several months in South and Southeastern Asia, as water rises to the point where some Dhaka area factories must send boats to collect workers. The floods lead to illnesses like rashes and diarrhea, raising medical costs while production and income is lost. This can amount to 10% of garment workers total income during periods when living costs, such as electricity and medicine, surge due to heat-related impacts.
An example unfolds in ready-made garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh, where a study published by BMC Public health found that more than half RMG workers surveyed from 10 randomly selected sweatshops had faced damage from natural disasters related to climate change. Workers were affected by flooding (79.9%), drought (52.2%), river erosion (49.5%), earthquakes (45.1%), storm surges (39.7%), and landslides (13%). Nearly half of those interviewed were forced to migrate, increasing job competition within factories in urban areas, further lowering wages as a result.
Respondents also identified climate change as a primary contributor to illnesses. About 59% mentioned no air conditioning or extra cooling protocols to resolve increased heat, and 78% were affected with illness as a result. Despite this, none of the factories gave any risk allowance for illness as a result of climate change.
The Price of Climate Change…
Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labour Relations (ILO), projects exorbitant economic losses if adaptation is not agreed upon. Without adaptation, high heat and humidity will create a loss of 4.9% of Bangladesh’s 2030 projected GDP, with similar impacts for Cambodia (-6.5%), Pakistan (-5.1%), and Vietnam (-4.9%). Fashion’s earnings are expected to fall 22% (65.6 billion USD) by 2030 and 68.7% by 2050 (1,424 billion USD) without adaptation.
A research study by Harvard shows that damage by climate change impacts hot, low-income countries most, as a one-degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces economic growth by 1.3 percentage points, a notable decrease and an effect that will not be seen in developed nations.
Globally, some workers can earn extremely low wages. In one documented case a supplier paid as little as $1.58 per hour. In Bangladesh workers are paid an average of $113 per month for full-time work, making every hour of work vital. In 2022, it was estimated that potentially 490 billion hours of labour were lost due to heat.
These losses in GDP and available working hours will be almost completely felt by those in developing countries.
Sink or Swim
Adaptation is crucial to protecting garment workers ᠆᠆ so how do we?
One solution is encouraging social dialogue between leadership and workers. When factories operate with unsafe equipment or when extreme heat makes labour dangerous, the demands for change must come from those affected: the workers themselves. However, supply chain factories must prioritize social dialogue to encourage safe and healthy workplaces. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social dialogue was the only mechanism workers had to protect themselves, proving its effectiveness in crisis. But the protections provided during emergencies should not be exceptional, rather set a standard. Importantly, both governments and fashion companies must institutionalize these practices as part of their daily operations.
Investment in green energy can transform factories into sustainable and climate resistant workplaces. Beyond reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions, renewable energy can efficiently power cooling systems, lowering indoor air temperatures by 3-4 degrees Celsius.
But the primary, and most effective and immediate form of climate adaptation in developing nations is raising wages. Without adequate income, workers cannot meet basic standards for health and safety. When wages are among the lowest globally, people are extra susceptible to malnutrition, poor healthcare, and a diminished living standard. A study published by the National Library of Medicine found that among female garment workers in Bangladesh, 43.33% were underweight, and 96% of those had health issues. Over half the participants reported multiple health complications, even before factoring climate stressors. This situation will only worsen as temperatures rise.
In Dhaka, workers have told the Executive Director of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell, Jason Judd, that they often resort to selling or pawning household goods to pay electricity bills. During climate-intensive periods, medicine prices reportedly rise as much as 10 times, putting healthcare further out of reach. Paying a living wage means compensating workers adequate for a standard workweek so they can afford a decent standard of living ᠆᠆ essentials like food, water, housing, and education. Yet despite this, only 2% of garment workers make a living wage.
Raising wages is often argued to threaten industry competitiveness, but in Cambodia a decade ago, wage increases were implemented which grew orders, revenue, and jobs.
Raising wages would reshape the fashion industry with positive benefits. Heightened wages slows production by disrupting the low-wage system that enables fast fashion. This pressure leads to more sustainable practices across supply chains. According to The Business of Less, increasing workers’ pay by just $100 could reduce global CO2 emissions by 65.3 million metric tons ᠆᠆ because higher wages raise production costs, in turn moderating consumption.
A living wage would enable climate adaptation among workers by allowing them to afford and invest in essential resources, such as sanitation, food, clean water, and basic needs ᠆᠆ foundational elements that build resilience to climate change.
No Relief on the Factory Floor
Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labour Relations (ILO) also monitors legislation. Currently, international regulations on heat stress for workers are limited to two non-binding recommendations – The Hygiene Recommendation (No. 120, 1964) and Protection of Workers Health Recommendation (No. 97, 1952). These recommendations urge governments to set standards and enact laws protecting workers from extreme heat, inadequate ventilation, and lack of water access. However, implementation has been minimal, with only Vietnam as the notable exception.
A survey of national legal frameworks in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam reveals the disparities within each country. While Vietnam has stringent laws on climate adaptation for labour, such as paid sick leave, heat thresholds, and pay during force majeure work stoppages, the other countries have few or no legal provisions addressing climate-labour disruptions.
Cambodia, in particular, remains virtually silent on climate-related labour protections. There are no requirements for paid breaks, pay during work stoppages, or rights to stop working in dangerous conditions. Furthermore, none of the countries, besides Vietnam, have indoor heat standards and extreme heat protocols. Even basic protections, such as access to drinking water, fall below acceptable thresholds across all four national legal frameworks.
S.O.S
For these workers, climate change isn’t conceptual or invisible, rather a daily struggle for health, stability, and survival. As heat rises ᠆᠆ long-term health risks and a loss of income do too.
It is already apparent that several major apparel production hubs that are responsible for a significant share of current output are unlikely to escape the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis. While about one million jobs and $65 billion in export earnings are expected to be lost by 2030, only 3% of big brands disclose efforts to support workers affected by climate change.
Adaptation among all nations is critical to global development, determining industries where every human has a decent standard of living. As climate change threatens the lives of millions ᠆᠆ collective, equitable action is not just necessary, it’s urgent.
Photo credit: Liuser
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