“Heat stress” and unprecedented high temperatures are among the most prominent climate-related challenges, the consequences of which threaten the “global economy” in terms of their broad impacts on many basic sectors.
Heat stress refers to the occurrence of excessive temperatures that negatively affect economic activities and living organisms. This has negative effects on productivity in various economic sectors.
One of the main effects of heat stress is its impact on worker productivity. Under extreme temperatures, workers suffer from decreased performance, which leads to additional costs for companies and organizations.
In agriculture, heat stress can damage crops and livestock, leading to food supply shortages and increased food prices. This has a direct impact on the global economy and the global trade balance.
On the other hand, the energy sector may witness an increase in demand for cooling homes and buildings in hot summer seasons, which increases energy consumption and leads to an additional load on electricity networks, and other broad impacts that various economic sectors suffer from.
If appropriate measures are not taken to combat heat stress, it can cause huge costs in the long term, both in the form of additional health costs as well as economic consequences resulting from lost productivity and deteriorating financial conditions.
Addressing the phenomenon of heat stress represents an important challenge that requires international cooperation and joint efforts. In order to maintain environmental sustainability and the prosperity of the global economy.
Singapore is an example
For example, a recent study by the National University of Singapore’s Yong Lo Lin School of Medicine showed that economic losses in Singapore due to heat stress could nearly double to $1.64 billion in 2035 from before the pandemic in 2018 due to lower labor productivity.
Returning to 2018, heat stresses caused an 11.3 percent decline in average productivity across Singapore’s four largest economic sectors – services, construction, manufacturing and agriculture, according to a report published by the American network “CNBC”.
The NUS Project HeatSafe report said the productivity decline is expected to rise to 14 percent in 2035, resulting in an economic loss of S$2.22 billion ($1.64 billion).
The loss will be much higher for workers exposed to adverse environmental conditions – those who work in the sun, or who are exposed to other sources of heat such as machinery.
It is estimated that for every hot day, lower worker productivity during working hours translates into an average income loss of S$21 per worker.
Aside from the impact on cognitive ability and physical exertion, the National University of Singapore research also found that exposure to extreme heat poses a risk to the country’s fertility rate, which has already reached historic lows.
An era of global ferment
The Southeast Asian country is not alone in facing this extreme heat; Earlier in February, scientists warned that the world had crossed a key warming threshold over a full year for the first time ever.
Last July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world had moved away from global warming to an “age of global boiling.”
The most prominent sectors affected
In this regard, Dr. Alaa Sarhan, professor of environmental economics in Cairo, indicated in exclusive statements to the “Eqtisad Sky News Arabia” website that “it is expected that the global economic losses resulting from heat stress will increase with the rise in temperatures and the presence of maximum and extreme heat waves.”
In this context, he highlighted an aspect of the impact of various economic sectors on the repercussions of heat stress and unprecedented high temperatures, as follows:
Heat stress leads to reduced labor productivity, especially in industries that require a lot of physical effort or working in open spaces (..) Losing a large portion of productivity leads to a wide range of economic losses.
Exposure of workers to high heat leads to health problems, which results in high health care costs for individuals, health systems, and governments.
There is damage to infrastructure due to extreme temperatures, such as roads, bridges, railways, utilities, and electricity networks, which leads to an increase in the cost of replacement or maintenance. These effects vary according to the degree of heat stress, its timing and severity, and the extent of the infrastructure’s ability to withstand and confront it.
Heat stress would negatively affect the agricultural sector, in terms of agricultural production quantities and livestock production productivity, leading to economic losses for farmers and industries that depend on agriculture, as well as food supply chains, leading to decreased revenues and increased production costs in this sector.
Heat stress will lead to higher insurance costs; Especially since insurance companies are forced to pay major compensation in the event of damage related to heat stress. Such extreme temperature changes contribute to increasing claims by those affected, such as the agricultural and health sectors, to insurance companies, and thus increase the cost of insurance for individuals, economic activities, and governments.
Sarhan stressed the utmost importance of combating the negative effects of heat stress. To reduce the economic burden it could cause, and to protect the most sensitive and affected populations, including “climate change adaptation” measures in this context, by building infrastructure capable of withstanding these negative impacts.
He also stressed that there is a need to invest in strategies for adaptation and response to climate change, and the presence of early warning devices for upcoming heat waves, as well as the presence of some interventions in city planning and public health planning.
In 2030, 2.2 percent of total working hours worldwide will be lost due to rising temperatures, a loss equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs. This equates to global economic losses of $2.4 billion, according to the International Labor Organization.
Agriculture and construction are among the sectors most affected by heat stress.
As for agriculture, there are 940 million people in the world working in this sector, and its losses are expected to reach 60 percent of the total working hours that the world will lose due to extreme heat by 2030.
The construction sector will also be severely affected and will lose up to 19 percent of global working hours on the aforementioned date.
Other sectors most at risk are environmental goods and services, garbage collection, emergency, repair work, transportation, tourism, sports and some industrial activities that use heavy machinery.
The most prominent affected areas
In addition, environmental expert, Tahseen Shuala, explained in exclusive statements to the “Eqtisad Sky News Arabia” website that heat stress has a wide negative impact on the global economy, which can be clearly seen in the following:
Global warming may change the agricultural map worldwide. With the disappearance of some agricultural varieties that are unable to withstand high temperatures. For example, climate change has resulted in a decrease in the production of some crops, such as cocoa, coffee, and tea, in countries that are the first to produce them in the world.
Countries that have climate diversity in their different regions are the countries that will safely pass through the severity of heat stress, which will escalate in the coming period. The diversity of temperatures in the different seasons provides an opportunity to diversify agricultural crops, which gives some flexibility in growing some crops between one region and another. (..).
Global warming leads to the drying of the land and its unsuitability for agriculture, and the occurrence of a disruption in the earth’s layers, resulting in disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
An increase in the proportion of carbon emissions and methane gas leads to the emergence of a type of acid rain that causes environmental disturbances and the emergence of some harmful microbes and the death of beneficial ones.
Global warming leads to an increase in disease-carrying insects and the transmission of viral diseases such as dengue fever and the Zika virus, for example, which harms public health due to the spread of diseases in an epidemic manner and the tendency of countries’ economies to deal with the crisis.
Heat stress will result in the displacement of more than one billion people in the year 2050, as a result of the extreme phenomena resulting from it in most major and industrialized countries.
