Warming from tropical deforestation reduces worker productivity in rural communities.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Anggraeni I ; Ebi K ; Game ET ; Garg T ; Krenz J ; Masuda YJ ; Spector JT ; Wolff NH
• Description:
  The accelerating loss of tropical forests in the 21st century has eliminated cooling services provided by trees in low latitude countries. Cooling services can protect rural communities and outdoor workers with little adaptive capacity from adverse heat exposure, which is expected to increase with climate change. Yet little is still known about whether cooling services can mitigate negative impacts of heat on labor productivity among rural outdoor workers. Through a field experiment in Indonesia, we show that worker productivity was 8.22% lower in deforested relative to forested settings, where wet bulb globe temperatures were, on average, 2.84 degrees C higher in deforested settings. We demonstrate that productivity losses are driven by behavioral adaptations in the form of increased number of work breaks, and provide evidence that suggests breaks are in part driven by awareness of heat effects on work. Our results indicate that the cooling services from forests have the potential for increasing resilience and adaptive capacity to local warming. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Climate Change Community Health Services Hot Temperature Occupational Health Safety Temperature
• Keywords:
  Hot environments; Climate change; Climatic factors; Heat exposure; Temperature effects; Work performance; Outdoor workers; Community health
• ISSN:
  2041-1723
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 6 ; OSHA Region 9 ; Texas ; Washington
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  12
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20064978
• Citation:
  Nat Commun 2021 Mar; 12(1):1601
• Email:
  ymasuda@tnc.org
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2021
• Performing Organization:
  University of Washington
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Nature Communications
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:8ad7d37a2d4c17242a9ba3a8d1846d24dfc2792208eae3a8b7ff798eee4c40d54c25c60fd165b5c9c0c6aff7c0694250ec2d5dcfedd6a49bbeb5389241c0dd5f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/248724/cdc_248724_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 548.67 KB ]