Hotter trends: Working conditions and climate-linked heat stress in the Cambodian garment sector

Under climate change, heatwaves are increasing in frequency, duration and intensity, placing hundreds of millions of workers at risk of impacts to health and livelihoods. The human impact of climate-linked heatwaves is thus a topic of growing academic and policy concern. Nevertheless, assessments and responses to heatwave risk are shaped by data and methodological challenges. Analysis of heat stress risk traditionally relies on a combination of intensive laboratory studies and secondary data, leading to a predominance of spatial frames over social ones, such as working livelihoods, despite these being known to shape heat exposure. Responding to this challenge, this paper employs a novel methodology, utilising an array of 20 simultaneous CORE thermal sensor devices in combination with integrated qualitative and quantitative methods, to understand heat stress vulnerability through the frame of industrial labour in global supply chains. This paper draws on data generated in the Cambodian garment industry: a dominant economic sector in a country highly vulnerable to heat stress. This is thus a case study with major relevance to the wider landscape of global work. The garment industry is one of the world's most polluting and carbon intensive industries, as well as one of its biggest employers, with an estimated 70 million garment workers worldwide. Reflecting growing interest in sustainability in garment supply chains, industrial decarbonisation programs are increasingly prevalent and well-funded in the global industry. Yet these initiatives focus overwhelmingly on carbon mitigation within the primary supply chain, leaving the impact of climate change on garment sector workers largely absent from policy in the sector. Drawing on 135,701 minutes of thermal data, or 75 hours for each of the 20 workers participating, this paper presents one of the first bodies of scientific data on heat stress vulnerability amongst garment workers, including formal, informal and piece rate work within the sector.