As extreme weather events become the new normal, informal workers across South Asia are bearing the growing brunt of intersecting crises. Labour rights violations and poor social protections are worsening under the climate crisis. In India, amid the ongoing heatwave, we may have come to a boiling point as street vendors, waste pickers, and other informal workers rise in defiance, coming together in solidarity.Their demands for compensation for losses and other damages are aimed squarely at the coal, oil and gas corporations. In 2023 alone, climate disasters prompted by oil and gas corporations have affected more than 9 million people in Asia, while Big Oil continues to block climate action and spread disinformation, amassing immense wealth.
This International Workers’ Day, a new coalition is forming in Delhi. Informal workers, trade unionists and climate justice campaigners like Greenpeace India, supported by counterparts in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, have launched the Workers’ Collective for Climate Justice – South Asia. Along with the Collective, groups have signed the Polluters Pay Pact, a global campaign to hold billionaires and polluting corporations accountable for the climate crisis, by demanding that the governments introduce new taxes on fossil fuel corporations to help communities rebuild from climate disasters and inv …
