"In almost all the places we work, worker leaders are reporting extreme weather as an increasingly critical challenge for those working informally." WIEGO Urban Policies Director Caroline Skinner’s observation reveals a truth often ignored in global climate governance: climate change is both a livelihood and an environmental crisis.
With negotiations at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 30) set for November), WIEGO’s research on Climate Change and the Urban Informal Economy provides ways to face this dual reality. Working with and for worker organizations, our study maps how climate change is impacting the health, work routines, productivity and earnings of workers in informal employment in Bangkok, Delhi, Lima and six Brazilian cities. This research, grounded in workers’ experiences, shows how climate change exacerbates inequalities locally, nationally and globally.
The research also offers insights into how urban climate-related challenges might better inform global climate governance processes. At the heart of this lies a fundamental question: how can we shift from highly technocratic climate solutions toward people-centred approaches that address both environmental and livelihood needs?
New Research Maps Climate Impacts Across Three Sectors in Nine Cities
The Climate Change and the Urban Informal Economy study builds on work in Brazil, which documented how climate change impacts waste pickers, and extends to street vendors and home-based workers – sectors overlooked in both climate and labour debates and policy. The research in Bangkok, Belém, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Delhi, Florianópolis, Lima, Manaus and Salvador examines how place of work and access to workplace infrastructure – like water, electricity, toilets and shelter – shape workers’ experiences of climate change and their coping strategies.
The research is relevant for discussions on climate financing and can inform strategies to fund workplace-level adaptation. It also underscores the role local governments play in crisis response to protect lives and economies. As Skinner notes: "Local authorities shape the environment for workers. At best, this presents an opportunity to foreground bottom-up alternatives driven by worker organizations in dialogue with key urban actors."
Early findings point to extreme-weather impacts on workers’ productivity, physical and mental health, and costs of adaptation. “We are seeing that workers are bearing the costs of adapting to climate pressures. They're investing in cooling devices, as well as paying more for water and electricity. They are having to reduce or shift work hours, their productivity is decreasing and they are losing customers," says Marcela Valdivia, researcher and project manager.
These impacts extend beyond traditional workplaces and can be different for women: "The reality of homes being used as workplaces by urban workers has to be recognized and reflected in climate action," says Shalini Sinha, WIEGO’s home-based work sector specialist. “The research is bringing women-dominated invisible sectors such as home-based work to the centre stage of discourse on climate change.” Moreover, research is revealing how both gender and age mediate the experiences of extreme weather on work and health.
Leveraging Climate Research for Systems Change
The research is guided by WIEGO's principles of knowledge co-production, which we use to generate research for social change. Across all study cities, the research process builds climate awareness with worker organizations and partners, helping to break down the technical lexicon of climate change and make it accessible to those experiencing its impacts firsthand.
This approach ensures that data doesn't serve merely as anecdotal evidence. As Valdivia notes, "WIEGO and worker organizations work together to use findings in campaigns, policy advocacy, media and global spaces." Amplifying worker voices provides direction for driving change, particularly at the city level.
Cities are sites of potential transformative change because they play a role in both creating and solving climate challenges. There are key strategic interventions to leverage and drive systemic climate action.
The first is shifting city governments' understanding of resilience. "The transformation lies in having city governments understand that building workers' resilience is building city resilience. They're inseparable," says WIEGO Waste Specialist Sonia Dias.
The second centres on integrated urban design and policy approaches. Systematic changes across multiple sectors can create lasting impact. "City design must embrace shade, green open spaces, water bodies and heat-resistant building materials. Changes are needed across housing, transport and livelihoods. Labour regulations, climate resilience and just transitions must be integrated into planning and policy, quickly and effectively,” notes Sinha.
The third involves building alliances. Dias explains: "We need to be constantly scanning the policy landscape to find opportunities for influence. We need to strengthen alliances. This includes relationship building with civil society and allies at both the city and national policy levels. It is very much about using evidence to collectively problem-solve."
Using Data to Advocate for Climate Protections
These leverage points are already yielding results. In Brazil, waste picker cooperatives used near-real-time monitoring data to pressure federal prosecutors over a delay in renewing the land-use agreement for the waste picking sorting centre in Florianópolis and secured climate-sensitive renovations with private-sector funding in Belo Horizonte's metropolitan region. Attention received from the research has also earned waste pickers seats at climate decision-making spaces, including Brazil's Circular Economy Technical Chamber as part of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, and Belo Horizonte's Municipal Committee on Climate Change Adaptation and Eco-efficiency.
The inclusion of workers in informal employment in India’s National Disaster Management Authority guidelines is also groundbreaking in specificity and scale. Importantly, the guidelines consider specific risks women workers face and provide recommendations for domestic workers and home-based workers.
However, guidelines are only the first step. Translating them into effective city-level heat action plans that deliver real relief to workers will require both conventional and radical approaches across labour, gender, urban planning, and governance. The objective in India is to engage with more national ministries so as to deepen impact and expand influence from heat action plans to climate action plans, national adaptation plans, and just-transition discussions.
Key Takeaways from the Research Process as WIEGO looks to COP
Building worker power is foundational. The climate-change research process serves as both a capacity-building and mobilizing tool for workers to participate in climate decision-making spaces locally, nationally and globally.
Systems change requires strategic partnerships. Achieving shifts in discourse and policy around climate demands multi-level alliances that can sustain and scale policy messages. For example, worker organizations and trade unions situate labour within broader struggles for housing, public space and services. Academic collaborations, particularly those connected to IPCC Reports, elevate grass-roots knowledge. And international networks such as C40, UCLG and Cities Alliance bridge local realities with global processes.
The research’s core message for COP 30 is clear: Global climate solutions and financing must centre the workers who play fundamental roles across cities. Fully recognizing workers in informal employment as essential partners in climate action will build on the leverage points, alliances and evidence-based advocacy strategies already creating change across cities.
This is the second blog in a series on Unpacking Research: WIEGO Notes from the Ground.