Climate negotiations tend to revolve around emissions pledges, yet for Bangladesh’s $39 billion ready-made garment sector, the pressing danger is already on the shop floor: unrelenting heat.
With more than four million people employed across its factories, the industry is watching rising indoor temperatures erode worker health, inflate overheads and challenge its capacity to adjust.
The damage is measurable. In 2024, Bangladesh forfeited an estimated 29 billion potential working hours to heat exposure, 92 percent more than the 1990-99 average.
The associated loss of earnings is put at $24 billion, close to 5 percent of national GDP.
In factories around Dhaka and Chattogram, the strain is plain to see. Temperatures indoors regularly pass 35°C and may hit 40°C at the height of summer.
According to a February poll by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), 78 percent of garment workers believe summers have noticeably grown hotter in recent years, and about half said the heat had left them weak or unwell.
Cooling the production floor is therefore a commercial imperative, not a comfort perk. Managers are installing more fans, upgrading ventilation and servicing cooling equipment more diligently.
Many are also guaranteeing safe drinking water and oral rehydration salts, scheduling formal hydration breaks, drawing up first-aid procedures for heat illness and shifting working hours during the worst spells.
Such steps are not free. Owners say extra outlays on electricity, generator diesel during outages, drinking water and welfare schemes push operating budgets up by 2 to 5 percent across the April-June peak.
Output suffers too. A pioneering 2025 study, led by the University of Sydney and published in The Lancet Planetary Health, examined Bangladeshi apparel factories and concluded that, absent cooling measures, heat stress cut production by 12 to 15 percent as employees slowed under thermal pressure.
Heat brings tiredness, headaches and stomach complaints, which in turn drive up mistakes and defective goods.
Sleepless, sweltering nights and draining journeys to work mean many staff start shifts already exhausted, feeding absenteeism and sick leave.
Yet the research also offered encouragement: inexpensive, focused measures, such as cooling individual workers instead of whole floors, won back a worthwhile portion of the lost output. In other words, a solution need not demand heavy capital spending.
No factory can resolve this in isolation. How well workers recuperate between shifts depends on conditions at home.
Regular blackouts, substandard housing and unreliable water in crowded neighbourhoods stop people resting on sultry nights, perpetuating a loop of exhaustion.
Breaking it, demands government investment in dependable power, clean water and climate-resilient urban infrastructure.
“International brands buying from Bangladesh, meanwhile, must accept that suppliers cannot shoulder adaptation costs alone,” Daily Star reported.
Safeguarding supply chains calls for longer-term sourcing commitments, co-funded investment, prices that realistically reflect higher running costs, and climate resilience written into core compliance standards. Without joined-up action, the next heatwave may turn into an industrial emergency.
Image courtesy: IFC
