Issue paper on child labour and climate change

The paper examines more than 100 articles from the peer-reviewed literature and reports from international organizations, think tanks and non-governmental organizations. The available evidence, though still limited, makes abundantly clear that climate change – and public and private responses to it - is already having profound impacts on child labour, and, following from this, on global progress towards ending all forms of child labour by the 2025 target date set by the Sustainable Development Goals. As the impacts of climate change grow and intensify, this will be even truer in the years up to and beyond the 2025 target date.

There is an urgent need to consider child labour in broader public and private action towards a just transition to climate-neutral economies and societies. This means, above all, ensuring that climate action is structured in a way that furthers child labour reduction goals and does not instead result in unintended negative consequences for child labour. Both public and private climate actions are relevant in this context.

Public climate action has implications for child labour across a range of policy areas. Safeguards, for example, are needed so that public policies promoting the clean energy transition do not create labour market disruptions that leave low-skill workers and their families in a position of greater vulnerability and more reliant on their children’s labour.

Climate change adaptation policies, such as environmentally sustainable methods to intensify agriculture production in the face of climate change, or public works schemes to buffer climate shocks, must also be designed in a way that reduces household dependence on child labour and do not instead result in greater demand for child labour.

In regulatory terms, combining both environmental and human rights considerations into national laws and regulations governing the behaviour of firms can play an important role in ensuring complementarity between these two regulatory goals.