Hanoi (VNA) – Singapore’s economic losses due toheat stress could nearly double to 1.64 billion USD in 2035 from pre-pandemic2018 due to a decline in labour productivity, a recent study by the NationalUniversity of Singapore showed.
Back in 2018, heat strain caused an 11.3% fall in averageproductivity across Singapore’s four big economic sectors — services,construction, manufacturing, and agriculture, it said.
Fall in productivity is expected to rise to 14% in 2035, leadingto an economic loss of 2.22 billion SGD (1.64 billion USD), after adjusting forinflation, foreign media cited the NUS Project HeatSafe report as saying.
The loss will be significantly higher for workers exposed toadverse environmental conditions — those working under the sun, or beingexposed to other sources of heat such as machineries.
It is estimated that for every hot day, the reduced workers’productivity during working hours translates into a median income loss of 21SGD per worker.
Project HeatSafe is the first large-scale study in Singaporeas well as the region aimed at assessing the impact of rising heat levels onproductivity and health on an individual and macroeconomic level.
Natalia Borzino from the Singapore-ETH Centre, acollaborator for Project HeatSafe, said they took 2018 as the baseline for thestudy as it was pre-pandemic and also the last “normal year” that the team haddata for.
The island nation is warming twice as fast as the rest ofthe globe, with its UV index recently hitting “extreme” levels for the secondtime within four days, the highest band in Singapore’s gauge for solar UVradiation.
The Southeast Asian country is not alone in facing thisintense heat.
Earlier in February, scientists warned that the world hassurpassed a key warming threshold across an entire year for the first time onrecord. Last July, United Nations’ Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautionedthat the world has moved away from global warming to “an era of globalboiling”.
Aside from impacting cognitive capacity and physicalexertion, the NUS research also found that extreme heat exposure poses a riskto Singapore’s fertility rate, which are already at historic lows./.
Back in 2018, heat strain caused an 11.3% fall in averageproductivity across Singapore’s four big economic sectors — services,construction, manufacturing, and agriculture, it said.
Fall in productivity is expected to rise to 14% in 2035, leadingto an economic loss of 2.22 billion SGD (1.64 billion USD), after adjusting forinflation, foreign media cited the NUS Project HeatSafe report as saying.
The loss will be significantly higher for workers exposed toadverse environmental conditions — those working under the sun, or beingexposed to other sources of heat such as machineries.
It is estimated that for every hot day, the reduced workers’productivity during working hours translates into a median income loss of 21SGD per worker.
Project HeatSafe is the first large-scale study in Singaporeas well as the region aimed at assessing the impact of rising heat levels onproductivity and health on an individual and macroeconomic level.
Natalia Borzino from the Singapore-ETH Centre, acollaborator for Project HeatSafe, said they took 2018 as the baseline for thestudy as it was pre-pandemic and also the last “normal year” that the team haddata for.
The island nation is warming twice as fast as the rest ofthe globe, with its UV index recently hitting “extreme” levels for the secondtime within four days, the highest band in Singapore’s gauge for solar UVradiation.
The Southeast Asian country is not alone in facing thisintense heat.
Earlier in February, scientists warned that the world hassurpassed a key warming threshold across an entire year for the first time onrecord. Last July, United Nations’ Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautionedthat the world has moved away from global warming to “an era of globalboiling”.
Aside from impacting cognitive capacity and physicalexertion, the NUS research also found that extreme heat exposure poses a riskto Singapore’s fertility rate, which are already at historic lows./.
VNA
