Laurie Parsons
ABSTRACT Climate change is increasingly recognized as a labor issue. The world of work is not only a major site of environmental risk, but also a means by which environmental risks are structured and intensified. Nevertheless, climate scholarship has been uneven in its recognition of the diverse dimensions of work in a warming world. As a result, key gaps in knowledge surround the climate changed worker and workplace. Seeking both to outline the landscape of existing scholarship and to highlight what remains to be explored, this review will examine the frames through which the worker under climate change is understood, emphasizing how disjunctures between these continue to shape contested viewpoints on work under climate change. From this footing, the review will explore three key intersecting strands of the climate‐labor nexus. First, labor's role within the mitigation of carbon emissions, both on the scale of workplace organization and national governance. Second, the role of labor in climate change adaptation, focusing especially on the autonomous strategies employed by workers in response to the changing climate. Third, the vulnerability of labor: how working conditions and trajectories are reshaping landscapes of environmental risk. In doing so, it will evidence the centrality of labor in shaping the globalized inequalities of the climate and its potential as a bridge connecting diverse fields of scholarship. Ultimately, the review will show labor to be not only a vital lens on the global systems that mediate the changing climate but a means, differently articulated, to reshape those dynamics themselves. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change Climate and Development > Urbanization, Development, and Climate Change