Climate Change, Decent Work, and Workers' Health: Vulnerabilities and Responses of Workers in Brazilian Agriculture

This report presents a comprehensive climate risk and vulnerability assessment focused on agricultural workers in Brazil, integrating the ILO’s decent work framework as a measure of vulnerability. The assessment draws on the lived experiences of workers across three distinct agricultural contexts in Brazil – Mato Grosso, Maranhão, and Rio de Janeiro – and encompasses diverse production models including smallholder farming, cooperatives, and large-scale agro-industrial operations.

By combining climate hazard data, labour market indicators, and health surveillance information with direct input from workers through participatory approaches, the assessment identifies how climate hazards intersect with poor working conditions to threaten the health, safety, and livelihoods of farming communities. The resulting insights inform practical, locally relevant strategies to protect workers and strengthen community resilience in the face of climate change.

The project employs a mixed-methods approach that combines secondary data analysis (health surveillance records, labour statistics, and climate indicators) with primary data from 79 field interviews and a national multi-stakeholder workshop. This integrated methodology provides an extensive assessment of climate hazards and their effects on workers, examined through a decent work lens. Three complementary workstreams – participatory approaches, secondary data analysis, and stakeholder engagement – converge to produce a Climate-Decent Work Risk Assessment at municipal level across Brazil and a set of recommendations to promote intersectoral responses to climate change integrating health, labour, environment, and agriculture policies.

This document is part of the project Climate Change, Workers’ Health, and Decent Work: vulnerabilities and responses of workers in Brazilian agriculture, which aims to analyse the impacts of climate change within the context of agricultural work. The activities were carried out through inter-institutional cooperation between the University of Nottingham (UK), Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Maranhão Federal University (UFMA) and Mato Grosso Federal University (UFMT), and were funded by The British Academy under the ODA Challenge-Oriented Research Grants 2024 Programme.

This work involves the support and participation of representatives of organizations and entities of federal, state and municipal public administration, as well as experts from the scientific community and leaders of civil society movements. The multiple narratives of our approaches highlight violations of rights, socio-environmental vulnerabilities and institutional weaknesses that affect rural workers, aggravated by climate change. But also, describe collective actions, adaptation experiences and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration to intervene in problems and seek solutions together.