China, India worst hit as half a million coal workers face job cuts globally by 2035 - South China Morning Post
Climate change: China, India to bear the brunt with half a million coal workers facing job cuts globally by 2035 due to mine closures and energy transition | South China Morning Post
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Climate change: China, India to bear the brunt with half a million coal workers facing job cuts globally by 2035 due to mine closures and energy transition
- San Francisco-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor urges the industry to plan ‘just transition’ strategies for the sector’s unpredictable future
- ‘Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers is not’, report co-author says
face unemployment globally by 2035 due to mine closures and a market shift towards cheaper wind and solar power generation, with
China and India likely to be hit hardest, a new report said.
That equates to 100 workers being laid off every day for the next 12 years, according to a report released on Tuesday by San Francisco-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). The report looks into the employment of nearly 2.7 million coal miners working at 4,300 active and proposed coal mines and projects around the world that are together responsible for more than 90 per cent of global coal production.
By 2050, about 1 million coal mine jobs, or 37 per cent of the existing workforce at operating mines, will no longer exist given the coal industry’s foreseeable closures, even without host countries’ climate pledges or policies to phase out coal, the report said.
“just transition” strategies for the sector’s unpredictable future.
“The coal industry has a long list of mines that will close in the near term – many of them state-owned enterprises with a government stake,” said Tiffany Means, GEM researcher and a co-author of the report. “Governments need to shoulder their share of the burden to ensure a managed transition for these workers and communities, as we move into a clean-energy economy.”
The report raises the question of whether the coal and other energy-intensive industries will manage the job transfer and re-skilling needed to meet expectations of a just transition, which refers to practices that help with mitigating and adapting to climate change without sacrificing key stakeholders’ interests.
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The prospects are especially grim for China and India, two of the world’s largest coal producers, which are expected to shed the most jobs globally, according to GEM.
China has more than 1.5 million coal miners who produce half of the world’s coal. The northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan and Inner Mongolia mine more than a quarter of the world’s coal and employ more than a third of the global mining workforce, about 870,400 people.
The report estimated that Shanxi province could cut 241,900 jobs by 2050.
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“One among every 30 people in Shanxi works in the coal industry,” said Shanxi-born Tom Wang Xiaojun, executive director of Manila-based environmental policy group, People of Asia for Climate Solutions. “These people are not being prepared in any way to face a life without coal-related income when the coal market is, for sure, going to shrink after 2030.”
Richer provinces in China’s coastal regions also need to step up and share the responsibility to help coal-producing provinces start a steady, just and harmonious transition away from coal, he added. “It is high time that the coal miners were trained and equipped with new skill sets that could ensure for them a safe, healthy and dignified livelihood in the post-coal era,” Wang said.
India, the world’s second-largest coal producer, officially employs about 337,400 miners at its operating mines. State-owned Coal India will face potential lay-offs of 73,800 workers by 2050, the report said.
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Governments should draw inspiration from countries such as Spain, which regularly reviews the ongoing impact of its decarbonisation progress while planning its just energy transition strategies, said Dorothy Mei, project manager at GEM and a co-author.
“Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers is not,” she added.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”