World Safety Day 2024: Ensuring Safety and Health at Work in a Changing Climate in Lagos and Africa
World Safety Day is a global annual event that aims at creating awareness about the relevance and value of safety and health at work. A global initiative by ILO, seeking collective localized impacts across climes and, regions of the world.
The theme for this year World Safety Day, “Ensuring Safety and Health at Work in a Changing Climate,” pinpoints the critical need to address workplace safety issues in the face of climate change. This theme is particularly relevant for Lagos, Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, where the impacts of climate change are increasingly being felt coupled with the already existing issues of economic downturn, recession and other bandwagon of amorphous statutory policies .
Climate change poses significant challenges to workplace safety in Lagos and Africa. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and changing precipitation patterns has increased the risk of heat stress, dehydration, and other health hazards for workers. In addition, natural disasters such as floods and storms can disrupt workplaces, leading to injuries, fatalities, and economic losses. The afore mentioned has been an annual incident in Lagos with communities affected and displacement of people, due to flooding. ?The mental health of displaced persons and bread winners is and would greatly be affected during these incidents due to global climate change.
We seat on kegs of gun powder and assume all is well. Furthermore, misplaced priority of government decisions has further escalated this menace. However, to ensure safety and health at work in a changing climate, it is essential for businesses and organizations in Lagos and Africa to adapt the right policies on sustainability and resource governance. This may include implementing heat stress management programs, providing adequate training on climate-related risks, developing emergency response plans for extreme weather events, cooperate social responsibilities for host communities in line with climate change initiatives, keeping a track on their carbon footprints and investing in infrastructure that can withstand the impacts of climate change.
Addressing the intersection of workplace safety and climate change requires collaboration between government agencies, employers, workers’ organizations, civil society groups, and other stakeholders. By working together, these entities can develop holistic strategies that promote safe working conditions while also mitigating the effects of climate change.
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Education and awareness campaigns play a crucial role in promoting safety and health at work in a changing climate. In Lagos and across Africa, initiatives that raise awareness about the risks posed by climate change and provide information on how to stay safe at work can help prevent accidents and injuries. Catch them young for school children are cost effective problem to be part of solution initiatives on climate change impacts in our societies.
Conclusively, the theme of this year 2024 World Safety Day underscores the urgent need to prioritize safety and health at work in the face of a changing climate. In Lagos and Africa, addressing the challenges posed by climate change requires proactive measures, collaboration among stakeholders, education campaigns, and a commitment to creating safe working environments for all.
Leleji Akpewe James is an EHS advocate and can proffer valid solutions for stake holders in the private sector on how to manage Environment, Health and Safety Risk and install cost effective safeguards to protect the workforce, through operational/process integrity management systems.
@Leleji Akpewe James