ONE thing the pandemic has illuminated for us is that even in a global crisis, not everyone is equally exposed to risk.

While some work from home, various frontline workers have had to brave considerable risks to keep the the coronavirus in check, ensure deliveries arrive, and keep shelves in supermarkets stocked.

Heightened awareness of the plight of the frontline workers has helped propelled longstanding issues of labour protection in especially the healthcare industry to the limelight, as in the case of the contract doctors. Sadly enough, it seems that even an actual pandemic cannot rectify the “pandemic” of nurses and other medical support staff being underpaid and under-appreciated globally.

Important as it may be for rallying civic consciousness during the pandemic, our idea of a frontliner should go beyond wartime framings wherein the frontline is temporary. In other words, this frontline subsides when the pandemic recedes from being a public health emergency.

On a hotter Earth, the idea of a frontline should be transformed drastically, especially for those of us who live in the tropics. I strongly believe that to raise awareness about the climate crisis and those exposed to its most pernicious effects, anyone whose job encompasses prolonged and significant exposure to outdoor activities should be considered a frontliner.

This emphasis on the tropics stems from the fact that our combination of heat and humidity is a particularly deadly combo. Humid conditions make sweat evaporation difficult, which means our body will fail to cool itself on very hot days and, therefore, we are literally “cooked from within”.

The dry air of the Northern regions makes the summer temperatures of up to 40°C are bearable, but a hot day in the 30s in the tropics poses a much greater health hazard.

The combination of heat and humidity exacerbates what scientists call heat stress, defined as “heat received in excess of that which the body can tolerate without physiological impairment” by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Heat stress, in turn, can cause nausea, exhaustion, delirium, coma and long-term damage to our organs.

Such is the predicament of many of our construction workers, delivery riders, agricultural workers, outdoor food vendors; technically, everyone who doesn’t have the luxury to work in a shaded, sheltered, well-hydrated (home) office.

Heat is a fact but also a hazard

Broadening our understanding of a frontliner is important because there is a risk that we have all but accepted heat as a fact and not a hazard.

Whereas news of forest fires and devastating heat waves in Western countries often catches eyeballs, most Malaysians are acclimatised to the hot weather, largely thanks to our car-and-shopping mall-centric lifestyle that has provided the fortunate many refuges in air-conditioned spaces, which ironically raises surface temperature even more.

Asking to recognise outdoor workers as frontliners is to ask for a drastic change in public attitudes towards heat exposure, which is often invisible (not least due to the racialisation of cheap and foreign labour) in policy discussions conducted in air-conditioned rooms by policymakers who spend most of their working life indoors.

Even the ILO’s report about heat stress measures the damage in the economic lexicon of “working hours lost” and not the more human-centric idea of “working hours endured”, which is precisely how we talked about the sacrifices of our medical frontliners during the pandemic.

But in a warming and overpopulated world, even as many of us can shun the outdoors in our lives, others will have to brave the sun to plant our crops, deliver our parcels, and collect our garbage. No matter how optimistic (or dystopian) one’s outlook may be, automation that eliminates outdoor work simply isn’t available yet.

Thus, raising awareness about how frontliners are around us and will be with us in the long run due to the climate crisis is important if one intends to push for changes in our political culture and discourses, as well as the implementation of mitigation and compensatory measures.

Drop the suit and tie

In terms of sartorial culture, I would say drop the suit-and-tie aesthetics. Oftentimes, we see our politicians gathering (perhaps admirably) in the hot sun in such attire.

One of the first things Dr Mahathir Mohamad did when he became the prime minister (again) was to hold an outdoor assembly to meet hundreds of civil servants in the Prime Minister’s Department, most of whom were in (air-conditioned) corporate wear more suited for the office. A deputy minister even collapsed during the event.

Some would say, why should we care if politicians, who are very well-taken care of in general, are protected from heat stress? What’s their exposure compared to that of the hard labourers or the security entourage that accompanied them everywhere?

I can sympathise with this sentiment but it will most likely be counter-productive.

When we normalise this image that even elites can brave the sun seemingly without protection – never mind that they will wear enough sunblock, assistants will carry their umbrella, and that they can vanish into their Vellfires after a few handshakes and smiles – we are much more likely to find the idea that exposure is no big deal.

Hence, schools still have to wait for upper directives to tell them to avoid having school assemblies outdoors.

Shouldn’t it be common sense already that it makes no sense to expose schoolchildren to the sun when they don’t have shower facilities to cool themselves down afterwards given that they still have to attend classes?

It’s far better if elites could dress for the climate to show that heat exposure is something serious so that social norms and expectations can change, especially for those most in need.

After all, we constantly talk about decolonisation so why insist on wearing attire that doesn’t fit our climate?

Heat mitigation and compensation

Mitigation wise, there’s also a lot to be done, more so given the drastically increasing urban temperatures we are facing. Greening and shading urban spaces have been proven to be able to reduce surface temperature significantly.

More importantly, shading must consider the needs of human movement so that continuous coverage of walking corridors are provided. Installing drinking fountains in spaces with a lot of human traffic should be made a norm, not least for its role in reducing plastic waste.

Government should invest more in developing wearable cooling technologies, include smart fabrics, given that we have the perfect environment to test them year-round.

Employers must be encouraged to adopt these technologies for their workers so that we can attain economies of scale for cool-tech faster. Currently, cooling tech is still too confined to sportswear and not workwear.

Lastly, and this is arguably an experimental idea, I would advocate for something like a heat tax to raise awareness that heat exposure is an occupational hazard.

By imposing a cost on heat exposure, we can raise awareness regarding structures of social inequality that separate the people who order services in cool environments from those delivering them in the hot sun.

Thus far, I have not seen this idea of a heat tax floated anywhere, but it’s clear that the technology to do it is already here. We can pilot this for our delivery riders on motorcycles and bikes who are constantly exposed to the perils of heat stress.

For example, we can set a baseline temperature of let’s say 27°C and charge a heat tax per degree temperature difference with the actual temperature when the delivery is made, with all of the returns given to the rider.

Alternatively, we can charge it based on the gap between the measured temperature and the “feels like” temperature, which measures how one perceives the temperature due to the humidity.

As I am writing this, the actual temperature is 33°C but it feels like 41°C  due to the humidity, according to my phone. So, if we charge 50 sen per °C difference, then the delivery rider gets an extra four ringgit.

It’s a given that we should not take global warming lightly. Yet current discourses about climate change remain focused on the future (such as preventing global warming beyond 1.5°C by 2030), which is undoubtedly important. But climate change is not in the future tense, as we are already feeling its effects.

The people on the frontlines need appreciation, protection, and compensation now. – October 19, 2021.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.