Paper short abstract:

People’s work capability in the French Alps will be disrupted by climate change impacts. Through a quantitative approach, generic worker vulnerability-resilience is analysed in terms of availability and accessibility of decent work, alongside specific job sensitivity to climate change impacts.

Paper long abstract:

People’s work opportunities in the French Alps will be disrupted by climate change impacts through three pathways - impacts on job-creation resources, changes to work conditions, and increased natural hazard disruptions (Schulte et al., 2023). I propose that a capability framing of work vulnerability-resilience to climate change is a valuable approach. It emphasises the intrinsic and instrumental value of work to a person’s life, wellbeing, and dignity (Nussbaum, 2011; Stephens, 2023), and that only through the right work conditions can work truly be a liberator (Sen, 2001).

Deficiencies in decent work, such as job precariousness, are linked to chronic forms of (un)employment vulnerability (McCann and Fudge, 2017). In contrast, those who work in secure and decent work conditions are more likely to be resilient when stressed. Expanding Dubois and Rousseau’s (2008) supposition that a person’s broad capability set influences their potential to adapt when under stress, I assume that a person’s work capability influences a person’s potential and ability to find and access work in the face of a crisis, such as climate change.

However, worker vulnerability-resilience is also a matter of the ability of the labour market to generate work opportunity. To encompass both worker vulnerability-resilience and job creation vulnerability-resilience, I use the notion of option freedom (Petit, 2003; Robeyns, 2017). This enables a framing of the “opportunity to work” capability in terms of availability of decent work generated by the labour market and accessibility of decent work determined by multiple conversion factors. In this way, a worker’s vulnerability-resilience is both determined by their individual work conditions/experiences as well as the ability of a system to generate decent work.

To map the vulnerability-resilience of work opportunity to climate change across the French Alps, I identified indicators representing decent work, labour market resilience, sector-based climate sensitivity, and environmental pressures. Through a PCA and cluster analysis, the research will highlight communities where people will require the most support in transitioning in light of disrupted work opportunities. Our hypothesis is that people who are generically vulnerable in terms of job deficiency and insecurity will also be vulnerable to climate change impacts, and that, mid-mountain, rural, and remote communities will be most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Policymakers are addressing this threat to work capability mainly through techno-centric, business-as-usual, solutions that focus on local economic growth rather than a sustainable human development pathway.

Key words: Work capability, climate change, vulnerability, resilience