The biggest business cost of climate change for Asian companies is not flooded factories or broken supply chains but the health of their workers, the insurer AIA and the sustainability nonprofit Forum for the Future argued this week in a new report on the region.
The case is stated in numbers a boardroom understands. The Lancet Countdown, a research collaboration, put global labor losses from heat exposure at $1.1 trillion in 2024. Asia is warming faster than the global average. The Singapore-ETH Center projects that heat stress will cost Singapore alone about 2.2 billion Singapore dollars, roughly $1.7 billion, in lost productivity by 2035. In a high-emissions scenario, the Asian Development Bank estimates, climate change could cut GDP in developing Asia by almost 17 percent by 2070, with weaker labor productivity one of the main reasons.
Mitchell New, AIA’s group general counsel, laid out the argument on Thursday in a commentary for Fortune that accompanied the report. For decades, he wrote, companies have weighed climate risk in terms of physical assets, supply chains and regulation. What that view misses is the human body. Research from the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization finds that worker productivity declines as temperatures rise, while heatwaves drive heatstroke and dehydration, haze from pollution brings respiratory illness and floods injure people and interrupt the work of hospitals and clinics.
The timing is poor. By 2050, one in four people in the region is expected to be over the age of 60, adding strain to health systems already stretched by extreme weather.
Mr. New set out three priorities for executives. First, build what he called climate-health literacy across an organization rather than leaving it to one department. About 75 percent of companies now disclose board oversight of climate-related issues, up from 6 percent six years ago. Second, make workforces resilient by assessing exposure to heat and bad air, shifting hours or locations in extreme conditions, providing cooling and hydration, and folding climate-related illness into business-continuity planning, with Asia’s large outdoor workforces in mind. Third, invest in stronger health systems together with governments, providers, development institutions and private capital.
Employers have ground to make up. In the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Resilience Pulse Check, 84 percent of organizations said they felt underprepared for future disruptions to their workforces.
The report, independently authored by Forum for the Future and sponsored by AIA, found that 99 of the world’s 100 most environmentally at-risk cities are in Asia and that more than 40 million households in the region forgo medical care because of cost.
Mr. New said insurers can contribute research and health-engagement work to the problem. AIA has committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, backed by validated near-term targets and a plan it calls its Climate Transition Plan. The commentary reflects his views, Fortune noted, and not necessarily the publication’s.
The question is no longer whether climate change will affect health. It already has.