Friday, July 31, 2026
Pakistan’s solar revolution leans on workers toiling in extreme heat
Nearly a fifth of all Pakistani households rely on solar energy, but the people installing and cleaning these panels have little to no protection.
Abdul Rehman used to clean solar panels on Karachi’s rooftops during the hottest part of the day. But working through last year’s sweltering summers left the 33-year-old dizzy and severely dehydrated.
“It was one of the worst experiences. I felt I would faint,” Rehman tells Dialogue Earth. “It taught me a lesson: I will have to take care of myself because no one else will.”
Pakistan has been experiencing a solar boom, easing the immediate impacts of the war in Southwest Asia. By February 2026, the country had avoided over USD 12 billion in oil and gas imports and is poised to save another USD 6.3 billion by the end of the year, according to analysis by the Secure Energy Project.
Nearly a fifth of all Pakistani households currently use solar energy in some capacity, according to a recent report by energy think-tanks Ember and Renewables First. It shows that the country’s total electricity demand growth, 21% in just two years, was met entirely by new distributed solar generation, accelerating the country’s electrification and bringing it close to the global average.
This solar revolution rests on the shoulders of the workers who install, maintain and clean the shiny panels. They often carry out this invisible labour in extreme heat without safety measures.
“While everyone who has been a part of the solarisation in Pakistan has benefitted from it, the labour working on this green energy revolution have not, with no rights and meagre wages,” Farooq Tariq, a human rights advocate and president of the Haqooq Khalq Party, tells Dialogue Earth.
Customers with installed panels expect them to be cleaned in the day, Rehman says, adding that he has been pushing back against these demands. “I have now started telling people that I want to come anywhere between 4pm and 12am – not during daytime.”
But Rehman is an outlier. Most young men who clean solar panels in the city are “migrant workers rushing to big cities in search of work” and willing to take up jobs at any time of day, says Tariq.
“I see most of them going to wash solar panels at 12pm to 2pm, the peak heat time. That’s so dangerous,” Rehman says, adjusting the black cap he wears to work. “But what option do they have? They must earn for their families.”
A lack of safety
Pakistan’s distributed solar industry has created an estimated 300,000 direct and 200,000 indirect jobs between fiscal years 2017-2025, with the majority concentrated in engineering, procurement and construction services, according to a white paper by Renewables First.
However, there is little data on the number of manual workers and installation technicians as they often come from the informal sector, says Zehra Khan, a Pakistani trade unionist, activist and general secretary of the Home Based Women Workers’ Federation.
While training for potential solar technicians is no longer rare in the country, many programme catalogues Dialogue Earth saw focused largely on equipment safety and not safety measures, especially against heat.
Pakistan’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act 2018 does not explicitly mention heat-stress, though it broadly covers workplace hazards and risks to workers’ health, safety and welfare.
But according to Tariq, implementation is lacking. “Health and safety measures practically don’t exist for solar technicians and cleaners.”
Ad-hoc work
In Pakistan, some solar panel cleaners are contracted by companies who assign them slots, while others are household maintenance staff who double up.
Muhammad Asif, 32, moved from South Punjab to work in a household in south Karachi’s affluent Defence Housing Authority neighbourhood. Before he started cleaning solar panels for his employer, he was told to observe and help the professional cleaner that came once a month. Now that his employer has bought a high-pressure washer, Asif cleans the panels himself.
“My employers are careful about the heat, so they make sure that I do it after 5pm. I keep a big handkerchief with me, and if it’s hot even in the evening, I dampen it and keep it on my head,” he tells Dialogue Earth.
In Karachi, contracted solar panel cleaners are typically assigned time slots between 9am and 6pm, and it takes an hour on average to clean a household’s panels, says Ali, an employee of Karachi-based solar panel cleaning company Solar Sweep. This means some cleaning slots fall within peak heat hours.
Ali Habib, CEO of Punjab-based environmental consultancy Sama Verte, the parent company of Shama Solar, which specialises in end-to-end solar photovoltaic services, notes that the company has “guidelines to not clean the solar panels during the day when it is hot, as at that time … the sun is bright and we get maximum production of solar energy”.
Since solar panel workers are also at risk of electric shocks, Shama Solar encourages workers to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) such as boots and helmets. The headgear helps to protect against heat, Habib says.
Because solar installations usually follow tight schedules, Shama Solar’s workers are encouraged to carry out indoor work, like wiring or installing invertors and batteries, in the day, and install solar panels in the evening, he adds.
Nadeem Nawaz, a project manager at Shama Solar, notes that solar installation work increases after April, “which means a lot more solar technicians are out on the roofs in the peak hot months. Workers do get sick and dehydrated in the heat and are rushed to nearby hospitals, or we give them a day off”.
But the atmospheric heat is not the only danger to solar workers. “The frames and structures of the solar panels are made of aluminium, so it gets very heated up, and hands of the technicians can get burnt, but it is also too hot to wear the thick safety gloves,” Nawaz notes, adding that some technicians refuse to wear safety gear due to the heat.
However, working at night is not practical, Nawaz says. “At night, extra lights are required, and visibility is limited which [makes it] unsafe.”
Long-term risks
Safety experts recommend specialised protective gear to deal with heat and direct sunlight.
French PPE provider Oteplace advises renewables workers to wear kit including wide-brimmed hats, UV-rated sunglasses and special evaporative vests that can be soaked in water to aid cooling.
But most solar workers in Pakistan do not have access to such equipment, making them vulnerable to heat stress, dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, according to doctors Dialogue Earth spoke to.
“Even death remains a real possibility,” says Asiya Shahab, a doctor who often sets up medical camps to provide care to the less affluent in Karachi and its suburbs.
Doctors also worry about the long-term impacts of UV exposure on solar technicians. “If solar panels are installed during the peak heat times when the sun is at its zenith, then it can lead to intense UV exposures, when the rays of the sun bounce off light-coloured roof tops,” says Shahab. She adds that the exposure can lead to sunburn in as little as 10 minutes, causing the drying and premature aging of the skin, as well as eye conditions such as cataracts, tissue growth in the eye and photokeratitis (eye sunburn).
Chronic exposure to UV radiation “is a well-established cause of skin cancer”, says Maryum Nouman, head of medical oncology at the Dow Comprehensive Cancer Care Centre in Karachi. “UV rays cause cumulative DNA damage and can lead to mutations in important tumour suppressor genes, while also impairing the skin’s local immune surveillance. Over time, these changes increase the risk of developing skin cancers, including basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma,” she tells Dialogue Earth. “Individuals with prolonged occupational sun exposure including solar technicians… are at a higher risk.”
According to 2023 estimates from the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, nearly a third of deaths from non-melanoma skin cancer are caused by working under the sun.
A lack of redressal
Despite being highly vulnerable to heat stress, solar labourers are not spoken about at policy discussions and are not legally recognised, notes Khan. “There are no formal laws for the protection or well-being of labour[ers] working on solar energy.”
This means that if they suffer due to extreme heat or any other work hazards, they have no systems to get support for treatment, she adds. “There is no data available about their numbers and details, so how will they be a part of any policy discussions or labour accords?” says Khan. “And it is not just the panel installers and cleaners but all those working on the solar energy supply chain, for example those working on earthing.”
She adds that all such workers should be registered with social security organisations like the Sindh Employees’ Social Security Institution (SESSI) or the Employees’ Old Age Benefit Institution (EOBI).
There is potentially hope on the horizon for increased heat safety for solar workers. Pakistan recently approved an Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Code of Practice for the construction sector, which sets legally binding standards to strengthen safety and health protections for workers in the industry. The International Labour Organization noted that the code is grounded in internationally recognised standards including its own code of practice on OSH in construction, which has a section on heat stress.
The new Pakistan code covers construction workers in the informal economy and could provide some support to solar installation workers in the long run. Rabia Razzaque, senior programmer officer for the International Labour Organization in Pakistan, confirmed that the new code encompasses “broad terms to cover all equipment of electrical systems”, including solar energy.
Key measures laid out in the code include fall protection, electrical safety, ergonomic handling of objects, PPE, and emergency preparedness to mitigate physical, electrical, chemical and environmental hazards. It also encompasses proper training, hazard assessments and adherence to OSH management systems.
Solar labourers “are invisible workers who need to be made visible”, says Khan.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
On the banks of the Paraná River, a fishing community struggles to stay
After more than 80 years in Remanso Valerio, one of Argentina’s last urban fishing communities is now threatened by transformations to the area.
Remanso Valerio in Argentina clings to the shores of the Paraná River, where the waterway cuts through clay ravines. From this small neighbourhood on the river’s banks, the Paraná unfolds into the distance, brown and vast, specked by islands that seem to go on forever.
Remanso Valerio is in Rosario, Sante Fe province. In recent decades, this city has become a major agricultural export hub thanks to the river that runs along its eastern edge. Approximately 80% of Argentina’s foreign trade, including much of the soy and corn that supplies global markets, sails down the Paraná aboard mighty cargo ships towards the Atlantic.
In the shadow of these ships, the Remanso Valerio neighbourhood coexists on the banks of the waterway. One of Argentina’s few urban artisanal fishing communities, Remanso Valerio – also known locally as El Remanso – has had to adapt its daily rhythms to the vessels and their wake. Now, plans to dredge the river, and to build a large-scale residential development on its banks, threaten to transform the landscape. The plans would disrupt a way of life that has endured for generations.
The first families arrived around 80 years ago, moored their boats and never left. The Santa Fe singer Jorge Fandermole called them “earnest country folk” in his famous hit, Oración del Remanso. Such is the significance of this community’s relationship with its territory that it was the subject of a recent social sciences study.
Today, it is home to some 350 families. Their self-constructed homes climb the ravines, linked by dirt paths that wind through the uneven terrain. Fishing nets are laid out in the sun next to the boats.
Dialogue Earth met Jorge Marín, one of the neighbourhood’s oldest and most respected voices, shortly before he passed away in late May. He had arrived in El Remanso more than 80 years prior, the son of one of the first settlers from the neighbouring town of Paraná. Marín came to be known in the neighbourhood as the “great fisher”. From his home high on the bluff, the fisher’s eyes fixed on the water as he watched the ships pass by. Marín’s words reflected the growing challenges the community faces: “The river gave me everything … from here, I see how the ships carry away all our riches.”
Since the 1990s, repeated dredging for the Paraguay-Paraná waterway project has enabled ever larger ships to pass through, establishing Rosario as a vital export point.
That transformation came at a cost to the river itself, fishers say. Dredging can accelerate erosion and make marine ecosystems less resilient. Manuel Díaz, a veteran El Remanso fisher, puts it bluntly: “Before, we’d cast a line and catch between a hundred and two hundred bogas [a species of grunt fish, popularly known as boops boops]. Now, if you’re lucky, you catch a small one.”
In June 2026, the Belgian company Jan De Nul was awarded a new concession, including further dredging works to deepen the waterway, running until 2051. Experts warn such interventions could further alter the river’s natural dynamics, affecting fish reproduction and accelerating riverbank erosion. Questions have also been raised over the sufficiency of the official environmental impact assessments carried out to date.
Neither Jan De Nul nor the Argentine National Agency for Ports and Shipping (ANPYN) has replied to requests for comment. A government report published in November 2025 stated that environmental regulations are being followed and environmental impacts minimised.
Dialogue Earth spoke to Cecilia Reeves of Taller Ecologista, an environmental organisation based in Rosario: “We are turning the Paraná – a complex, living system – into a straightened, uniform river highway. [For fishing communities] the river isn’t a transportation route. It’s their home and source of food.”
The neighbourhood is also facing a significant change: Parque de la Cabecera. This development proposes 2,500 new homes for some 15,000 people, as well as new sports fields, a cultural centre and “high quality public spaces”. The provincial government is currently finalising tender documents ahead of a bidding process for private developers.
The development includes Remanso Valerio. According to reports, 70 households would need to be relocated. Discussions are ongoing but two families have reportedly signed relocation agreements.
The plans worry some long-time fishers. “I grew up here; this is my life, and I can’t see myself living anywhere else,” says Díaz. “With the river, we feed our children and grandchildren; we buy them school supplies.”
Carlos Rubén Caballero, 42, has been fishing these waters since he was eight. As he speaks, his hands untangle his 300-metre-long net: “This new thing they’re doing was kept quiet … at first people were scared [of being displaced] … but we’re still here.”
The minister of public works, Lisandro Enrico, has stated that the project will generate a “true urban and social transformation” for those living in the area.
Agustina Olmos, 26, is a daughter and granddaughter of fishers. She is open to relocation but not to a wholly new area: “If they give me the chance to relocate, I’ll relocate, but I won’t leave here.”
These development tensions are replicated in riverine and coastal communities across the world. Fishers in Remanso Valerio fear that what is at risk of disappearing is not just the memory of a community, but a living history that continues to influence daily life – the continuity of a deep relationship to a river that has shaped ways of working, social ties and a body of knowledge for generations.
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As plastic talks move behind closed doors, observers worry
Previously deadlocked talks to curb plastic pollution are restarting. Some who want a strong agreement say they are being excluded.
Last year, attempts to achieve a global treaty on plastic pollution stalled, as 183 nations reached an impasse on whether to cut plastic production, and other issues.
As negotiations resume, representatives from some countries and civil society groups are concerned they will exclude voices calling for stronger action.
They worry that an increasingly behind-closed-doors approach will provide more space for powerful oil- and plastic-producing states, such as Saudi Arabia and the US, to unduly influence the negotiations.
This article is based on more than 20 interviews conducted over two months by a team of four reporters who have followed the plastics treaty process for years.
Where is the process?
Since it began in March 2022, attempts to build a treaty to reign in accelerating plastic production, under the auspices of the United Nations, have been plagued by access and participation issues.
Civil society groups, whose members have ‘observer’ status at the UN, have raised objections over restricted access to venues and exclusion from key negotiation spaces, as well as a shift to more unofficial meetings happening in the margins of the process.
“A succession of informal spaces has progressively dominated the negotiations, excluding observers from the room,” says Ana Rocha, director of the global plastics program at GAIA, an NGO. NGOs have also spoken out about how wealthier, oil-rich nations that produce plastic from their fossil fuels are able to bring large delegations, and thus wield more influence than poorer nations often worse impacted by plastic.
These tensions are part of a central conflict: between a majority of self-titled “ambitious countries” that want to control plastic production, and a small group of oil-producing nations who oppose any such step.
The 183 countries involved in hashing out a workable treaty together form the International Negotiating Committee (INC). Attempts to find common ground eventually crumbled at what was meant to be the sixth and final INC meeting in August last year. That meeting was suspended with no agreement. Soon afterwards, the chair of the process since November 2023, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, resigned.
A new chair was appointed in early 2026. Julio Cordano of Chile has laid out a roadmap to agreement. That includes regular informal meetings to build momentum, help countries align, and prepare for the next round of formal negotiations, scheduled for March 2027. He has emphasised the need for inclusivity and transparency in these meetings. The contribution of observers is “a crucial element for advancing towards a successful outcome”, he writes.
Yet participants say they’re seeing something different in practice.
Shadow meetings and language boycotts
The 18 months between the last failed round of negotiations and the talks planned for next year is unusually long. Previous meetings have taken place once or twice per year. It is considered standard to have informal meetings during these “intersessional” periods, some organised by the UN, others by individual countries.
But civil society organisations and some member states fear that their exclusion is being normalised at these intersessionals.
For example in March, an invite-only meeting led by Japan brought together 20 countries to discuss the treaty in Tokyo. The countries collectively represented 60% of global oil production and 70% of global plastics production. As a rule, informal meetings should not involve any substantive negotiations, yet that can be difficult to verify behind closed doors.
Cheikh Sylla is Senegal’s delegate and a member of the INC Bureau, a group of regional representatives whose role is to approve meeting agendas and assist the chair. He says discussions in Tokyo could influence the direction of the wider treaty process because
the chair and one member of the secretariat – which runs the INC process – were there.
A second three-day informal meeting led by the UK and Senegal took place in Dakar in May, with largely the same group of attendees. As in Tokyo, it took place under the Chatham House rule, meaning speakers’ identities could not be revealed, so it is not clear what positions individual countries put forward. But Sylla, who attended the meeting, says there was a move by some countries to reopen negotiations on the definition of “the full life cycle of plastic”. That term, and need to address the issue, appeared in the 2022 resolution that launched the talks.
Some countries reject the idea that the eventual treaty should tackle oil extraction and plastics production at the start of the life cycle. Ambitious countries say the scope is clear in the resolution and that reopening discussion risks a treaty focused on waste management instead of the root cause, rising production.
A UK government spokesperson insisted that “no proposals were produced” at this meeting and it does not replace any formal negotiations.
Yet despite these reassurances, NGOs are concerned these informal meetings could create a shadowy parallel process. “As we saw from the recent Japan meeting, the voices of key regional blocs were notably absent, undermining a core tenet of multilateralism: equal representation,” says GAIA’s Rocha.
Exclusion concerns were only heightened by the most recent informal meeting, in Nairobi in July. The event drew together head delegates from each negotiating country, and observers were not invited to attend.
Some fear this absence is taking a toll on the process that could signal lowering ambition to come.
Jacob Kean-Hammerson, global plastics policy lead at Greenpeace USA, said a document outlining priorities for discussion, circulated by the chair before the Nairobi gathering, “just completely crossed out the notion of having any conversation on chemicals or production,” despite these being core issues with majority support, he says. “There is no unanimous agreement to not include those things, or even simply have a discussion on their merits.”
When this concern was put to Cordano in a press conference in June, he insisted that “no topics are excluded”.
Sylla argues that limiting participation makes it easier for governments to settle on a weak agreement down the line. “If you want to agree to a low-ambition [treaty], you need to kill the transparency [and] the inclusiveness,” he says.
Delegates from several African countries have also boycotted recent informal head-of-delegation meetings due to a lack of French-language interpretation, Sylla adds. In the past, translation has been provided at plenary sessions but not routinely in other sessions, say attendees.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) rejected a proposal to provide interpretation at upcoming informal meetings on budgetary grounds. “This approach is consistent with established UN practices for intergovernmental negotiations,” it stated. Sylla says this could exclude around 20 French-speaking countries from meaningful participation in these meetings. Any interpretation has to be provided centrally by the UN so they cannot hire their own interpreters, he adds.
Many Global South countries rely on aid from wealthier countries to participate at the talks but this resource is also under threat. Norway, for example, has recently scaled back its aid for work on sustainable oceans and marine litter.
Karoline Andaur, WWF-Norway secretary general, said: “The programme is essential for ensuring civil society meaningful participation in key national and global decision-making processes. Norway’s support allows waste pickers, affected communities, scientists, and the Global South actors to participate in plastic pollution treaty negotiations.”
“Cutting this funding would weaken participation and transparency thereby creating a democratic deficit in the talks.”
Kenya will be severely affected by Norway’s cut, according to WWF. WWF Kenya’s CEO, Jackson Kiplagat, says the cut “sends the wrong signal when we need greater commitment, not less”.
Norway has long been a key financier of participation by delegates from African and other developing countries in UN-led environmental negotiations, including the plastics treaty talks, says Ayub Macharia, who is on Kenya’s delegation at the talks.
Ayub feels funding cuts could limit the number of delegates some countries are able to send to future negotiations.
“This is significant since INC discussions often take place simultaneously in separate negotiating tracks, requiring multiple representatives to effectively monitor and engage in the process.” Lower financial support may limit resource-constrained countries from shaping the treaty’s outcome, he explains.
Token inclusion for civil society?
NGOs, Indigenous peoples groups and other civil society organisations have previously met with delegates at formal negotiations to provide research, guidance and testimony to dozens of member states that actively seek their advice. But UN-organised informals are not usually open to observers.
This means that for the long months ahead, civil society may only be involved in the process via informal webinars with the chair.
“It’s still very, very unclear how and if civil society can participate,”saysFrankie Orona, a longtime observer of the process and executive director of Society of Native Nations, an environmental and Indigenous cultures nonprofit.
Concerns have been stoked by suggestions from the chair during a webinar with observers that the 700-plusorganisations which make up the civil society bloc should “self-organise” and elect specific “focal” contacts. These would represent multiple groups at once, as a possible way to be allowed to engage in the informal meetings.
Despite the potential benefits of gaining access to the informal meetings, Orona is wary about the long-term effect of reducing organisations’ ability to engage directly with the secretariat and reducing diverse voices to a single spokesperson. “We have to be very cautious about what we, as civil society, agree on. Because we could be setting a precedent of how [formal] negotiations are handled moving forward, and we can’t allow for that low of an ambition.”
Observer inclusion is also critical to a just and balanced process, argues Alexandra Harrington, an international jurist and chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Plastic Pollution Task Force. “Many of us involved in the process actually provide vital legal and scientific support for developing countries.”
“The big countries have huge delegations and well-trained international legal teams, which the smaller countries don’t have access to,” she says. “If you take that away or if you limit the access, then you’re limiting the ability of countries to actually have legal advice.”
Academics have also shared their concerns. The shift to observer-free informal sessions might have to do with “growing political sensitivity as countries grapple with issues that are likely to shape the final agreement”, says Steve Fletcher, director of the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth.
“Concern arises when substantial phases of negotiations, or negotiations on key issues, take place without public scrutiny,” he says. If closed-door discussions become the norm, there is a risk that the final agreement reflects political compromise more than the needs of those most affected by plastic pollution, Fletcher adds.
In his response to Dialogue Earth, the chair of the INC process, Julio Cordano, says his suggestion to observers to self-organise “was not intended to reduce direct engagement”. In fact, it may help expedite “access and interaction”, he says.
“My objective is to strengthen, not narrow, observer engagement while respecting the member-led nature of the negotiations,” he adds.
Shellan Saling, interim chair of the Youth Plastic Action Network, says observers, including youth participants, do not have the access to the negotiations that they need. But Saling says it is the wider process and not the chair that is the problem. “I have seen significant improvement in transparency and inclusivity compared to the previous chairs,” she says.
Saling points to Cordano’s regular meetings with observers and publication of letters and meeting notes.
UNEP, whose secretariat supports the plastics treaty negotiations, says it is “fully committed to a transparent and inclusive INC process”.
A spokesperson added: “The secretariat supports transparency by sharing and publishing relevant information on the INC website, supporting observer webinars and related engagement opportunities, and clarifying and applying applicable UN secretariat rules and arrangements as mandated, including on interpretation.”
As countries work to revive the treaty process, the challenge will be in balancing efficiency with inclusivity.
Harrington warns that if all countries are not properly involved, “getting legal and scientific advice that they need from civil society organisations when they can’t afford it… you build a treaty that is inequitable and, when you put it in place, it doesn’t have the intended effect.”
