{"id":5926,"date":"2025-07-16T11:01:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T11:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=5926"},"modified":"2025-07-16T11:01:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T11:01:33","slug":"romania-among-countries-projected-to-see-sharp-gdp-labor-productivity-decline-due-to-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=5926","title":{"rendered":"Romania among countries projected to see sharp GDP, labor productivity decline due to heat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romania will face some of the most severe economic consequences of heatwaves in Europe, with projected losses expected to exceed -2.5% of GDP by 2055\u20132064 due to lowered labor productivity, according to research published in Nature Communications and quoted by Euronews<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year was the warmest year on record since 1850, both in Europe and globally, rounding off the warmest decade on record. It was also the warmest year in Romania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Overall, Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, with the temperature having risen at twice the global average rate since the 1980s, according to Euronews.\u00a0Heat stress translates into economic losses, according to researchers, as it lowers labor productivity, meaning output per hour worked or output per employee.<\/p>\n

To show this, David Garc\u00eda-Le\u00f3n and his colleagues\u00a0examined heatwaves in 2003, 2010, 2015, and 2018, and compared their impacts to the historical baseline of 1981 to 2010 in a study<\/a> published in Nature Communications. In those selected years, the total estimated economic damages from heatwaves ranged between 0.3% and 0.5% of Europe’s GDP. This represents 1.5 to 2.5 times the average annual economic losses from extreme heat during the 1981\u20132010 period, which stood at approximately 0.2% of GDP.<\/p>\n

They also showed that labor productivity losses stood at -0.1% in Romania during 2000-2004, and -0.45% in 2017-2021.<\/p>\n

The findings come after a 2024 OECD report<\/a> covering 23 countries and 2.7 million firms between 2000 and 2021, which found that both an increase in the number of high-temperature days and the occurrence of heatwaves substantially reduce labor productivity.<\/p>\n

Specifically, it showed that ten extra days above a temperature of 35\u00b0C during a year result in a 0.3% reduction in firms\u2019 annual labor productivity. This is 0.2% when measured above 30\u00b0C.<\/p>\n

When it is above 40\u00b0C, the impact grows to over 1.5%, reaching 1.9%. The decreases range from 1.1% to 2.7%, suggesting that in this most extreme scenario, losses can exceed 2.5%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The more recent study estimates that Romania will be among the countries most affected by increased heat, alongside Cyprus, Croatia, Portugal, Malta, and Spain, with impacts reaching or exceeding -2.5% of GDP by the 2055\u20132064 period. Greece and Italy (both -2.17%) and France (-1.46%) are also expected to have significant losses by the 2060s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other side, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium show relatively lower GDP impacts, generally staying below -0.5% even in the worst-case future scenarios. However, almost all countries, even in cooler regions, show a consistent downward trend.<\/p>\n

Experts recommend robust climate mitigation efforts to curb the rising intensity and frequency of heatwaves and adaptation measures, like improving workplace ventilation, adjusting working hours to avoid peak heat, or expanding urban green spaces.<\/p>\n

radu@romania-insider.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

(Photo source: <\/em>LCVA<\/em><\/a> | <\/em>Dreamstime.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romania will face some of the most severe economic consequences of heatwaves in Europe, with projected losses expected to exceed -2.5% of GDP by 2055\u20132064 due to lowered labor productivity, according to research published in Nature Communications and quoted by Euronews.\u00a0 Last year was the warmest year on record since 1850, both in Europe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}