More frequent and intense heatwaves, driven by climate change, are harming the health and wealth of sellers at the daily street market in the shadow of Delhi’s iconic Red Fort, a study has found.
Researchers from Greenpeace India and Workers’ Collective for Climate Justice South Asia interviewed ten market sellers from the huge Lal Qila (Red Fort) Market, as well as activists, social workers working with this community.
They found that men and women selling products like shoes, clothes and dried fruits to the local community are standing for hours in the sun and suffering headaches, dizziness and fainting spells.
“By 11am, the sun feels like it’s piercing through the skin,” said one unnamed trader. “By evening, our feet are swollen, and we can’t even feel our toes properly,” said another.
On International Workers Day in Delhi on Thursday, groups representing hundreds of thousands of workers launched the “Workers’ Collective for Climate Justice – South Asia” and signed a petition calling for governments to tax fossil fuel companies to fund climate action.
India heats up
In each of the last three years, India has been hit by summer heatwaves which scientists say have been made much more likely and much hotter by human-induced climate change.
Although far from the typical June peak, this year temperatures are already in the high 30s C (around 100F), harming the capital city’s several hundred thousand market sellers and other informal workers like rickshaw drivers, waste pickers and domestic workers.
Workers are trying to adapt to the changing climate but shade-providing tarpaulins are torn down by authorities and a lack of accessible drinking and toilet facilities means keeping hydrated is a challenge.
Sandeep Verma is an advisory board member for Youth Organisation for Democratic Development and Help in Action, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of market vendors in Delhi. He told Climate Home that using public toilets in Lal Qila costs at least 10 rupees ($0.11) each time.
Because of these “very high charges”, he said, vendors avoid drinking. While men find it easier to urinate publicly, it’s a “very difficult situation” for women, he added. The Greenpeace report finds urinary tract infections and kidney stones are common consequences.
Despite the health impacts, many market traders reported lacking the time, documentation or confidence to access public health systems.
“With clinics often hostile or overcrowded, workers self-medicate, ignore symptoms, or work through illness until their bodies break down. Climate crisis, in this context, is not just ecological, it is deeply biological, marked by silent inflammation, exhaustion, and untreated ailments”, the report found.
Heatwaves have financial costs too. A separate 2023 study in Delhi found that for every degree Celsius increase in the temperature, informal workers lose around a fifth of their net earnings.
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Verma told Climate Home that Delhi’s residents avoid markets in the extreme heat, reducing customer footfall and vendor earnings. The heat also spoils food and flower products, as vendors lack refrigeration.
Tarpaulins torn down
Traders are trying to adapt to heatwaves by wearing cooler cotton clothes, wearing headscarves, hats and wet clothes, and consuming glucose sugar sachets.
They also use tarpaulin sheets, umbrellas and plastic covers for shade or set up their stalls under trees or near buildings. But municipal authorities often remove this shade, the report says, as these makeshift structures are considered ‘encroachments’.
“They don’t allow us to put up cloth covers, even when everything’s melting,” said one street trader surveyed by researchers.
Verma said that municipal authorities and police officers will seize all a trader’s goods, putting them temporarily out of business, and that the procedure to get goods back takes 15-20 days.
He added that, since the 2014 Street Vendor Act, such seizures are unlawful unless notice has been served. His union is filing legal cases against these seizures but this has proved time-consuming and so far unsuccessful, he said.
The report’s authors say that vendors should be able to use umbrellas, tarpaulins and mobile carts without fear of confiscation and that community cooling centres and designated vending zones with heat-resilient roofs, ventilation, drinking water and sanitation should be set up.
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It found that street vendors are getting together to share information and lobby the authorities. They are represented by the National Hawker Federation and Janpahal, who offer legal aid and campaign for them while the Self-Employed Women’s Association supports female vendors.
“These support groups are critical not just during episodes of state-led eviction drives or crackdowns but also during periods of distress” like the Covid-19 lockdown or heatwaves, the report found.
Many market traders have been able to secure identity cards and vending certifications under the 2014 street vendors law, giving them more rights. Verma is calling for the provisions of this law to be enforced in full.
The post Climate-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.
In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
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Climate Change
Cheniere Energy Received $370 Million IRS Windfall for Using LNG as ‘Alternative’ Fuel
The country’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas benefited from what critics say is a questionable IRS interpretation of tax credits.
Cheniere Energy, the largest producer and exporter of U.S. liquefied natural gas, received $370 million from the IRS in the first quarter of 2026, a payout that shipping experts, tax specialists and a U.S. senator say the company never should have received.
Cheniere Energy Received $370 Million IRS Windfall for Using LNG as ‘Alternative’ Fuel
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