Climate change is increasing heat-related illness, respiratory diseases, displacement, food insecurity, mental health challenges, catastrophic storms and disasters, and other impacts that place growing pressure on health and care systems worldwide. Yet climate discussions continue to focus primarily on impacts and outcomes, often overlooking the workers, services, and systems responsible for caring for people before, during, and after climate shocks. Emerging evidence from initiatives, such as the Climate and Care Initiative, underscores that health and care workers are increasingly acting as climate first responders and are at the heart of resilient health and care services. Health care workers, childcare providers, social workers, domestic workers, and community caregivers help individuals and communities anticipate, cope with, and recover from climate impacts. Yet they remain largely absent from climate adaptation planning, climate finance discussions, and just transition strategies. Meanwhile, across the world, workers and their communities are already developing locally-led responses through workplace collective bargaining and by exercising other fundamental labor rights. In Cambodia, for example, Solidarity Center-supported research shows that unionized workers experience half as much heat stress as unorganized workers. Trade unions and other worker organizations serve as the first line of defense against worsening health impacts by negotiating binding agreements with employers that provide the structural safeguards workers need to protect themselves and to provide the quality of care required now and into the future. These experiences demonstrate that care systems should not only serve as social policy but as essential climate adaptation infrastructure. This session seeks to bring a worker rights and care systems lens to climate discussions and explores how centering labor rights within climate adaptation and just transition strategies can deliver improved health and care outcomes. Objectives The session will: -Reframe care systems and workers as essential climate adaptation and resilience infrastructure. -Highlight how climate change affects both care needs and the conditions under which care is provided. -Explore the intersection of labor rights, occupational health, public services, climate resilience, and gender equality. -Examine why adaptation finance and just transition investments should support care systems, workers and labor rights, and community-based resilience initiatives. -Amplify lessons and leadership from workers and communities across the world already responding to climate impacts. The Solidarity Center’s climate and labor work is made possible through diverse funding sources, including philanthropic support from private foundations.