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Climate change is no longer an issue ISO 45001 users can automatically leave outside their OH&S management-system context. In February 2024, ISO published a formal amendment — ISO 45001:2018/Amd 1:2024 — affecting Clauses 4.1 and 4.2 of the standard. ISO confirms the amendment applies to ISO 45001:2018, and safety professionals responsible for maintaining or auditing an OHSMS need to understand exactly what it requires, what changed, and what it means in practice for their next audit cycle.
What Is the ISO 45001 Climate Change Amendment?
The amendment requires organizations to explicitly determine whether climate change is relevant to their OH&S management system and recognizes that relevant interested parties may have climate-related requirements.
|
Area |
2024 Climate Change Amendment |
|
Clause 4.1 |
Determine whether climate change is a relevant issue |
|
Clause 4.2 |
Consider climate-related requirements of relevant interested parties |
|
Overall intent |
Existing context/stakeholder requirements remain fundamentally unchanged |
|
Practical effect |
Organizations need evidence that climate relevance was considered |
The ISO/IAF communiqué specifically explains that the overall intent of these clauses remains unchanged — this is not a new management-system framework, but a targeted addition designed to make an existing consideration explicit. For organisations tracking the ISO 45001 amendment 2024, ISO 45001 changes 2024 and the ISO 45001 climate action amendment, the key takeaway is that this is the latest amendment to explicitly name climate change as a factor to consider, rather than leaving it implied within general context-of-the-organization requirements.
Clause 4.1 covers the context of the organization. Following the amendment, organizations should ask questions such as: could heat, flooding, storms or wildfire smoke affect employees? Could climate conditions affect facilities or critical infrastructure? Could changing temperatures affect work methods? Could climate-related regulation or stakeholder expectations affect OH&S? Are outdoor, mobile or vulnerable workers particularly exposed?
It's worth being precise here: the requirement is to determine whether climate change is relevant — not to automatically declare every climate issue an OH&S risk. Some organisations may conclude climate factors are highly relevant; others, depending on their operations and location, may reasonably determine limited relevance. What matters is that the determination is made deliberately, documented, and can be evidenced during an audit rather than assumed or overlooked entirely.
Clause 4.2 concerns the needs and expectations of interested parties — workers, regulators, customers, contractors, insurers, parent companies, local authorities and clients, among others. ISO's amendment expressly adds a requirement to ask whether these relevant interested parties have climate-related requirements affecting the OHSMS. A regulator might introduce new heat-exposure rules, an insurer might require climate-risk documentation, or a parent company might set group-wide climate-related safety expectations — all of which now need to be considered as part of this clause. Organisations that already maintain a robust interested-parties analysis under Clause 4.2 may find this addition is more about explicit documentation than a fundamentally new activity.
This is where the standard connects to real worker risk. Extreme heat can lead to heat stress; storms and floods create emergency and infrastructure risks; wildfire smoke causes respiratory exposure; UV radiation affects outdoor workers; extreme weather introduces transport and site risks; and in some occupations or regions, changing biological risks are also emerging as a concern for workers exposed to shifting environmental conditions.
The ILO identifies excessive heat, UV radiation, extreme weather events, workplace air pollution and other climate-related exposures among growing occupational safety and health concerns. For the U.S. example, OSHA notes that occupational heat exposure affects millions of workers and can lead to serious illness or fatalities. Taken together, these findings help explain why ISO chose to make climate relevance an explicit consideration rather than leaving it as an implicit, easily-overlooked assumption within Clause 4.
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Putting the amendment into practice can follow a straightforward, repeatable sequence that fits within existing management-system activities rather than requiring a parallel process:
This sequence forms a practical ISO 45001 climate change checklist and supports ISO 45001 risk assessment climate change work, along with broader climate adaptation, operational controls and climate resilience planning.
Auditors are not likely to demand a separate climate manual. Instead, they will look for evidence woven through the existing management system: context analysis, relevant interested-party review, a documented climate relevance decision, risk assessments, hazard registers, applicable legal requirements, emergency plans, operational controls, training and communication records, internal-audit evidence, management-review inputs, and corrective actions.
The key question is not simply "Do you have a climate policy?" but "Have you determined whether climate change is relevant to your OHSMS, and have you acted appropriately where it is relevant?" Organisations that can show this determination was made deliberately, and traced through to any resulting action, will generally satisfy auditor expectations without needing a standalone climate framework.
Readers looking to strengthen their audit and implementation skills can explore the ISO 45001 Occupational Health & Safety Management System Awareness course for a deeper, practical grounding in these principles.
It's worth being clear about how these frameworks relate. ISO 45001 is an international voluntary management-system standard — it is not OSHA regulation. OSHA is the U.S. occupational-safety regulator, while the ILO serves as an international labour and OSH authority and guidance source.
In practice, this means organizations must meet the occupational health and safety laws applicable in each country in which they operate. ISO 45001 can support systematic management but does not replace those legal duties.
ISO 45001 and sustainability intersect through worker protection and organizational resilience, but ISO 45001 remains an OH&S management-system standard, not an environmental or ESG reporting standard. Discussions of ISO 45001 sustainability, ISO 45001 and ESG, ISO 45001 climate resilience and ISO 45001 climate adaptation should stay focused on worker health and safety outcomes rather than drifting into carbon accounting, which falls outside the standard's scope.
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The ISO 45001 climate change amendment does not transform ISO 45001 into an environmental-management standard. It makes climate relevance explicit within organizational context and interested-party analysis, connecting that assessment to hazard identification, risk management, operational controls and continual improvement when climate change is relevant. Build a deeper understanding of these principles through the ISO 45001 Occupational Health & Safety Management System Awareness course.
