Climate change

Climate change and slavery: the perfect storm?

Environmental damage exacerbates poverty, making it easier for poor people to be trafficked. What will campaigners do about it?

Cameron Conaway

the Guardian,

13 December, 2013

For years, researchers in a variety of sectors have known two key concepts about the intersection of poverty and the environment. The first is that unsustainable use of natural resources can and does cause poverty. The second is that poverty can, and does, cause environmental degradation. But many anti-slavery activists and climate change researchers are making more connections.

Increasingly it seems that there's a link between a damaged environment and growth in modern-day slavery.

According to Arifur Rahman, the chief executive of YPSA, a non-profit social development organisation based in Chittagong, Bangladesh: "Without a doubt, each time our country battles through an environmental disaster, we see a subsequent rise in cases of slavery and human trafficking.

"It's often not until months later that we're able to find and rescue the victims, but when we do and we ask when they were abducted or lured into the trade, the date they tell us often coincides with the date of the natural disaster. In our minds, and in our personal experience on the ground, this means the link between climate change and slavery could not be more clear."

Leaders of various anti-slavery NGOs such as Open Hand in New Delhi, My Refuge House in Cebu, and Anti-Slavery International in London all echo similar sentiments. So if the link between the two issues has been well recognised, how come it has not become part of any significant international conversation?

According to Kevin Bales, the co-founder of Free The Slaves, one obvious answer is our tendency to hone in on one problem at a time: "When I first met people in slavery, they were my focus. I listened to them and their needs with every fibre of my being. Those of us who are activists tend to focus purely on what's in front of us. While this is advantageous in myriad ways, it also means we're not pulling back the lens to see the full picture.

"It wasn't until later in my career, upon looking through photographs based on my research into modern slavery, that I began to notice the ways in which many of the environments were destroyed. Up until that moment I had been so concerned by what was in my face that I missed the connection between climate change and slavery."

Bales was so moved by this realisation that he has worked for several years to put together a book (due out next year) that he hopes will raise awareness of the link between climate change and modern slavery. It can be difficult pinpointing precisely how much of a particular environmental disaster can be blamed on humans, but in the mind of Bales and many others, it's dangerous to ignore the overlap.

While it's clear that the link has been under discussed, has the issue been acted upon in significant ways by organisations in either sector? According to Dr Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of natural resources, ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, the answer is no.

"Climate change influences every single aspect of life on Earth. But in order to truly combat climate change, at this stage, we must combat our own comfortable ways of life, the ways of life we were born into. This means it's far easier to kick climate change issues into the long grass than to address it head on.

"Peer-reviewed research continues to show that climate change underlies poverty and that poverty drives human trafficking. If we want to get at the root of slavery, it seems we're neglecting one of its deepest layers."

So what do anti-slavery organisations have to gain from recognising the link between climate change and modern-day slavery?

"It's all about understanding poverty," said Arun Gandhi, a journalist, activist and the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. "The better we can understand the complex forces that give rise to poverty, the better we'll be able to truly cut at the roots of all forms of slavery."

Rahman agrees, "When we talk about the link between climate change and modern slavery, what we're really talking about is poverty. Disconnected families, hungry children, and displaced peoples … we know these factors make people more vulnerable to trafficking and we're seeing with our own eyes and through the scope of history how climate change gives rise to these factors."

Each sector will need to diversify its current concept of economic development or risk seeing its gains toppled by climate change and/or damaged by modern slavery. They'll need to think not only of creating jobs and stimulating an economy, but doing so in a way that avoids environmental catastrophe.

Though poverty affects deforestation rates, all too often those living in poverty and under inherited indebtedness try to dig their way out by working agricultural jobs that are often vulnerable to forced labour. As Bales puts it: "employers who can destroy the environment without care are often the ones who can destroy lives without care." This is a lesson that both environmental and anti-slavery organisations would do well to recognise and act on.

Cameron Conaway is the executive editor of the Good Men Project and tweets as @CameronConaway