BY: CAROLINE ROLF
As we shop for cellphones, computers and cheap frozen seafood, we remain ignorant to the fact that we are unwittingly supporting the enslavement of tens of millions of people in developing countries.
A leading expert on slavery in present day, Kevin Bales spent several years traveling to some of the world’s most dangerous places researching and documenting the hidden but prevalent global issue of human trafficking. From the mineral mines of eastern Congo to the quarries of northern India, Bales noticed a pattern emerging: in the places that slavery was prevalent, so was massive, ongoing environmental destruction.
In Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World, the author and co-founder of Free the Slaves, links modern slavery to environmental obliteration. He found some 35 million people, including children, are victims of debt bondage, kidnapping and are subject to abuse from which they are unable to escape. Just as these people are exploited, some of the most destructive industries are doing the same to the environment: illegal logging, mining for minerals, uncontrolled fishing that destroys mangrove forests and brickmaking that requires powerful greenhouse gases. The role that slaves play in this ecological catastrophe offers Bales a solution: free the slaves and save the planet.
“Shrimp, fish, gold, diamonds, steel, beef, sugar and other fruits of slavery and environmental devastation flow into the stores of North America,” writes Bales.
Bales reports about the illegal fish farming in Bangladesh’s mangrove forest, which is supposed to be under the protection of the United Nations World Heritage Site. Mangroves play an important role in coastal ecosystems, removing carbon dioxide from the air and providing a habitat for Bengal tigers. Slave owners have ignored this and clear cut parts of this forest to make room for illegal fish and shrimp farms. Bales hypothesizes that 40 percent of global deforestation is credited to slave labour and later discovers the role that slavery plays in CO2 emissions.
“When we calculated up, very conservatively, how much CO2 is coming from slavery, it worked out like this: That if slavery were a country it would have the population of Canada, but it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 after China and the United States…’’
Slaveholders have wiped out these forests that are crucial to removing atmospheric carbon, to put in shrimp farms, burn wood, to do a lot of things, but almost all of it involves slave-based deforestation. Another similar account of illegal shrimp farming was documented in Thailand where enslaved workers from Asia are forced to peel shrimp for 16 hours a day for next to nothing. The cheap seafood was sold in major U.S. retailers including Walmart and the Olive Garden restaurant.
Some of the slavery is hereditary, meaning these people have never known freedom. “They were born into slavery, and when you’ve never known freedom, when you’ve never been outside the quarry, you’ve never been to another village, you’ve never seen a school, you’ve never had a doctor’s appointment, you’ve never seen a newspaper, all the lists of all the things we expect in freedom don’t apply to these people.
Bales ends his book with a memory of an antislavery pageant in a Brazilian elementary school. The children shout, “Slavery, no way!” Bales assumes that if modern slavery ended, deforestation among other environmental damage done by slaves would end too. In the meantime, if we were only able to use the materials and food we knew were truly clean, Bales suggests we would be without cellphones, clothing and food. Blood and Earth asks people from every point in the chain to take responsibility for the harm we have done to each other and put an end to it in order to repair the world. This is an inspiring book that suggests how we can begin to heal humanity and the planet we all share.
