Twiggy's daughter introduces another spanner in the works...
April 12 2024Modern-day abolitionist Grace Forrest has warned that the race to decarbonise the world’s economy risks repeating the mistakes of the colonial era by building industries on forced and child labour.
Forrest, who on Thursday evening became the first Australian woman to win the Roosevelt Foundation’s Four Freedoms award for her anti-slavery advocacy, says the green economy is sleepwalking towards another century of exploitation .
The work of her human rights organisation, Walk Free, has exposed modern slavery, forced and child labour throughout the renewable energy supply chain, with evidence of state-imposed forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim majority groups in China in the making and supply of solar panels and other renewable technologies.
It has also shone a light on the slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where cobalt is mined by workers for its use in rechargeable batteries for laptop computers and mobile phones.
“We have this tremendous closing window of opportunity to build an economy that isn’t built with its roots in the historical slave trade,” Forrest said. “We have an opportunity to build an economy that isn’t coming from colonial lines and yet, right now, a green economy absolutely will be built on forced and child labour.
“So the message really is, you cannot harm people in the name of saving the planet.”
The 30-year-old founded Walk Free in 2011. It is funded by the Minderoo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of her father mining magnate Andrew Forrest and mother Nicola. Itslatest Global Slavery Indexestimated that 50 million people were living in modern slavery – either in forced labour or forced marriage – on any given day in 2021.
(SMH) /world/europe/slave-like-solar-panels-may-be-great-for-the-environment-but-at-what-human-cost-20240411-p5fj8o.html
